In an interview with the Pulse of Radio, and regarding how the single came together, lead singer Sully Erna revealed that it was written in about an hour, stating, "It's one of those songs that surprisingly came out and was written from back to front in, like, an hour. I started putting one thing together with the next, and then Shannon Larkin started jumping in and then we arranged the whole song, and literally within an hour, maybe 90 minutes, this whole song was written and it was one of the last songs that we wrote, and it ended up becoming the first single." When interviewed by Full Metal Jackie, Erna offered additional details as how the single came to be, stating, "We had been working on stuff that we had on our own and brought in. I go, 'You know what? We haven’t wrote anything yet, I'm just going to write a song real quick before TC gets back from dinner.' Tony, kidding around, said, 'You should make it a real fast riff because he'll be right back.' So I started playing really fast and then all of a sudden, I was like, 'Hold on. I have something going here.' I started hearing the different movements in the chords and it just started to feel like it was coming together. Then all of a sudden, within 90 minutes the whole song kind of wrote itself."
Title
In the same interview with the Pulse of Radio, Erna revealed that the working title for the single was "100,000 Horsepower", but he felt he needed to change it, explaining, "Actually, the original title I wanted to put on the song was '100,000 Horsepower'. But unfortunately, rhythmically, it was too many syllables and I couldn't make it fit the way I wanted to creatively, so I trimmed it back to '1000 Horsepower', which is still pretty fuckin' powerful, by the way."
Track listing
;Digital single
Music video
On August 12, the music video for 1000hp premiered on Shazam, a commercial smartphone-based music identification service. One day later, it premiered on Godsmack's official Vevo channel.
reviewer Rick Florino gave the song a favorable review and described it as a "bombastic Boston bruiser of epic proportions" and that "all of the hallmarks of the band's patented sound remain intact." Florino concluded his review by saying, "It's the kind of tune you could hear at sports events and during high-octane action movie set pieces for years to come. It's exactly how real rock should sound in 2014, and it's one of the best singles of the year." A less favorable review came from Shelly Barclay of AXS, who felt that the song was not on a par with the band's other singles, stating, "The song does not have the same guttural edge as songs like 'Keep Away'." However, she went on to say that the song "holds its own in the band's library of rock tunes."
Commercial
Upon its release, "1000hp" entered both the Billboard Mainstream Rock and Hot Rock Songs charts, peaking at number one and twenty-two, respectively. "1000hp" also debuted at number one on the U.S. iTunes Rock Chart.
