Collective Soul’s bass player, Will Turpin, whose band’s new documentary, Give Me A Word: The Collective Soul Story, hits the 2025 movie schedule on video-on-demand and Blu-Ray on July 8th, has some thoughts on bands that get annoyed with playing their hits. If any band would understand this, it’s Collective Soul, who had a slew of giant hits in the 1990s that fans of the band still love hearing the band play in concert. I had a chance to speak with Turpin about the documentary, the band’s long history, and just what it's like to play hits like “December” and “Shine” all these years later.
Collective Soul Really Cranked Out The Hits In The ‘90s
Even for Gen Xers like me, it’s easy to forget just how huge Collective Soul was in the 1990s. Their first two albums, Hints Allegations and Things Left Unsaid and Collective Soul sold millions and millions of copies worldwide. Both spent months on the charts, and three decades later, the band still sells out concerts all over.
Bands that have so many huge hits early in their careers often form a love/hate relationship with those songs. Understandably, as lead singer Ed Roland says in the rock documentary, usually artists want to keep looking forward with their life’s work. Looking back, and playing the “old songs” becomes a grind for artists, and sadly, that means sometimes bands come to resent those hits, despite the passion fans still feel for them.
Will Turpin’s Take On Collective Soul’s Hits Is Refreshing
When I asked Turpin about his relationship with songs like “Shine” and “The World I Know,” and whether he ever got sick of playing them in concert, he really opened up about how he felt about bands that resent their hits, saying,
I don't really buy into the whole, ‘if I have to play this song one more time,’ attitude. I know some other artists who buy into that kind of attitude, and I always thought that was extremely immature, maybe crass.
Turpin sees the songs through the fans' eyes, it seems. He understands why those fans are still coming to see their favorite artists, and it’s because those hits are important to them. Turpin says,
I just think that's the wrong perspective to have when people allow these songs to be such a part of their lives. All they're asking you to do is have fun on stage while they pay you to play that song.
In addition to calling the idea crass, which I agree with, Turpin goes on to say that it’s really about ego,
Some of those people are just, you know, lost in [their] own ego, [and they’re] missing the big picture here.
And for me, he’s right. He goes on to highlight just how cool it can be, and how Collective Soul feels when they play their biggest songs,
If we can't have fun together on stage, look at each other and play ‘Shine’ and listen to all those people sing that song, watch their hearts into the song, watch them go through the memories sometimes…It's about like, dude, you just need to pick something else to do, really.
All This Shows In The Documentary
Give Me A Word: The Collective Soul Story shows both sides of this discussion. Much of the film is framed around the recording of Collective Soul’s 2024 album, Here to Eternity, but it tells the definitive history of the band with input from members, both past and present.
The final scene of this excellent documentary features the band live in concert as thousands of fans sing along with every word on all the old hits, and everyone’s joy, from the band to the fans in the last row, is palpable, like a great concert film. That’s just how it should be.
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