Rob Thomas has been one of modern music’s most compelling and commercially successful artists for well over a decade – between Matchbox Twenty, his solo work, and his various collaborations with iconic artists like Santana, Mick Jagger and Willie Nelson, his tally now stands at more than 80 million albums sold worldwide. Arguably the most accomplished singer/songwriter of his generation, it all comes back to the creative source for Rob. As he says with typical understatement, “I’m a guy who hears songs in his head, and I have to write them down, and I have to get them out. I’m just lucky enough that I can make it my life’s work.”

Formed in Florida, Matchbox Twenty entered the world with a blockbuster -- 1996's YOURSELF OR SOMEONE LIKE YOU. The debut set spawned five hit singles -- "Push," "3 am," "Real World," "Long Day" and "Back 2 Good" and snagged an RIAA Diamond Award certification for U.S. sales exceeding more than 12 million to date. Thomas also raised the band's profile by co-writing and singing on Santana's Grammy Award-winning 1999 smash "Smooth." Matchbox Twenty maintained the momentum with MAD SEASON in 2000 and "MORE THAN YOU THINK YOU ARE in 2002, both of which went multi-platinum and continued to spit out hits such as "Bent," "Unwell," "If You're Gone," "Bright Lights" and "Disease."

But after three albums of hard work and equally hard touring, Matchbox Twenty was ready for a break. Thomas released a pair of Top 5 solo albums which contained several #1 singles, Doucette worked with his band The Break and Repair Method and wrote film music, while Cook led the New Left. The hiatus not only renewed Matchbox Twenty as a band but also seasoned the individual members even further as they came back together for 2007's EXILE ON MAINSTREAM, a greatest hits collection that sported six inspired new tracks which were co-written by the band for the first time ever and included their biggest selling single to date “How Far We’ve Come”. 

In addition to more than 30 million records sold worldwide, Matchbox Twenty has also earned countless accolades, including five Grammy nominations, four American Music Award nods, the 2004 People’s Choice Award for “Favorite Musical Group, and they were named “Best New Band” in the 1997 Rolling Stone Readers Poll.

After EXILE ON MAINSTREAM's Top 5 success, Matchbox Twenty continued the collaborative process as it headed towards NORTH. The romantic "Overjoyed," according to both Thomas and Doucette, was "the first time we felt like we had something special”. Kyle Cook took lead vocals on the incredible ballad "The Way," which he and Doucette penned together. "She's So Mean," meanwhile, represents a "storytelling exercise" during which Thomas, Doucette and Cook sat around a microphone free styling lyrics that they eventually sculpted into the cautionary tale about a hard-to-handle woman who Doucette promises bears no similarity to anyone in the group members' real lives. Listening deeper to NORTH reveals even more different nuances, approaches and feels because of the group-writing dynamic.
 
"Matchbox Twenty is pretty all-encompassing," Doucette says. "Once it gets rolling, we just devote all our time and energy to that. I can speak for everybody on this; it's the thing we hold the most dear because it's the thing we built the longest, so we want to give it its due. We don't make records that often anymore, so when we do we want to devote our time and energy to not only doing it; but also bringing that music to the fans."

Judy E Chieff is following