Studio Album · No. 6
Neon Pill Songwriting Credits by Cage the Elephant
Produced by John Hill · Engineered by Jeremy Ferguson, John Mueller, Jon Yeston, Jonny Bell
Holds writing credit on 12 of 12 tracks
Authorship Breakdown 12 / 12 documented
Scored across the 12 tracks with documented writers, by whether Cage the Elephant carries a lyricist or composer credit.
Share of the 12 tracks where a band member is credited, by role.
By the Numbers
Every song on Neon Pill carries a base writing credit split six ways among Matt Shultz, Brad Shultz, Nick Bockrath, Matthan Minster, Daniel Tichenor, and Jared Champion, the full working lineup that reunited to finish the record. Three tracks add outside collaborators on top of that base credit: 'Neon Pill' and 'Over Your Shoulder' bring in Romanian-American songwriter Vlad Holiday, 'Metaverse' adds both Holiday and Jermaine Armstead, and 'Out Loud' adds Nashville songwriter Caitlyn Smith. Matt Shultz's lyrics were largely written during his psychotic episodes and only reinterpreted for meaning after his recovery, so the album reads less as a clean lyricist-versus-composer split than as one crisis filtered through a shared band credit. John Hill produced every track and Manny Marroquin mixed the whole record rather than working song by song.
Neon Pill is the sixth studio album by Cage the Elephant, released May 17, 2024 on RCA Records after a five-year gap following Social Cues. The record grew out of frontman Matt Shultz's mental health crisis, a psychosis triggered by an adverse reaction to ADHD medication that led to his 2022 arrest and recovery, and much of the album's lyrics began as writing from inside that episode before Shultz reworked their meaning afterward. Produced by John Hill, the album pairs confessional songwriting with genre-fluid, retro-leaning production pulling from sounds spanning the 1960s through the 1980s. Three singles from the record - 'Neon Pill,' 'Rainbow,' and 'Metaverse' - each topped Billboard's Alternative Airplay chart, extending the band's streak of consecutive number ones to four and tying them for the second-most all-time toppers on that chart behind Red Hot Chili Peppers. 'Rainbow,' written for Shultz's wife Eva, also topped the Adult Alternative Airplay chart, while 'Out Loud' and 'Over Your Shoulder' both reference the Shultz brothers' father, who died in 2020. The album reached number 57 on the Billboard 200 and earned the title track a Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Music Performance, the band's fourth nomination overall.