“Savior” by Skillet

"Savior" was the third single from Collide, the fifth studio album by Christian rock band Skillet, and it cuts close to the bone. John Cooper, the band's singer and bassist, wrote it alone and has said it comes mostly from his own childhood: his father never hit him, but the two shared a deeply damaging emotional bond. Here that old hurt gets hammered into heavy, cathartic alt-metal.

The video went arguably darker than anything Skillet had tried to that point. Only the band's second clip to tell a story, after "Best Kept Secret", it switches between the band playing inside a house and out in a park at night while an abusive father torments his kids, who break away and run through the park until they land safe in their mother's arms. On Billboard's mainstream rock chart it climbed as high as No. 26.

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