The lead singer of Dashboard Confessional, Chris Carrabba, stopped by The Bobby Bones Show to talk about how one of his songs unexpectedly became the Spider-Man 2 theme song, his upcoming tour with Counting Crows, and perform for us in studio.
In the 90s, Carrabba was recording music on a 4 track in a closet and going town to town in a van selling his music, just wanting people to hear it. He didn’t expect to start touring, but he found people understood his music and became a fan of it early on. Eventually, his music became so popular that when fame started for him, he was confused. He explained how 20 years later, he still gets nervous when he performs. There was a time when his success started to really take off that he didn’t want to do music anymore. It became overwhelming and he had to have security guards with him whenever he wanted to run errands or go to the mall.
Their first music video that premiered on MTV was for their song “Screaming Infidelities” and that helped launch their mainstream success. Carrabba didn’t want to be famous and being center stage was not something he ever dreamed of. He just liked making music and expressing himself through it. Myspace was a huge launching pad for his music. At the time, it was the biggest social media platform, and it was mainly used for artists to put out their music and expose it to fans. That’s how a lot of his early music gained traction, and Napster. He knew he wasn’t making a lot of money with his music being available on Napster, but he liked that it allowed many people to hear it and he credits it to his success.
Dashboard Confessionals most popular song may be the one that became the theme song for Spider-Man 2, called “Vindicated.” But he wrote that song never with the intention of it being played in one of the biggest movies. Originally, he wrote another song that he submitted for the movie, but it wasn’t chosen. He was able to see a pre-screener of the movie, before the graphics were even finished, and left with the story in his mind. A few weeks later he was in Hawaii for the last date on the tour and he picked up a guitar and started writing a line that had popped into his mind, “Dangles on a string.” When he started to think where that line came from, he realized it was because he saw the Spider-Man movie. An hour or two later, it was completely written, and he called to play it for the head of Sony Music for pictures, Lia Vollack. She asked if he could demo it that day, and this was pre-home studios, so they were able to do a rough demo at the club they were performing at that night. She loved the song so much, she called and asked if they could fly home to record it so they could use it as the theme song for the new Spider-Man movie.
Dashboard Confessional will join Counting Crows this summer on their ‘2023 Banshee Season’ tour. They will join them in 49 cities across North America and begins June 13 in Omaha, Nebraska. More information can be found here. While in studio, he played his song, “Vindicated” that you can watch below!