“Are You Ready” by Disturbed

"Are You Ready" kicked off Disturbed's seventh album, Evolution, in 2018, and the fans picked it. When the record was finished that July, David Draiman asked them whether the first single should be a heavy one, like most of the band's catalog, or a softer ballad closer to their take on Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence". Out of 80,000 votes, more than 83% wanted heavy, and this is what heavy sounded like. The music goes back a long way: Dan Donegan traces it to an idea he had in 2004, during the Ten Thousand Fists sessions.

Draiman sings lead, Donegan handles guitar, piano and electronics, John Moyer plays bass and Mike Wengren drums, and Kevin Churko produced, engineered, mixed and added keyboards, sharing the writing credit with Donegan, Draiman and Wengren. It went all the way to the top of the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart that September.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.