Song Info

lpliveusername · June 25, 2014

- This is the place for everything that's not a Linkin Park song.
- Linkin Park songs here

GREY DAZE

Wake Me

What's In The Eye?

Morei Sky

Sean Dowdell (The Grey Daze Story 6 October 2015):
[What the hidden track on Wake Me exactly is? It's Chester singing "Morei Sky" (definitely not the same vocal take we can hear on the album version), a metronome and some talk near the end of the track. What was happening there?]
I think it was his headphone feed while we were doing bass and drum tracks.

David Knauer (The Grey Daze Story 6 October 2015):
[What the hidden track on Wake Me exactly is? It's Chester singing "Morei Sky" (definitely not the same vocal take we can hear on the album version), a metronome and some talk near the end of the track. What was happening there?]
Yes, that was headphone bleed. During the tracking of Wake Me, as we were recording basic tracks, Chester was sitting on the couch in the back of the studio and sang along so the band could hear him in the headphones. That track you hear is what was recorded on his handheld mike which included the music in the control room, the click track for tempo, him singing, and him talking to his girlfriend who was sitting with him.

Jonathan Krause (The Grey Daze Story 6 October 2015):
There were some fun times the band had, not just playing out but hanging out too. We used to invite people down to the practice studio to hangout, showcase the new material and get the word out.
As far as the writing, Jason, Steve and I collaborated on a lot of stuff. I came up with musical ideas for "Hole", "Spin", "Painted", "Shouting Out", "Morei Sky" and "Come On". Those are mostly bass driven songs, except for "Spin". I use a lot of delay bass. Jason came in with "Sometimes", "Everybody's Falling To Pieces" and "Piece Of My Mind". A lot of the other stuff was a collaborative effort. And yes, Sean and Chester both wrote the lyrics.
Writing was allot of fun. I remember an idea would be started by either Steve/Jason or I and within seconds the rest of the band would find the notes and rhythm. Not long after Chester would spew out the verse or chorus to the new material. We would be like Holy shit, that was awesome!. Writing was incredibly easy with this band. We didn't force it. Plus, it really was not that complicated, but more of a formula.

Wake Me

Sometimes

Holding You

Hole

She Shines

Shouting Out

...No Sun Today

B12

Anything, Anything

Sean Dowdell (LPAssociation Chat 15 April 2003):
[i just wanted to say that Grey Daze are great in my opinion and that you're a talented drummer. Do you have a certain Grey Daze song that was your favorite to play live?]
thank you, I have goten a hel of alot better since those albums but thanks. My favorite to play I think was anything anything or saturation believe it or not, the energy we got off on was intense

Sean Dowdell (Linkin Park World Chat 25 April 2003):
[did any Grey Daze music get good airplay on radio stations?]
yes, we had 2 hit songs, b12 and anything anything

Mace Byers (LPLive Grey Daze Encounter 18 October 2010):
[Which song was the biggest crowd pleaser?]
B12 and the cover of Anything Anything.

Sean Dowdell (LPLive Grey Daze Encounter 18 October 2010):
Soul Song was not our biggest hit. B12, Down Syndrome, Anything Anything and Hole were our biggest hits.

Dave Sardegna (LPLive Grey Daze Encounter 18 October 2010):
Once I joined Grey Daze we kept the name for about 6 months then changed it to Waterface with all new material written by myself, Jodi Wendt (singer) and original GD members Bobby Benish (guitar) and Sean Dowdell (drums).
Setlists were basically the No Sun Today record. The Down Syndrome and Anything Anything of course. Also did The Metro" by Berlin since we now had a female singer.

Jonathan Krause (The Grey Daze Story 6 October 2015):
During the time that I played, I saw that crowd favorites were "Spin", "Hole", "She Shines" and "Sometimes". Oh yeah, there was a new song we started playing called "Super Star". That one seem to get the crowds going and we covered "Anything Anything" by Dramarama and that one was a crowd pleaser too. Chester seem to really hit that one.

Kerry Rose (The Grey Daze Story 6 October 2015):
[You mentioned Whisky A Go Go show being fantastic. What exactly made it so memorable for you?]
It's a fantastic - very famous venue, and they have a killer sound system. There was 3-400 people at the show and they really got into the band. When they did "Anything, Anything", the place went nuts. The sound guy thought it was better than the original version. I just remember it being a particularly good show.

Saturation

The Down Syndrome

Sean Dowdell (LPAssociation Chat 15 April 2003):
what are your favorite Gd songs?
my favorite is down syndrome

do yu guys like the acoustic version at the end of the album? I a playing the piano with Chester signing

Sean Dowdell (LPLive Grey Daze Encounter 18 October 2010):
Soul Song was not our biggest hit. B12, Down Syndrome, Anything Anything and Hole were our biggest hits.

Dave Sardegna (LPLive Grey Daze Encounter 18 October 2010):
Once I joined Grey Daze we kept the name for about 6 months then changed it to Waterface with all new material written by myself, Jodi Wendt (singer) and original GD members Bobby Benish (guitar) and Sean Dowdell (drums).
Setlists were basically the No Sun Today record. The Down Syndrome and Anything Anything of course. Also did The Metro" by Berlin since we now had a female singer.

Sean Dowdell (The Grey Daze Story 6 October 2015):
[Do you remember if the band ever performed the acoustic version of "The Down Syndrome" live? Also, who's playing keys on this one? Did you have any special name for it?]
No and I played the piano during recording. Just the acoustic version is correct.

David Knauer (The Grey Daze Story 6 October 2015):
[The acoustic version of "The Down Syndrome" that appeared as the hidden track on No Sun Today sound like it was recorded in one take with no overdubs. Was it recorded live during your pre-production session?]
That must have been recording during the [actual] No Sun sessions. I hear the engineer say "We're still rolling". That is Mike Jones' voice. I do have a version of that song no one has ever heard. During the first pre-production session for No Sun Chester and Bobby recorded a version of that song with just guitar and vocal. I was so new it didn't have a name yet, Its labeled "New Song" on the track count.

Michael Jones (The Grey Daze Story 6 October 2015):
[The acoustic version of "The Down Syndrome" that appeared as the hidden track on No Sun Today sound like it was recorded in one take with no overdubs. Was it recorded live during your pre-production session?]
If memory serves that was a live track in the studio. All in one take. It had such a cool vibe, we kept it!

Other

Commit

Covers

Painted

Smoke Mouth

FORT MINOR

The Rising Tied

Remember The Name

Mike Shinoda (MTV.com 18 April 2005):
Their producer helped me buy my first sampler. I’ve known these guys forever, and for me to be able to come back and put them on [Linkin Park’s] label, Machine Shop Records, it’s a good feeling. You can tell on the song ’Remember the Name’ [that] we were having fun with it and being able to brag on it.

Mike Shinoda (MTV.com 18 April 2005):
It’s a song that sums up where we’re coming from with the album and the project. So if you were to look for the record out there on the Internet, look for that [song] first.
You’re gonna have to be creative. I’m not going to tell people where to look.

Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Numb Journals 21 August 2005):
thanks for the big support at the shows and on the internet. i understand that "remember the name" got leaked...i didn't do it...but i suppose now that it's out there, i'm glad you're hearing it and liking the song. as for the live show, we're having a good time, and they've been really great. speaking of which:
RYU from Styles Of Beyond had a fun idea--any of you who come to the show can do this:
the guys and i are all from cali, so he wanted to see people bring CALIFORNIA FLAGS to the concert. he mentioned it the other day, and someone brought one. they were in the M&G, and we all signed it. it was great. so if you can get your hands on one, bring it to the show!

Mike Shinoda (RapMusic October 2005):
I’ve known Styles of Beyond since about eight years ago. I even designed their original logo back in ’97. I ran into them a few times when this project got started, and more and more I realized how dope they are. We ended up signing them to our label, and here we are.

Mike Shinoda (MTV.com November 2005):
That snare [sound] is like 12 tracks of sticks and clapping and snapping and tambourine [combined into one]. It probably took me a half hour just to make it. I'm lucky because I'm able to play a lot of different instruments. In the case of somebody like Kanye, he works a lot with samples. I could've gone that route too, but I figure if there's something you can do that is, like, your gift, just focus on [that]. Besides the fact that samples can be expensive!
I had to do the strings — I think it's [because of my] classical start that I really like choir and strings. I met a really great guy named Dave Campbell — he's actually Beck's dad [and a top orchestrator for many years]. We worked with him on [Linkin Park's] Meteora. My favorite part of the process is, I'll play the string parts on keyboard and give him a CD, and after a day or two he brings in sheet music of the songs for string players to play. It's so much fun to see a hip-hop song transcribed for strings.

Mike Shinoda (FMM Chat 20 November 2005):
when you're creating your music, what do you do first? the instrumental part or lyrics? what is easier to you? - i do different parts first. where'd you go - piano, then chorus. cigarettes - verses. RTN - strings, then hook

Mike Shinoda (antimusic 2005(?)):

a. "Remember the Name" - Just breaking down the science of music, from my perspective. Plus, I thought it would be a great way to introduce the world to this project.

Mike Shinoda (Fort Minor Forums 9 March 2006):
i hope you all know about the FM remix contest. here's the info if you need it:
http://ccmixter.org/fortminor
go ahead, download the multi-tracks and get started...you already heard mine (on the green lantern mix tape). go crazy

Mike Shinoda (LPU Chat 22 August 2006):
warner bros. is heading the charge on the REMEMBER THE NAME single...we think that it's a nice way to go out on this album--the song has been such a cult hit in the sports
world, and people all over have requested it for other things. we're hoping to do a new video for it--the concept for it is really cool, i think. i hope that works out.

Petrified

Mike Shinoda (MTV.com 01 September 2005):
It's a change of pace from what people would expect me to do with Linkin Park. It's got that spirit in there because it's me, but definitely like a different kind of song, like it's a little bit of trash-talking.

Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Numb Journals 08 October 2005):
by now you've seen the petrified and or believe me video. i've been seeing a ton of positive feedback on them--i'm glad you like them.
by the way, a new version of the believe me video will be out soon. it's not that different, the light effects are a little stronger and there's a cool effect in the chorus (that i won't spoil be telling you about).
in the U.S., petrified will be debuting on MTV2, MTVU, and FUSE next week. it's so good to catch the video on a bigger screen than the little computer windows.
one more bit of news: there will be a special edition of the album, out on the same day as the regular release. THE SPECIAL EDITION is really great, it had a 25-minute DVD, THREE extra songs (featuring Kenna, Holly Brook, and Lupe Fiasco) and extra art. trust me, you'll want to check for this one. it'll be on presale on the site as well...
anyway, that's it for now. talk to you later!
-m

Mike Shinoda (Fort Minor Forums 13 October 2005):
some of you have already figured this out, but i suppose it's only right that i clarify what's going on with the FM singles...
---
PETRIFIED is getting started here in the U.S. we're just beginning to get support from FUSE, MTV2, MTVU, and various radio stations. to vote for the song on Fuse's "Oven Fresh" go to:
http://fuse.tv/content/se/ovenfresh.php
on radio and video, we appreciate your support--call in to your radio stations and request the song!
BELIEVE ME is the single outside the U.S. in many places, it's doing very well. The video is out there too. there are too many places to get into details, but "thanks" to everyone who has been supporting the song!
---
...just so you know, we're planning to include a DVD of those two videos PLUS a video for remember the name and the "making of petrified" with the fort minor fan club membership. the fan club will be opening up shortly...it's called FORT MINOR MILITIA

Mike Shinoda (MTV.com 20 October 2005):
Irresponsible! We shot in an abandoned train and were shooting from 6 at night to 7 in the morning, the SOB guys are drinking the entire time. It's not just that, though, we've got flare guns [going off] inside and outside the train, just totally irresponsible.

Mike Shinoda (FMM Chat 20 November 2005):
What's your opinion on fans who constantly criticizes your work negatively? - some of them have a good point, a lot just differ in opiniion. a lot of times, they just haven't really listened to the songs. they just listen 1 or 2 times and form an opinion
a lot of people criticize the more simple lines...you gotta realize that those lines are intentionally simple. like petrified. look how the song starts super simple and builds to a more complex pattern. it obviously not an accident

Mike Shinoda (FMM Chat 20 November 2005):
who had the idea of the petrified-video? - robert (the director) and i came up w it together

Mike Shinoda (antimusic 2005(?)):

b. "Petrified" - that only word I can use to describe this song is "irresponsible." It's just a trash-talking battle track.

Mike Shinoda (Billboard 25 June 2015):

There are songs I want to play because I feel they're really fun sonically or lyrically, like "Petrified" or "In Stereo." On the other hand, when I toured with Fort Minor 10 years ago, I never really played "Cigarettes" or "Kenji" that often, and this time those were the two songs I was most excited to play because I feel like they say the most. This show thematically is coming from a different place. "Welcome" is an underdog song. It's about feeling like an outsider and being totally fine with that.

Right Now

Where'd You Go

Mike Shinoda (Yam November 2005):

True! "Where´d you go" is about how it is when you sit at home, when your partner is on tour. A really crazy love song.

Mike Shinoda (Yam November 2005):

Everytime when Anna hears the song she cries. I hope that "Where´d You Go" won´t be a hit, because then she would cry everytime she hears the song on the radio.

Mike Shinoda (MTV.com November 2005):
We're thinking about doing this as a single. It's got a singer [signed to Linkin Park's Machine Shop Records] named Holly Brook on it. Her voice is unbelievable.
[shinoda listens with his eyes closed, nearly in tears.] There were only two songs that I told Jay and Brad [Delson of Linkin Park guitarist, who assisted with the album's production] that I can't take off the album: 'Kenji,' because it's about my family, 'Where'd You Go' because it makes my wife cry every time she hears it. [The song is written from the perspective of someone whose lover is always traveling.]
When it came time to talk about those things [in songs], I had to do them on my own. I can't do it with Linkin Park, out of respect for the other guys. It's almost asking for too much attention. I also wouldn't have done this record if it hadn't been for the support of the guys in the band — I wouldn't just go out and do it. They've been really cool about it, and I'm grateful.

Mike Shinoda (FMM Chat 20 November 2005):
when you're creating your music, what do you do first? the instrumental part or lyrics? what is easier to you? - i do different parts first. where'd you go - piano, then chorus. cigarettes - verses. RTN - strings, then hook

Mike Shinoda (FMM Chat 20 November 2005):
a lot of songs are written about being "on tour" -- that song is from the person at home's perspective. it's somewhat generalized, though. i thought that way, it would make a better story. it seems to relate to more than just that story though:
people whose parents are divorced, people who have someone away in the army, people whose parents/loved one work too much

Mike Shinoda (antimusic 2005(?)):

e. "Where'd You Go" - A lot of people do songs about being on the road or on tour. I wanted to do a song from the opposite side, the other perspective. It was weird, I just came into the studio and sat down and played it. The words were there in a matter of probably two minutes. A few weeks later I decided I wanted Holly to sing it instead of me because I thought her voice would make the track so much more powerful. "Where'd You Go" makes my wife cry every time she hears it.

Holly Brook (SongwriterUniverse May 2006):

It's amazing, being part of a hit song with 'Where'd You Go'. It's kind of surreal. The other day I was on TRL (on MTV). It's great to get out there and get this exposure.

Holly Brook (SongwriterUniverse May 2006):

It was in early fall (of 2005) that Mike Shinoda called me up. He said, 'I have this song, and could you put your vocals on it?' I spent a half-hour singing it at a session, and that was it! The next thing I know, is that Mike's got this whole solo project called Fort Minor, and I went on tour with him to sing 'Where'd You Go.' Mike brought this 11-piece band on the road, and we've toured the U.S. and Australia.

Back Home

Cigarettes

Mike Shinoda (HipHopSite October 2005):
There are things that you can do in certain types of music that you can’t do in others. I have a song on the record called “Cigarettes” that talks about the similarity between the tobacco industry and the rap music industry. You get sold a product full of lies, but you don’t really care, because it’s more about playing a role, maybe a little escapism. I could never write a song like that on a Linkin Park record, but an album like this is the ideal home for it.

Mike Shinoda (MTV.com November 2005):
This is Jay's favorite track on the record. We're talking about hip-hop and where it is today. I asked Jay, 'Do you think it's weird that I'm making a commentary on hip-hop because some people see me as this guy in a rock band?' And his response was, nobody who hears the song will misunderstand [my] love for hip-hop. There's no question that I love hip-hop, but because I do, I'm able to criticize it.
There are a lot of similarities between the tobacco industry and hip-hop: You tell a smoker it's bad for them, they don't give a sh--. It's like, I'll go out and buy an escapist, exciting, gangsta CD, and I'll love it even though I know it's saying things that are morally against who I am. I saw Ludacris on 'Oprah' the other day and it was the same [contradiction]. She kept on throwing out there, 'I don't agree with your lyrics,' and you could tell he wanted to say something to defend himself, but he's not gonna back-talk Oprah on her show! I think this is a big deal in hip-hop right now.

Mike Shinoda (FMM Chat 20 November 2005):
when you're creating your music, what do you do first? the instrumental part or lyrics? what is easier to you? - i do different parts first. where'd you go - piano, then chorus. cigarettes - verses. RTN - strings, then hook

Mike Shinoda (antimusic 2005(?)):

f. Cigarettes - It's about how I feel about hip hop right now. There's a funny similarity between the rap industry and the cigarette industry. We know they aren't telling us the complete truth, but we buy it anyway because we're just using it as an escape. It's like a good R-rated movie, like Scarface.

Mike Shinoda (Billboard 25 June 2015):

There are songs I want to play because I feel they're really fun sonically or lyrically, like "Petrified" or "In Stereo." On the other hand, when I toured with Fort Minor 10 years ago, I never really played "Cigarettes" or "Kenji" that often, and this time those were the two songs I was most excited to play because I feel like they say the most. This show thematically is coming from a different place. "Welcome" is an underdog song. It's about feeling like an outsider and being totally fine with that.

Mike Shinoda (AbsolutePunk.net 13 July 2015):
[This kind of goes back to the song “Cigarettes” on the first album, but one of the things I’ve always found refreshing about your lyrics is that they’re not misogynist or sexually explicit, and they don’t glorify violence or drugs. Does that just relate to your upbringing and being married? All that kind of stuff?]
That’s just kind of how I am. I remember a kid I grew up with who was Armenian. I made beats and all my friends would rap on them, and one time he said, “Oh man, I wish I could just say the n-word. It would make rapping so much easier.” That is so fucking stupid. I told him outright, “That is so dumb.” Number one, that is a filler word, when you’re rapping that is. I shouldn’t say that. I say that too lightly. For a lot of people, rhythmically it’s a filler word. In real life, it is definitely not a filler word, but in the context of what he was talking about, he just wanted to say the word because it would make his raps sound like the people he listened to. I was like, “Look, dude. That’s the whole point of you being you. You come from a completely different place. You come from a completely different upbringing and background. The best thing you can do to make stuff that I want to listen to is to be you.”
When I first started really defining my own style and sound, it was about what makes me, me. I’m going to talk about the things that I talk about. I’m going to say them the way that I say them. A lot of rappers out there, even right now who are coming up, it’s the same thing as artists, painters and illustrators, and so on. When you’re learning to draw and paint, you imitate your favorite artists. You literally copy their work first, and then you work your way away from that.
A lot of young people when they’re learning how to be a musician, they copy their favorite musician, and then they try and develop their own style. In doing so, a lot of times they’re copying the content, too. They’re copying the way those people talk about certain things. As we develop as artists, that’s what we work away from. We have to learn to shake off the stuff that came from the stuff that we grew up on, and focus more on the stuff that’s more original and more ourselves. Believe me, I grew up listening to N.W.A. and 2 Live Crew. There was a time when my stuff was a lot more vulgar, and I worked my way out of it [laughs].

Believe Me

Laurent Briet (laurentbriet.com 08 October 2005):
The video airing in europe and asia is a “first” version. We had to meet the deadline for international release, but then worked some more it. Same edit, but more refined work on the post production side. I’ll be posting a quicktime of it as soon as I get the green light from warner. Working with mike, ryu, tak, cheapshot and bobo was really great. Glad to be done, glad to be back home.

Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Numb Journals 08 October 2005):
by now you've seen the petrified and or believe me video. i've been seeing a ton of positive feedback on them--i'm glad you like them.
by the way, a new version of the believe me video will be out soon. it's not that different, the light effects are a little stronger and there's a cool effect in the chorus (that i won't spoil be telling you about).
in the U.S., petrified will be debuting on MTV2, MTVU, and FUSE next week. it's so good to catch the video on a bigger screen than the little computer windows.
one more bit of news: there will be a special edition of the album, out on the same day as the regular release. THE SPECIAL EDITION is really great, it had a 25-minute DVD, THREE extra songs (featuring Kenna, Holly Brook, and Lupe Fiasco) and extra art. trust me, you'll want to check for this one. it'll be on presale on the site as well...
anyway, that's it for now. talk to you later!
-m

Mike Shinoda (Fort Minor Forums 13 October 2005):
some of you have already figured this out, but i suppose it's only right that i clarify what's going on with the FM singles...
---
PETRIFIED is getting started here in the U.S. we're just beginning to get support from FUSE, MTV2, MTVU, and various radio stations. to vote for the song on Fuse's "Oven Fresh" go to:
http://fuse.tv/content/se/ovenfresh.php
on radio and video, we appreciate your support--call in to your radio stations and request the song!
BELIEVE ME is the single outside the U.S. in many places, it's doing very well. The video is out there too. there are too many places to get into details, but "thanks" to everyone who has been supporting the song!
---
...just so you know, we're planning to include a DVD of those two videos PLUS a video for remember the name and the "making of petrified" with the fort minor fan club membership. the fan club will be opening up shortly...it's called FORT MINOR MILITIA

Mike Shinoda (MTV.com 20 October 2005):
He did a very different video for me. It's really clean and there's these crazy light effects. As you're shooting the video, it's like there's nothing there, so you had to imagine what's going to happen. I was very critical. I had to apologize many times for making him go back and change things a lot, but he was a good sport about it and we basically spent an extra two weeks on it. Basically from my face to the album artwork to crazy shapes that fly through the air, they're all transparent, three-dimensional light shapes that flow through the air and carry the song.

Mike Shinoda (MTV.com November 2005):
This is gonna be the next single in the States. It's got Styles of Beyond — I've known those guys for about eight years. We're all from the same area here in L.A. They're on about half the record.
I definitely wanted to add different elements, and there were some things that I wanted that I couldn't play. There's a really famous Latin percussionist named Willie Bobo and that's his son, Eric [on the track]. He plays with the Beastie Boys, he plays with Cypress Hill. He's got this whole crazy Latin percussion kit — I don't even know what all the names of the things are. He made it out for the video too. People are already like, 'Wait, which guys are Styles of Beyond? And who's in what?' It's complex: We're on some Wu-Tang sh--!

Mike Shinoda (R.AGE 25 November 2005):

Believe Me was the first song in the making of The Rising Tied that stuck out as a success. It felt like a good song. Apparently, other people have felt the same way about it because they have gotten behind it to support the song and video. I am extremely grateful for that. It has this old school hip-hop foundation, but still feels new. This album is a little bit like that, it has reference points to different times in music, but still feels unique. I can't wait until people hear it.

Mike Shinoda (antimusic 2005(?)):

c. "Believe Me" - This is a pretty weird song, to me. Lots of strange dynamics: Big 90's NYC drums, classic rock chord progression, Latin percussion…I love how it all came together.

Get Me Gone

High Road

Kenji

Mike Shinoda (RapMusic October 2005):
I’m half-Japanese. During World War II, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government put all the Japanese from the west coast into “internment camps.” It was a horrible case of racial profiling. The F.B.I. came to their houses and told them to pack up and get out. They were then stuck in holding camps for the duration of the war. My dad was three years old. My aunt was in her twenties, with four kids. Her youngest was born in the camp. The song “Kenji” is a story about that time. I wanted to make a song in the spirit of old Public Enemy or something like that, but with a topic that is close to me-it came out really unique.

Mike Shinoda (MTV.com November 2005):
'Kenji' is about the time during World War II, after Pearl Harbor was bombed, when the U.S. government put [thousands of people of Japanese descent] from the West Coast in prison camps. A lot of kids don't even know this — your history book in high school devoted like two paragraphs to it. I'm half Japanese and my family went through that, so I wanted to take that story and put it in a song. I felt really strongly about putting something on the record that was totally, uniquely me.
I did an interview with my dad and I did an interview with my aunt, who is almost 90 years old, and so they told me really what went on. I included that in the song. She was there when people were getting pulled out of their houses, and they had absolutely nothing to do with anything [involving the war]. It'd be your average neighbor — or you — getting pulled out of your house because you were racially profiled as somebody dangerous.

Mike Shinoda (FMM Chat 20 November 2005):
on kenji, that's my dad and my aunt. he's second to youngest and she's oldest of 12 siblings

Mike Shinoda (antimusic 2005(?)):

I just wanted to get back to my roots-to what I did before Linkin Park. And there were some songs, like "Kenji," which is about my family's experience in the Japanese Internment during WWII, that are just more appropriate on the Fort Minor album.

Mike Shinoda (antimusic 2005(?)):

d. "Kenji" - I'm half Japanese, and the song "Kenji" is based on my family's story during WWII in an internment camp. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government began a period of racial profiling. They put all the Japanese-Americans (and some other Asian-Americans) in secluded camps for the duration of the war. My dad was three years old, and had twelve brothers and sisters. My oldest aunt was in her twenties, and had four kids. Her youngest was born in Camp. Her husband died in Camp. They stayed there for the duration of the war, captive. Once they were released, they returned to vandalized homes and racial tension. That's what the song "Kenji" is about.

Mike Shinoda (FMM Chat 5 April 2007):
kenji...thanks, i'm still really proud of that song.

Mike Shinoda (Noisey 23 June 2015):

My dad’s family is Japanese-American, born and raised in California and interned during the Second World War after Pearl Harbor. They were put in camps in Arizona. Even Americans don’t really know the story, how they took the people out of their homes, gave them no time to pack anything up, and made them put stuff into two suitcases or two trash bags and they carted them off. They put the Japanese in horse stalls in some cases. The Santa Anita Racetrack was like a holding ground for Japanese Americans at the time. They stuck them in the horse stalls with the shit and the hay, until the camps were ready. And then when the camps were ready they stuck them in with barbed wire and towers. Guns pointed inside instead of outside. And kids were growing up there, my dad was three years old when that happened. He was literally growing up looking around going, 'This is what reality is.' They got out. They went back to their homes and their homes were trashed. Everything was broken and ransacked basically. If you were Japanese-American you also couldn’t buy a piece of property, then they’d get discriminated against in every time. In their schools, at their jobs, it was crazy. And you know, we all grew up understanding that reality.

When I was a kid, [other kids] just knew I was mixed. They didn’t know what I was. A lot of people thought I was Hispanic. Some people knew I was Asian, but they didn’t know what... I remember having a friend over my house one time and he made some weird comment about my gardener, and I was like 'That’s not my fucking gardener, that’s my dad you asshole.' And it was like always a thing. I was like this undercover minority.

Mike Shinoda (Billboard 25 June 2015):

There are songs I want to play because I feel they're really fun sonically or lyrically, like "Petrified" or "In Stereo." On the other hand, when I toured with Fort Minor 10 years ago, I never really played "Cigarettes" or "Kenji" that often, and this time those were the two songs I was most excited to play because I feel like they say the most. This show thematically is coming from a different place. "Welcome" is an underdog song. It's about feeling like an outsider and being totally fine with that.

Mike Shinoda (NME 07 September 2015):
It was a special moment. The feeling of playing a song like ‘Kenji’, which is about my family’s experience during WW2, in Berlin where I can’t even imagine what their families’ experiences were like. It was emotional – partly because of differences but partly because of similarities.

Red To Black

Slip Out The Back

The Hard Way

Fort Minor Militia

Do What We Did

Kenji (Interview Version)

Tools Of The Trade

Where'd You Joe

Strange Things

Believe Me (Club Remix)

Start It All Up

Move On

Other

Magic Doors

Trades Of The Tools

Welcome

Mike Shinoda (Welcome single 21 June 2015):

“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced”

-Vincent Van Gogh

I didn’t intend to write a new Fort Minor song, it just kinda happened. It’s not part of a new album, it’s just a song that I knew I wanted people to hear right now. And to make it easy for all of you in the LPU, I thought I’d just send you the song directly.

“Welcome” is an underdog song, an outsider’s song. Fort Minor has always been my outside outlet as a solo musician and painter, and a way for me to build confidence as an individual, though my individual voice. I played every note, wrote and sang every word, produced and mixed the song, and created all the artwork.

The video, shot in Venice, CA, is a 360 experience. In it, I painted a (huge) mural made from 1000 vinyl record jackets. After the video, I signed and/or drew on each one, and a vinyl single was placed inside with a print of the entire mural. Those are available now (until they sell out).

Head over to FortMinor.com to watch the 360 video tomorrow. If you watch it on your phone in the YouTube app, you’ll be able to move around in the space by moving your phone. If you watch it on your desktop or laptop computer, just click and drag on the video to look around. Watch it more than once, you’ll have a different experience each time.

I also made a bunch of new Fort Minor apparel I think you’ll like; you can even get the vinyl and a tee as a bundle for a discount. Those are on FortMinor.com as well.

I hope you enjoy “Welcome” as much as I’ve enjoyed creating it.

Sincerely,

Mike

Ryu Maginn (Twitter 21 June 2015):
I coulda swore I did a verse on the welcome song. Hmm.

Ryu Maginn (Facebook 23 June 2015):
To the Fort Minor fans: Just wanted to take a minute to say thanks to you guys for always being supportive of me. I'm humbled that you guys appreciate my past contributions to the group and expected to see me on the new project. I actually did do a verse on the song "Welcome" and was just as excited as you were for it's release. Unfortunatly for reasons unknown to me, the song was released without me on it. I guess it wasn't meant to be. Anyways, i'm glad that you guys finally got some new FM music, and i wish Mike nothing but success in whatever he does. I am putting the final touches on my solo album and can't wait for you guys to see what i've been up to! I'm holding some heat right now so stay tuned. I ain't done yet! #‎thankyou #‎fortminor #‎fortminormilitia #‎SOBcentral

Ryu Maginn (Instagram 23 June 2015):
yeah I obviously knew he was rapping the song, but I thought he was using it as a promo for his art exhibit or something. He was never clear on what the plan was. It was all vague.

Ryu Maginn (Instagram 23 June 2015):
yes. He told me today that he wanted to use my verse for the remix. Problem is, he didn't tell me that in the beginning. Everything was discussed thru email. He asked for my opinion on the song and I told him I liked it, then he asked if I wanted to put a verse on it, which I did. There was never any conversation about a remix. I was under the impression that my verse was on the original single. It's no big deal tho. I'm over it.

Mike Shinoda (AltWire 24 June 2015):
I didn’t plan to make another Fort Minor song. And one day, “Welcome,” just popped out of my head so quickly, and sounded so finished, I couldn’t ignore it. That’s why, in the social media release for the song, I had the @fortminor accounts talking to me, trying to get my attention. Because that’s how it really happened.

Mike Shinoda (AltWire 24 June 2015):
I have no plan to make a Fort Minor “album” at this point. I only have this one song. After this song, will there be another one? I don’t know. There’s something modern and exciting about that. I’m putting all my effort into this singular moment: I wrote every note and word in the song, performed everything, produced it, mixed it. I designed all the merchandise. I wrote the video treatment and produced the video. Incidentally, the video is a cutting-edge 360 video, filmed in public in Venice, CA, in which I painted a mural made of 1000 vinyl jackets. After the video, a vinyl single of the song and an art print of the whole mural was put in each of the actual jackets, which are all hand-painted and hand-signed by me. Those are available now on FortMinor.com.

Mike Shinoda (AltWire 24 June 2015):
Welcome is an outsider song. I guess I feel like I still have something to prove, more so to myself than anyone else. I came into a career as a rapper in a pretty weird way—through being in a rock band. And as such, I’m in a strange outside category. I mean, even from a practical perspective, what genre or station can you put “Welcome” on? At least in L.A., it doesn’t fit on any radio station. Thinking back to when I was a kid: I grew up a mixed race nerd who loved anime, video games, piano, got good grades, and listened to Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, NWA, and Public Enemy. At the time, I was a complete weirdo. The good news is, the world is a lot more open place for weirdos these days.

Mike Shinoda (TheRedBulletin 24 June 2015):
I look at it less about breaking out to the outside because this is where I come from; I grew up mixed race and a hip-hop listener when that wasn’t common.

Mike Shinoda (TheRedBulletin 24 June 2015):
I really wanted to get into different aspects of L.A. culture, for example a Muslim temple, gay pride parade or a rodeo, but it didn’t work out for the video. I tried to represent some of that in the painting on the boardwalk.

Mike Shinoda (TheRedBulletin 24 June 2015):
Maybe some people don’t think of Linkin Park as a group of outsiders, but besides the fact that the band has had a lot of mainstream success, we always felt like we had something to prove. We’re always working against preconceived notions about what the band is or who we are as individuals, and this song comes from that outsider perspective.

Mike Shinoda (TheRedBulletin 24 June 2015):
A lot of technologies come with a barrier to entry, but the landscape on YouTube is finally primed for a good 360 experience. Now I can make a 360 video and all of our fans can see it rather than it being a niche experience.

Mike Shinoda (Billboard 25 June 2015):

I'm always writing, and oftentimes I'll write stuff and it just seems I'm sorting through ideas and other times it's like, "Oh, that's a Linkin Park song." This song was the first one in forever I listened to and I thought, "Oh my god, first of all, that's done, and second of all, it's Fort Minor."

Mike Shinoda (Billboard 25 June 2015):

There's never been a lull in fan questions about new Fort Minor music. With Linkin Park, we do a meet-and-greet with 50 to 100 fans before every show, so I get a chance to talk to people in person, and in every single meet-and-greet there are a few people who ask about Fort Minor. And I always chalk that up to the fact those are the most hard-core fans, those are the ones who paid to be in the LPU [Linkin Park Underground fan group], they come to multiple shows a lot of times. It wasn't so much about people wanted to hear it; if that was the case, I would've done it earlier. But the truth of the matter is, when I did the first Fort Minor album the band was coming off Hybrid Theory and Meteora, which was really a time when we were known for one sound. Then we did Collision Course with Jay Z and I kind of missed the hip-hop songs I used to make when I was a teenager. So I made Fort Minor at that time thinking it would never fit in with Linkin Park. Then lo and behold a couple of years later, we broadened out our stylistic approach in the studio and my Fort Minor ideas could be incorporated into Linkin Park. On Minutes to Midnight, there were songs that had some elements of Fort Minor, notably "Waiting for the End" and "When They Come for Me." There's even one I consider a really modern Fort Minor-type song called "Until It Breaks," off Living Things. It's always kind of been there, but until this song it was always just something where I thought the Fort Minor ideas I had would be best served mashed up with the input of the rest of the guys in the band. And this is a song that came out of my head and it was basically done. It was 85 percent there, and I knew if I put it through the Linkin Park writing machine, it would change considerably and I didn't want that to happen to it. I felt like it was a good song on its own, and I was prepared to get behind it.

Mike Shinoda (Billboard 25 June 2015):

There are songs I want to play because I feel they're really fun sonically or lyrically, like "Petrified" or "In Stereo." On the other hand, when I toured with Fort Minor 10 years ago, I never really played "Cigarettes" or "Kenji" that often, and this time those were the two songs I was most excited to play because I feel like they say the most. This show thematically is coming from a different place. "Welcome" is an underdog song. It's about feeling like an outsider and being totally fine with that.

Mike Shinoda (ArtistDirect 02 July 2015):
At the time, I was a little frustrated. It's clearly an outsider song, feeling like I didn't belong or whatever. I think back to what was going on. The band was at a point where not a lot was happening, which is relative, because everything is always crazy with the band. We were sort of in-between projects, and I don't know exactly what the time period was. I was reflecting on how I ended up where I'm at. The more I looked at it, the more I felt like, "Being an outsider doesn't necessarily mean that you have to feel bad about it." There's a sense of coming to terms with it on my own in the song. It's funny because it was organic and fluid. It all popped out at once. That's unusual for me. The song was done before I even knew it. I listened to it and went, "Oh my God, this is not a Linkin Park song."

Mike Shinoda (ArtistDirect 02 July 2015):
This song had to be a certain type of song in order for it to be the first one in ten years. It couldn't be just any song. I've made things before and gone, "I don't know if this is Linkin Park." Even if it was a Fort Minor song, I might think, "Do I really want to come back with this sort of niche thing after this much time?" It would be a weird way to come back. Some of those ideas ended up being different things. I had one where the music ended up being an interlude and stuff like that. When "Welcome" came together, it was done so fast. I knew if I had run it through the Linkin Park process, it would change a lot. I didn't want it to change. Even if it didn't change, just the idea of playing some version of this song on stage with all six of the guys in the band standing up there felt like it would send a different message. Imagine the difference between me doing this up there by myself and me doing it with Chester [bennington]. It would be totally different.

Mike Shinoda (ArtistDirect 02 July 2015):
I know I've alluded to the things I've learned since Collision Course or Meteora, which is the time period that I made the first Fort Minor album. Think of Minutes to Midnight, A Thousand Suns, LIVING THINGS, the albums we did with Rick Rubin, The Hunting Party, which we did on our own, there were all of these writing techniques and creative approaches. The way we think and the way I think about getting into a song is much different than it used to be. For example, when we're writing a song with Linkin Park, one exercise we'll do is to think about what band the song we're making sounds like and then what are those bands not capable of doing that we can do.
If we're writing a song that sounds like U2, what can't they do? Okay, they don't really get into samples that much, they don't get into rapping, and they won't go heavy above a certain level. If we're making a song that sounds like Radiohead, the same things might apply. They can do the electronic stuff, but no rapping. They'll never get into hip-hop and so on. When I was doing "Welcome," I was like, "Okay, what can I do on a rap song that just feels natural?" That's when the singing parts and more melodic aspects came in. With the chord progressions and the way I put the music together, it felt very different from what I might usually do with Linkin Park. Once I got to the bridge, I realized, "Now, I've got a pretty solid hip-hop song. Let's go left." That's when this big prog rock keyboard solo and live drums starting popping in.

Mike Shinoda (ArtistDirect 02 July 2015):
I love what's going on hip-hop right now. It's one of the most exciting times for hip-hop lately, because it's got so much variety. There are so many different artists approaching things differently. You've got what's going on with Kendrick Lamar and the Top Dog Entertainment crew. Then, there's A$AP Rocky and A$AP Mob. A$AP Ferg is dope too. Then, you've got Action Bronson and Joey Bada$$. I really think Drake's new mixtape If You're Reading This It's Too Late is great. That really got me into him. There's all kinds of different stuff going on. Chance the Rapper is really cool. All of their styles and approaches stand out. To me, that's exciting. When "Welcome" came out, a lot of fans were like, "This reminds me of Kid Cudi." I think Kid Cudi is dope. I don't feel like my song sounds like him, but maybe a little bit, especially because he's so musical. There are a lot of newer artists killing it.

Mike Shinoda (AbsolutePunk.net 13 July 2015):
Whenever I put out anything, I just want to make sure I’m happy with what I’m putting out. It has more to do with before I even pull the trigger on whether or not a song is going to go out, or go on an album or whatever, it’s a little bit about context. First of all, this song could have ended up on a Linkin Park album, which would have meant that we would have taken it and run it through the Linkin Park studio process and everything. Everybody else would have gotten their input on it. Chester probably would have sung on it. The other guys probably would have played on it to some degree. It would have ended up being a much different song.
When I made the demo and listened to it, I just felt like it was so close to being done. It didn’t benefit from all that stuff and the pressure of it being on a Linkin Park album with other Linkin Park songs. It takes it away from being a hip-hop track, and I just wanted it to be a hip-hop track. I loved it the way it was. Whatever the reaction was, I knew I was comfortable with it as is.
Actually, the part of this whole release that I’ve been most thrilled about is the reaction to the 360 video. I don’t know how many of our fans have or have not seen a 360 video before. The idea to do this was a big gamble because first of all I produced the video, so that means I was effectively gambling was this even going to be worth it. You put all this effort and spend all this money on making a video to be 360, and people might click on it and say, “Oh, this is weird. I don’t know what this is. I don’t want to watch it.” Then it’s been all for naught, you know?

Mike Shinoda (AbsolutePunk.net 13 July 2015):
There were a couple challenges in it. The first just being finding the right way to tie everything together. The world of 360 at this point is so wide open. You’ve got to write the treatment differently. You’ve got to edit the piece differently. The pacing has to be different. If you cut a 360 video from clip to clip, if the editing was faster the way a lot of music videos are, in the 360 or VR environment that would be really hard to watch.
I guess if you’re trying to make people feel completely overwhelmed and almost dizzy, that would be a way to achieve it, to go for a regular video edit. But overall, you’ve got to slow down your pace edit because there’s so much more to see in every individual clip. You’ve got to slow down your pace and allow time for people to really soak it in and look around. You know they won’t be able to soak it all in in one viewing, so riding that line between giving them just enough but not giving them everything is one of the challenges.
The other thing is most people at this point, if they’re doing 360 at all, they’re just plopping a camera somewhere and letting the action go on around the camera. We did a two-day shoot with multiple locations and a bit of a somewhat abstract storyline. There was a lot of emotion, concept and arc to the story we were telling, following the events of these two days, and that’s unusual, being able to tell that story in 360. Once I saw the edit, it was such a payoff for me. It felt like we had rolled the dice and won.

Mike Shinoda (AbsolutePunk.net 13 July 2015):
Yes. Success has nothing to do with being or not being an underdog. Those are apples and oranges, you know? My background, the way I grew up, was as a mixed race. I’m half Japanese and half Caucasian. I grew up in L.A. Up until I was 13, I was in the Valley. There was a lot of diversity in the Valley, so I felt like it was a little easier to relate to people then. Then when I went to high school, we moved up north to the Agoura Hills area where it was pretty much like 85% Caucasian, I think. So that was a lot different.
I remember feeling like I didn’t feel Japanese and I didn’t feel white, either. I didn’t belong to either group. Everybody listened to rock and pop music pretty much, and I listened to hip-hop. People can’t understand this anymore because everybody now, when you ask us what we listen to, we all say everything. But back then you definitely defined yourself by one type of music, at least when I was in high school, so that was a divider.
I think most importantly, as it applies to the song, is can you see me hanging out at, like, Summer Jam? I don’t fit in there. I’ve been on Ozzfest and I’ve been on metal tours, and I’m definitely a little bit of a spectator there, even though I grew up on both things. I love hip-hop, and I have a lot of favorite metal albums. All of this stuff is familiar to me and is part of who I am. At the same time, I don’t instantly belong to any of those groups. Even with our band, even when nu metal was the thing, we always distanced ourselves from that. We didn’t feel like we belonged to that, either.
All those things said, I feel like a lot of people relate to that. A lot of us take pride in our individuality and being our own deal, and that’s what the song is about. If you’re weird, if you’re an outsider, if you’re an underdog, don’t look at that as a negative. Look at that as a positive.

Mike Shinoda (Hip Hop N More 14 July 2015):
The song just popped out of my head. Sometimes a track just comes out of nowhere. I had always thought, ‘If I ever put out another Fort Minor song, it has to be a certain type of song.’ But I never knew what that meant until this song was done.

Mike Shinoda (Hip Hop N More 14 July 2015):
I have no plans for collabos right now, other than a plan to get the verse Ryu laid on “Welcome” out there in some form, hopefully soon.

Mike Shinoda (NME 07 September 2015):
All I wanted with the song was to reintroduce the idea of Fort Minor the right way, so I can keep that door open and have the option to release more stuff.
The idea that occurred to me when I was putting the track together was that’s it’s funny that I became a rapper by not being rapper. I grew up obsessed with rap, and then we started a rock band and all of a sudden, fast forward ten years and I’m doing a record with Jay-Z.
I did always say I was the rapper in the band. But it’s different to be doing a show with 50 Cent onstage as Fort Minor and looking out at a crowd and it’s a hip-hop crowd…like strictly. It’s odd that I ended up here where I probably wanted to be by not going in that direction at all.
I simultaneously couldn’t fit in with anybody and could fit in with anybody. It was a double-edged sword because I could hang out with people and it would be easy and effortless and then somebody would make a weird racial joke about Asians and forget that I’m Asian.
At the same time, as big as the band got, we always felt we had something to prove. Even now, that whole nu-metal tag is still there.
We never held the flag for nu-metal – it was associated with frat rock. Arrogant, misogynistic, and full of testosterone; we were reacting against that. It breeds an outsiders’ feeling once it’s come and gone and people make jokes about. I fucking make jokes about it! What people don’t realise is I feel the same way.

Mike Shinoda (UpSet Magazine 07 September 2015):
a few months ago I came up with this song ‘Welcome’. I listened to it and it was just me. It didn’t sound like Linkin Park. It didn’t sound like anyone else. It always just felt like a Fort Minor song so I decided to put it out and it opened the door back up.
I played it to the guys and they loved it. I knew that meant they were considering it for the next Linkin Park album but I told them I didn’t want it to go in that direction and they were supportive. These are good dudes, these are my best friends in the world.

DEAD BY SUNRISE

Fire

Crawl Back In

Chester Bennington (MTV 16 July 2009):
It's a song about questioning your authenticity. I do that every once in a while; I wonder how many of my own thoughts are really my own, and how much influence do the people around me have on the person I am. There's a lot of that on the record. There's a very dark side [to it], and there's a very light side on it. There are songs about being in love and there's songs about hating people. It's a very strange juxtaposition. And that represents what had been going on in my life over the past couple of years — really great moments happening at the same time as these really terrible things were happening.

Chester Bennington (Ultimate Guitar 08 October 2009):
I think there are a few things that are different in the way I approach songs with Dead By Sunrise as opposed to what I do with Linkin Park. My role in Linkin Park is to come in after the music is written and start humming melodies until I find something that is great. With Dead By Sunrise, I can hear anything in my head and sit down and play it on the guitar. If I like it, I'll take it in. If it's a really mellow song, then I'll bring it in. I don't care if it's folksy and mellow. For example, when I wrote Crawl Back In I heard that (sings melody) in my head. I was like, This is cool. So I sat down and wrote it out. I put the pieces together and brought it in, and we started working on it. I was just like, I like this thing. I like the sound of it. It's cool. If you listen to Too Late and Crawl Back In, they are completely different. They are so different in so many ways that it doesn't seem like it could be on the same record. It's kind of crazy. If I like it, I'm going to fucking write it. That's basically how I work. I don't care if one song is a death metal song and the next song is like a pop ballad.

Chester Bennington (Ultimate Guitar 08 October 2009):
I think going through it was difficult, but I'm pretty good at writing about stuff. Once I came out with being abused as a child, a lot of those doors opened for me. Now I can write about anything I want. Nobody knew about it until that day. My parents were going, What? It was like, Okay, if I can write about that, I can pretty much write about anything. I would say that I wasn't writing songs about my particular problems while I was going through them during this record. I was writing songs about falling in love, and I was kind of skating around the subject a little bit. After I went through all of that, that's when I started writing very clear and very forward songs about what I went through. Crawl Back In talks about relapsing and how hard that is. Condemned is about that love affair with feeling like shit. It was very strange for me because these ideas just started coming. I don't know if I could have done it if I had was in the middle of it. I try not to change things that much in my songs. If it comes to me, then it comes to me. If it doesn't, then I'll wait a couple of days. After that, I'll just let it go. It's not worth it.

Chester Bennington (MusicRadar 20 November 2009):
[On a couple of other songs, Crawl Back In and My Suffering, you write pretty openly about your addictions.]

I do. I'm also a sucker for alcohol. It's an amazing thing…it was baffling to me when I was going through the throes of alcohol addiction because I'm usually a pretty even-keel guy. But when it comes to drinking, I just can't stop. The urge to drink just takes over. It astounds me how different I am when I'm drinking from when I'm not. I become this other person. Probably not a very good person, but that's what alcohol can do to some people.

Chester Bennington (Bullz-Eye 11 December 2009):
I wrote a lot of the synth-poppy and Goth-y kind of moments on the album. You can hear the Cure and Depeche Mode in some of the songs. There are a lot of poppy vocal melodies throughout the songs, too. Some people have picked up on the ethereal quality of the melodies too, which is great. But yeah, we also do more of the straight-up rock stuff like “Crawl Back In” and “My Sunrise” on the record.

Too Late

Chester Bennington (ShockHound 26 October 2009):
Every single one of them is pretty personal, but I think the most important one for me is "Give Me Your Name.” I wrote that one for my [new] wife. We danced to that song at our wedding. I didn't write the song with the idea that it would make the album. I actually wrote it to play at our wedding, but it turned out to be a great song. "In The Darkness" is another one that is very personal for me. It's not necessarily about anything personal, but it's my song about making love and how that feels. At the same time there are songs like "Condemned" and "My Suffering" which talk about my love affair with feeling like shit, so to speak. There's a weird juxtaposition between some of the songs. Some of them have more of a deep, emotional thing, and some of them are directly about specific things like relapse or learning not to repeat the mistakes of your past relationship in a future relationship. Then there are songs that I tried to mess with a little bit lyrically because they dealt with the God and my personal feeling about God. Those were "Fire" and "Too Late". Some people kind of get squirmish when you're dealing with that subject matter, so I changed it up a little bit lyrically to make it more about a relationship between two people rather than a relationship between myself and my God.

Chester Bennington (ShockHound 26 October 2009):
Yeah, and that's kind of what I didn't want. I don't want to preach to anybody because I know that not everybody believes what I believe in. In "Too Late," there are times I feel like I want to be closer to God but wonder if I will ever be able to get there, because at times I've been so far down the other road. The reality is that I know in my heart that's completely ridiculous, because if I want that I can have it. Sometimes people lack the confidence to have that. That's what that song is about. And then with "Fire," it's about feeling alone and kind of like an island and knowing that even at that moment, when you feel that way, if you believe you can look up or look outward and know you're not alone.

Inside Of Me

Let Down

Ryan Shuck (LPLive.net 06 May 2009):
[One thing that caught my eye over the years with you guys was turning on the TV in 2005 and after seeing the images of Hurricane Katrina, seeing Let Down being performed live. How did that go, coming up with the acoustic arrangement to play that?]
That was how the song went originally – it really was an acoustic song. We sort of made it more rock in the recording process.

Chester Bennington (LPLive.net and LPAssociation.com 25 August 2009):
[A recent behind the scenes clip has leaked out on the internet concerning the upcoming video for the second Dead By Sunrise single "Let Down". Can you tell us a little more about the plot behind the video and what we can expect from it?]
The plot is this: the album artwork is an artistic kind of theme where myself and the guys from Dead By Sunrise are being swarmed by this black void trying to destroy us and so we’re kind of getting sucked up by this black presence. The video is a representation of that and an extension of the artwork. I will be getting engulfed by the black void, the same sheet we used for the artwork we’re using in the video. I’m wrapped up in it and it’s trying to kill me, but you can’t tell its trying to kill me. Inside the black void is an image of a woman who must be causing me this grief that’s going on in the song and the fabric turns from the shape of her body into the shape of my face. I’ve yet to see any edits yet so I’m anxiously awaiting those to see how it turned out.

Chester Bennington (Ultimate Guitar 08 October 2009):
Very early on, I had been writing on my acoustic guitar. It is just me with four chords singing the melody. If a song is good like that, you really don't need to fuck with it a lot. In a sense I was like, Let's not overcomplicate this stuff. It doesn't need to be overcomplicated. In that clip when I said, If I can sit down and play one note and I never have to change playing that one note, the song is great because the melody is awesome and the lyrics are great. Why do you have to start throwing in a bunch of chord progressions? That was kind of a goal. Let's not detract from what makes the song great. In that sense, I very much stuck to what I wanted to accomplish. I would go in, sit down with my acoustic, play the chords and melody, and then leave for the first couple of tracks. Ryan would call in and say, Hey, do you mind if we started messing with this thing a little bit? I said, You guys go crazy. Do whatever you want. I want you to do whatever it is you think you want to do with the song. I want to see what you guys end up with. So they went in, and they came back out with the first version of Letdown. I was like, I love this. This is great. It's using that electronic/pop/alternative style of music with this grungy guitar singer/songwriter type of song. If we can find a way to balance that out, we will have created something special.

Chester Bennington (MTV 29 October 2009):
I can kind of tell like which songs are a little too grungy, a little too punk-driven [for Linkin Park].
On a song like 'Let Down,' which I felt really strongly about, I really wanted that song not to change. I didn't want to go in and change the words, I didn't want to change any of the vibe, and I knew that would happen a lot taking it to Linkin Park. So it was pretty easy to figure that out.
As time went on it got easier. I hear a song like 'Condemned' in my head and I know that's probably not going to end up on a Linkin Park record. But now it's getting really difficult, because Linkin Park is going in so many directions it's kind of hard to figure out which songs are which.

Chester Bennington (Bullz-Eye 11 December 2009):
Absolutely! After we finished all of the promotional work and touring for Meteora, we weren’t sure what was going to happen next. I then got the idea to do a solo album where I played everything outside of the drums. Then I got Amir (Derakh) and Ryan (Shuck) to come in and play some stuff, too. One day we’re in the studio and they took the guitar tracks I had for the song “Let Down” and started messing around with it. The next thing you know they are playing me what they did with it, and I’m completely floored! They had found this chord progression that took the song to a different place than I had imagined, but it was what I was looking for. I thought it was crazy, but I knew at that point that this project became a collaborative thing between the three of us. I like to think of Dead by Sunrise as a collective more than my own thing.

Give Me Your Name

Chester Bennington (The Aquarian Weekly 13 October 2009):
Songs like ‘Condemned’ and songs like ‘Inside of Me’ are pretty straightforward—there is no question as to what those songs are about. This one the fact that it can be seen in so many different ways is what makes it special, and I think that’s what going to give it the ability to connect with people in a much deeper way then perhaps other songs on the record. Oh, and by the way, ‘Give Me Your Name,’ I wrote that song for my wife for our wedding.

Chester Bennington (The Aquarian Weekly 13 October 2009):
We met through a friend, and we never actually crossed paths. Ryan was friends with her for many years. Almost for as long as I have [been friends with him], and we had known of each other for the same amount of time, but I have never met her for some reason. If she was at a party, I didn’t make it. We had never met and eventually, after I had split up with my ex-wife, we met at a party.
We hit it off right away, like instantly. Ever since we met—I think it was like four or five days before we’d see each other again, and we have been together ever since. I think she moved in with me about a week-and-half after I met her. We met, and that was it.

Chester Bennington (The Aquarian Weekly 13 October 2009):
That’s my favorite song on the record as well. That one and ‘In The Darkness,’ those are my two favorite songs. Those are both written with love about the relationship I have with my beautiful wife. So I wrote that for her, and we danced to that at our wedding.

Chester Bennington (Inked 03 November 2009):
If someone hates ‘Give Me Your Name,’ I’ll be like, ‘I’ll fucking kill you. I’ll fucking cut your face off.’ I had this acoustic guitar riff I had been playing with that was very mellow and I was like, Summon beautiful music in your mind. And it just came to me. It was the first song we danced to at our wedding and it was good enough to make the record. I wrote ‘In the Darkness’ and ‘Into You’ about our relationship, and even ‘Inside of Me’ is me needing to be with her when I was out there losing my fucking mind and she was 600 miles away.

Chester Bennington (MusicRadar 20 November 2009):
Give Me Your Name was even further outside the box because it was a song my wife asked me to write for our wedding. She looked at me one day and said, 'You should write a song for our wedding that we can dance to.' As if that's so easy! [laughs] 'Sure, honey, I've got that one right here.'
Obviously I'm not a love song kind of guy, but I looked inside myself and those words came out. Truthfully, it was never supposed to be for the record; it was only intended for our wedding. But it came out so good that I thought, Hey, I should put this on the record. Maybe other people will use it for their weddings." [laughs]

Chester Bennington (ShortList 8 June 2014):
My favourite wedding song is the song I wrote for my wife ahead of our wedding. It’s called Give Me Your Name and I wrote it for one of my other projects/bands, the Dead By Sunrise record I penned. We danced to it on the big day and I have such fond memories of it that I wouldn't pick any other song in the world for this.

My Suffering

Chester Bennington (The Aquarian Weekly 13 October 2009):
The record was written over a long period of time, because when we started the record it was late 2005 or mid-2005, so I started writing it then and we worked till end of the year. Then I started working on Minutes To Midnight. So I took the next three years off basically from working on the record [Out Of Ashes]. After that, I started picking it back up again after we finished touring for Minutes To Midnight.
I had a bunch of new songs, I wrote other new songs in the process of recording with Howard Benson. So there are phases of writing in different periods over the last four years. A lot had happened in that time, you can imagine, a lot of things have happened to yourself in four years, so there’s plenty of stuff to draw from. Some of these songs are about when I met my wife and fell in love with her. That’s where the love songs come from. At the same time, I was having tough times in the middle of a long, drawn out divorce that was draining and pretty much put me on a downward spiral just because it was so…there was so much going on during that period of time, that you get songs like ‘My Suffering’ and ‘Condemned,’ and the heavier, darker stuff was all derived from the phases of that experiences. But yeah, there was a lot going on.

Chester Bennington (MusicRadar 20 November 2009):

[On a couple of other songs, Crawl Back In and My Suffering, you write pretty openly about your addictions.]

I do. I'm also a sucker for alcohol. It's an amazing thing…it was baffling to me when I was going through the throes of alcohol addiction because I'm usually a pretty even-keel guy. But when it comes to drinking, I just can't stop. The urge to drink just takes over. It astounds me how different I am when I'm drinking from when I'm not. I become this other person. Probably not a very good person, but that's what alcohol can do to some people.

Chester Bennington (Bullz-Eye 11 December 2009):
I wrote a lot of the synth-poppy and Goth-y kind of moments on the album. You can hear the Cure and Depeche Mode in some of the songs. There are a lot of poppy vocal melodies throughout the songs, too. Some people have picked up on the ethereal quality of the melodies too, which is great. But yeah, we also do more of the straight-up rock stuff like “Crawl Back In” and “My Sunrise” on the record.

Condemned

Chester Bennington (Ultimate Guitar 08 October 2009):
I think going through it was difficult, but I'm pretty good at writing about stuff. Once I came out with being abused as a child, a lot of those doors opened for me. Now I can write about anything I want. Nobody knew about it until that day. My parents were going, What? It was like, Okay, if I can write about that, I can pretty much write about anything. I would say that I wasn't writing songs about my particular problems while I was going through them during this record. I was writing songs about falling in love, and I was kind of skating around the subject a little bit. After I went through all of that, that's when I started writing very clear and very forward songs about what I went through. Crawl Back In talks about relapsing and how hard that is. Condemned is about that love affair with feeling like shit. It was very strange for me because these ideas just started coming. I don't know if I could have done it if I had was in the middle of it. I try not to change things that much in my songs. If it comes to me, then it comes to me. If it doesn't, then I'll wait a couple of days. After that, I'll just let it go. It's not worth it.

Chester Bennington (The Aquarian Weekly 13 October 2009):
The record was written over a long period of time, because when we started the record it was late 2005 or mid-2005, so I started writing it then and we worked till end of the year. Then I started working on Minutes To Midnight. So I took the next three years off basically from working on the record [Out Of Ashes]. After that, I started picking it back up again after we finished touring for Minutes To Midnight.
I had a bunch of new songs, I wrote other new songs in the process of recording with Howard Benson. So there are phases of writing in different periods over the last four years. A lot had happened in that time, you can imagine, a lot of things have happened to yourself in four years, so there’s plenty of stuff to draw from. Some of these songs are about when I met my wife and fell in love with her. That’s where the love songs come from. At the same time, I was having tough times in the middle of a long, drawn out divorce that was draining and pretty much put me on a downward spiral just because it was so…there was so much going on during that period of time, that you get songs like ‘My Suffering’ and ‘Condemned,’ and the heavier, darker stuff was all derived from the phases of that experiences. But yeah, there was a lot going on.

Chester Bennington (The Aquarian Weekly 13 October 2009):
Songs like ‘Condemned’ and songs like ‘Inside of Me’ are pretty straightforward—there is no question as to what those songs are about. This one the fact that it can be seen in so many different ways is what makes it special, and I think that’s what going to give it the ability to connect with people in a much deeper way then perhaps other songs on the record. Oh, and by the way, ‘Give Me Your Name,’ I wrote that song for my wife for our wedding.

Chester Bennington (MTV 29 October 2009):
I can kind of tell like which songs are a little too grungy, a little too punk-driven [for Linkin Park].
On a song like 'Let Down,' which I felt really strongly about, I really wanted that song not to change. I didn't want to go in and change the words, I didn't want to change any of the vibe, and I knew that would happen a lot taking it to Linkin Park. So it was pretty easy to figure that out.
As time went on it got easier. I hear a song like 'Condemned' in my head and I know that's probably not going to end up on a Linkin Park record. But now it's getting really difficult, because Linkin Park is going in so many directions it's kind of hard to figure out which songs are which.

Chester Bennington (Bullz-Eye 11 December 2009):
[“Condemned” even has a punky new wave vibe to it in parts.]
It totally does! That main riff has that kind of thing going in. So yeah, we got to throw in a lot of the stuff we grew up on into these songs.

Chester Bennington (Artist Direct 05 October 2010):
[Does Saw 3D remind you of any songs?]
I'm glad that they asked me to put "Condemned" in the movie because I really felt like that would've been a great song for the film. I didn't really think about it at the time. I kicked the idea around, but I didn't want to plan that seed. I wanted that to come organically, and it did. Dead By Sunrise's "Condemned" is now in the film, and I think it fit.

Into You

In The Darkness

Chester Bennington (The Aquarian Weekly 13 October 2009):
That’s my favorite song on the record as well. That one and ‘In The Darkness,’ those are my two favorite songs. Those are both written with love about the relationship I have with my beautiful wife. So I wrote that for her, and we danced to that at our wedding.

Chester Bennington (The Aquarian Weekly 13 October 2009):
We met through a friend, and we never actually crossed paths. Ryan was friends with her for many years. Almost for as long as I have [been friends with him], and we had known of each other for the same amount of time, but I have never met her for some reason. If she was at a party, I didn’t make it. We had never met and eventually, after I had split up with my ex-wife, we met at a party.
We hit it off right away, like instantly. Ever since we met—I think it was like four or five days before we’d see each other again, and we have been together ever since. I think she moved in with me about a week-and-half after I met her. We met, and that was it.

Chester Bennington (Inked 03 November 2009):
If someone hates ‘Give Me Your Name,’ I’ll be like, ‘I’ll fucking kill you. I’ll fucking cut your face off.’ I had this acoustic guitar riff I had been playing with that was very mellow and I was like, Summon beautiful music in your mind. And it just came to me. It was the first song we danced to at our wedding and it was good enough to make the record. I wrote ‘In the Darkness’ and ‘Into You’ about our relationship, and even ‘Inside of Me’ is me needing to be with her when I was out there losing my fucking mind and she was 600 miles away.

Chester Bennington (MusicRadar 20 November 2009):
Thank you. Yeah, well, that was the idea. [laughs] Those songs were experiments. Into The Darkness was more up my alley in that it was kind of a love song but it was dark and twisted at the same time.
I don't know if anybody else finds it romantic, but when I sing 'I want to open my skin and pull you in,' I find it sexy, the idea of wanting somebody so badly that you want to become one with them; you want to inhabit their body and vice-versa. It was hard to open myself up in that way because I usually write about doom and gloom and 'poor me' shit. [laughs]

Elias Andra (Julien-K.de, LPLive.net and LinkinPark.it 14 February 2010):
I might get in trouble for saying this but we did record the Planet Hollywood show live. I saw a version of “In the Darkness” which I thought was amazing. By far, “In the Darkness” is my favorite song. I hope one day we can release these live performances or any documented performances in general to the public.

Morning After

20 Eyes

STONE TEMPLE PILOTS

Out Of Time

Dean DeLeo (ArtistDirect 27 August 2013):
It came together like no other we've ever done in the sense that it was pretty much conceived on bass. Robert was in the market for a new old P Bass. He was looking at some early sixties P Basses. He had like three or four of them sent to his house. He picked this one up, and it was one of those "antenna moments" where the guitar just spoke. He basically wrote those riffs on bass. That's why the song is so riff-oriented because it was written on bass. We got together to do the song, and we all threw our two cents in and came up with the tune. Like no other song we've ever done, it was conceived on bass.

Dean DeLeo (ArtistDirect 27 August 2013):
[What does the song mean to you?]
Oh my goodness, it is a new chapter. We changed our quarterback, man! There's never really a concerted effort when we go into the studio that we have to do this or write that. We just do what we do. We want to make sure each of us are happy with it, and it resonates with us. Usually, when that happens, it does what it's supposed to do, and other people are moved by it as well. Music is a place to dip our minds and our hearts, right?

Robert DeLeo (Rolling Stone 04 September 2013):

I wake up every fucking day and I put my life in perspective. Here's a perfect example: we were doing pre-production one day, we were working on "Out of Time," and I had to stop. I just looked at the four of us down in my basement and I went, "Do you guys realize where we're at right now?" We're down in my basement right now, and 35 years ago that's where I started using a tennis racket, which came to a guitar, which came to other people involved and playing other people's music. That all developed in the basement. So to come around full-circle 35 years later, to be a grown man and have us all playing in the basement, that's pretty fucking beautiful. It puts things in perspective, and my point is I don't ever want to lose vision of how important it is that my childhood dream has become reality and that's gonna continue for the four of us.

Dean DeLeo (MusicRadar 15 October 2013):
We kind of did it a little backwards, actually [laughs]. We spoke with him on the phone, and we all agreed that we wanted to do this. The second thing we did is what we should have done first – we probably should have gotten in a room. But it's something I felt in my bones. I felt that it was going to be productive and creative.
Oh, goodness… My timeline isn't so great. I'd say it was a few weeks or maybe a month later, if that. The songwriting process started a little bit before that with the use of technology and kind of MP3ing each other ideas. When we got in a room together, Robert had already fooled around with a rough idea of Out Of Time. We came into the session and dove right into that.
Yeah, there was a lot of material, man. I'm just speaking on behalf of myself, but you know, if I bring in eight or 10 songs, they're all my babies – I'm gonna like all of them. But the decisions aren't really mine and mine only. Between the four of us, these are the five songs that came to be on our first outing.

Dean DeLeo (MusicRadar 15 October 2013):
Being that we recorded this at Robert's house – he built a really beautiful studio in his basement – we kind of latched onto a lot of his guitars. We used some Gretsch Country Gentlemens, which we've never used before. He's got a really interesting semi-hollow Kent guitar, kind of a '60s Sears catalogue thing. [Laughs] We used those, but of course, I usually go to a session with a hollowbody, whether it's a 335 or a 330 or a 175, and then there's a Les Paul and, of course, a Tele or a Strat. We utilized every guitar.

Robert DeLeo (Loudwire 15 October 2013):
We started fresh. I think it was a good opportunity to really kind of drop the bags and pick up new and make this a new chapter of where we’re at. It’s always inspiring getting in a room with someone new, especially when it works. We just started doing our thing together man. That doesn’t always happen. I’ve been in rooms writing or producing and there is a chemistry that may or may not be there. It just felt like we were moving ahead doing our thing.
‘Out of Time’ was the first thing we put together and we did that, the recording and writing at my house here. In my studio here. That was just a dream come true to have everything come full circle. For me personally, there was a moment there where we were putting together some songs and I kind of had to stop and said, “Do you guys realize where we’re at right now?” They didn’t understand what I meant; we were down in a basement. We’re grown men and we’re in a basement. It took me back 35 years to when I was young and I guess when music bug hits us all, when we’re younger. It’s either the garage or the basement. Here we are coming full circle this many years later. We’re putting it together in my basement. It felt really cool, man. To be doing that. We had a good atmosphere about what we were putting together. It felt great.
It’s pretty humbling, man. I’m kind of laughing about it. My wife is, too. There were many times where I was like trust me, we’ll get a new bathroom soon, let me just build this studio. Trust me. Now it’s like, she kind of gets it now. Hey we did this here! It went to No. 1, that’s cool. Isn’t it?

Black Heart

Dean DeLeo (MusicRadar 15 October 2013):
Being that we recorded this at Robert's house – he built a really beautiful studio in his basement – we kind of latched onto a lot of his guitars. We used some Gretsch Country Gentlemens, which we've never used before. He's got a really interesting semi-hollow Kent guitar, kind of a '60s Sears catalogue thing. [Laughs] We used those, but of course, I usually go to a session with a hollowbody, whether it's a 335 or a 330 or a 175, and then there's a Les Paul and, of course, a Tele or a Strat. We utilized every guitar.

Robert DeLeo (NoiseCreep 16 October 2013):
It’s special for me. I just bought and found a rare bass that I had been looking for for years. I got a chance to use it on that song, so that meant a lot too. To do that from a gear geek kind of perspective.
I’ve been looking for this certain Rickenbacker 4001 Bass. That’s a very rare 1971 Rickenbacker Bass. There were only 20 of those made in ’71. It’s very rare and very collectible. Growing up on Paul McCartney and Chris Squire from YES, Geddy Lee. You dream of instruments of that. Then when you find one, it’s like, ‘Well this is going on the song.’ That means a lot, man. Dreaming about those instruments as a little kid and actually having one and using it on a song that you put together. It means a lot.

Robert DeLeo (NoiseCreep 16 October 2013):
That was an idea I had. I just wanted to have something. I started out on guitar and went to bass out of necessity. I always write on guitar. I just wanted to come up with something that kind of had everything — had great power chords, great stringy chords and parts to it. I was just feeling that one.

Eric Kretz (SongFacts 20 November 2013):

"Black Heart," which is the single we have out right now hitting radio, that one's so great because it has such a great porch stomp feel to it. When Robert was presenting that on guitar, it was just like you start smacking your foot on the floor [stomps foot]. We were all feeling where the groove was going. So when I hopped behind the kit, I was riding the floor toms in the verse of it with a very straight ahead beat, just to really get the energy across of where those hits were. Then it was just a matter of where to take it, especially for the kind of bridge and the ending of the song. That one was a really exciting start, and then it took a lot of work to make it seem seamless like that.

Same On The Inside

Dean DeLeo (MusicRadar 15 October 2013):
Being that we recorded this at Robert's house – he built a really beautiful studio in his basement – we kind of latched onto a lot of his guitars. We used some Gretsch Country Gentlemens, which we've never used before. He's got a really interesting semi-hollow Kent guitar, kind of a '60s Sears catalogue thing. [Laughs] We used those, but of course, I usually go to a session with a hollowbody, whether it's a 335 or a 330 or a 175, and then there's a Les Paul and, of course, a Tele or a Strat. We utilized every guitar.

Chester Bennington (ArtistDirect 16 October 2013):
For all of us, that one came from out of nowhere. It's really different. In a stylistic way, it's a step in a new stylistic direction for STP that still sounds very STP. I think a lot of people find themselves trying to play some type of role in society and fit in. Sometimes, in their lifetimes, people don't feel like anybody else and they don't want to play by the same rules anybody else does. You start to find the glass half empty. You also start to find your own independence and point-of-view. This is a song about struggling with those things. When I write lyrics, they're a little more to the point. It's a bit easier to figure out what they're about. When I was writing for High Rise, I was channeling the spirit of Mike Shinoda to a degree. It's like when Luke Skywalker is talking to Yoda and he's already absorbed "The Force". I was pulling on those guys, Mike, Rick Rubin, Don Gilmore, and all of the people who pushed me when it comes to writing lyrics. I'd run it through what my brain reconstructed as those people in my mind, and they criticized the lyrics along with me. I was hoping I wouldn't just settle for something I thought sounded nice when I sang it. I would try to live up to what we do with Linkin Park in terms of having songs with meaning but also writing in a more poetic manner as STP has in the past. I tried to combine more of that poetic style into the lyrics.

Eric Kretz (SongFacts 20 November 2013):

Whereas the song "Same On The Inside," Dean was strumming something on guitar when I walked in, "Ah, let's go play that." So he and I would just sit there and start going through the chord progressions and getting over all the jive feel, the jumpin' and jive feel of where the song was going. Chester would come in and suddenly start shooting melodies [snaps fingers], like, bam, bam bam! That was just so exciting as we were putting songs together. Within a few hours we were getting songs together, minus the lyrics. What Chester would do, as he would call them, is "banana lyrics" where he would just sing, "bananananana." Those are his words, not mine. That gets the point across. He doesn't have specific words yet. He'll be writing stuff down on his laptop and sing out the vowels and we all go, "Alright. The song's coming together." It's a really exciting time to be in the studio and working with the band when it goes that quickly.

Cry Cry

Tomorrow

OTHER (collaborations)

Barack Your World

Bass On The Bottom (Mr. Hahn and Troublemaker Remix)

Carry Me Away

Chali 2na song

Change

Cry To Yourself (aka State Of The Art)

Dan The Automator song

DJ Whoo Kid song

Feels Like Forever

Austin Carlile ("Restoring Force" Press Release November 2013):

It was the first time we had every actually recorded together. He’s our brother, and he’s an incredible vocalist. I remember one night we were doing pre-production early on, and Aaron had some reservations. He was down on himself, and he didn’t know if he was cut out for it. I told him, ‘You’re the person who delivers that final punch and emotion. You’re the one who sends it home for us. Trust yourself’. The next day, he showed me ‘Feels Like Forever’.

I saw Aaron’s struggle in the studio, and I had the same struggle two weeks later. I broke down. I was mentally, physically, and spiritually exhausted. That song takes me back to making this record. When we finished it, I was so reassured. You can always come out of any low point.

Austin Carlile (Blabbermouth 23 October 2014):

In the studio, 'Feels Like Forever' was the FIRST song we demoed, and ended up being the LAST song we finished recording. It fought back. It's a song that everyone in the band has a personal attachment to for various reasons. Bringing it to life visually and in our own backyard of Southern California was a great experience. Sand in my shoes still and all.

Austin Carlile (USA Today 23 October 2014):

The song is about an internal battle and feeling like everything is crashing down on you, it's raining down on you, drowning you. It's a song that we want to empower people to know that everybody goes through storms, everybody goes through trials and tribulations. It's the focus of how to get out of it, how to better yourself from it, how to learn from it so it doesn't happen again. Then, if it does happen again, you know exactly how to handle it.

Austin Carlile (USA Today 23 October 2014):

The idea behind the shell came from a whole line of things. For one thing, the shell resembles the inner ear, the source of equilibrium. Also, Restoring force is talked about in Hooke's Law, which is about the ability of a spring to be pushed down and push back, the restoring force of the spring. Restoring force is returning to center, returning to your equilibrium, returning to that center after a trial or a tribulation, a storm or a flood. That's what this record was for us. It was a restoring force for our band, and we wanted it to be a restoring force for the people who listened to it.

Austin Carlile (Beat Magazine February 2015):

The making of the new record was such a different experience this time round. Aaron and I flew out to the studio for about two and a half weeks before the rest of the band did. We started working on preproduction and wrote some skeletons of songs. Then together Aaron and I trialled some basslines. Soon our producer [David Bendeth] suggested we work separately and see what we could come up with.

I’d be lying if I told you it was easy. We’d never recorded with Aaron before and we didn’t know if it was going to work. Until one day he asked me to listen to a chorus and verse he said he’d had in his head forever. As a musician, you know when you have a good chorus and verse, the rest is cake. Even still there was a lot riding on this and Aaron knew it.

Austin Carlile (Beat Magazine February 2015):

We got to talking and had lunch together. I’d mentioned I was working on a new record and he seemed interested, so we went to his car and we listened to these super rough demos. I was doing vocals, even though I felt pretty silly. I had idolised this guy, now I’m singing to him in his car. Suddenly he looked at me and said, ‘You would be an idiot not to let me help you with this. I love it.’ He [Mike] helped bring that song to life and it was that day in the car that started our friendship with Linkin Park.

It has become one of my favourite songs. I don’t want to sound corny but Aaron bringing that song to the table was the restoring force for our band.

Gold Guns Girls (Mike Shinoda Remix)

Emily Haines (Drowned In Sound 27 April 2009):

When Jimmy sent me this song as a rough sketch I listened to it over and over while watching Scarface, dreaming up ideas. The lyrics I wrote look at greed in all its forms, and the fact that we seem programmed to be insatiable. If we could do a million dollar video for this song it would be a remake of that montage scene from Scarface - including the tiger!

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 30 August 2009):

Thanks to everyone who came out for last night’s Glorious Excess (Dies) opening; images of everything are on the way today.

In the preview video for GLXS, some of you noticed a song by Metric in there. I mentioned the band Metric a long time ago and some of you know I like their music. Their album “Fantasies” contains a song called “Gold Guns Girls.” When I first heard it, I thought: this is like a theme song for Glorious Excess!

Well, I contacted the band, and (to make a long story short) I remixed the song. With their blessing, it’s now on the “music” page here on mikeshinoda.com

If you like this song, check the band out at http://www.ilovemetric.com/. The band will be making the song available to fans soon…but you’re getting the exclusive here first!

Emily Haines (Wondering Sound 06 December 2012):

I suppose we do usually associate the desire to be independent to be in opposition to the desire to be successful in a mainstream realm. From the beginning, when Jimmy and I started writing together, it was always the dream, and always the goal, to reclaim radio. It’s completely absurd that radio should be a medium no self-respecting band would go near. That’s wrong. That’s insane. We were very pleasantly surprised with Fantasies to find that people actually are open-minded.
We had program directors of big, mainstream alternative stations — and obviously, we’re in no position to have any power whatsoever — but we managed to get in the door and say, “Will you just listen?” And they did listen, and they played it. They did that with “Gold Guns Girls” and “Gimme Sympathy.” That was really encouraging to me, having felt that the whole system was unfair. It’s really exciting for us to be able to participate in that and be a band on the radio. I would love to see enough bands go into that world that it changes the format and we can all enjoy the radio. That’s what I’d like to see happen.

Hawaii5Joe

Head Like A Hole

Home Sweet Home

Karma Killer

Marco Polo

MTV's Video Music Awards 2005 Score

Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Numb Journals 30 July 2005):
I JUST POSTED THIS IN LPU, THOUGHT I SHOULD COPY IT HERE...
hey everyone...just dropping in to say hi. i see a lot of excitement going around about the fort minor shows coming up. thanks. it's going to be different doing a straight up hip hop show...i'm bringing Styles Of Beyond (S.O.B.) on the shows. if you're an LP fan who loves hip hop, you gotta come to the shows and say hi--we'll need your support.
i was invited to do these shows in europe and couldn't turn them down. i guess that means i'm going to have to set up some shows in the U.S. and elsewhere

but PLEASE don't start bombing this thread with "when are you going to tour near me" questions--you'll just tire out the moderators. ha
anyway, the fort minor album is just about ready, but i have some little things i want to get done before anyone can hear it. in the meantime, i will be doing some music for this year's MTV VMAs. it's the first time they've asked an artist to score the show. lil' jon and i were asked. i have about 10 short instrumental pieces i am giving them to use. there are rumors that i'll be playing--they are unfortunately untrue. as for the songs, none have vocals, and they vary in style quite a bit, but i'm sure you'll be able to pick some of them out.
anyway, hopefully i'll see you out there on tour. later...

Mike Shinoda (contactmusic.com 22 August 2005):

The challenge was that they needed variety. I did 10 tracks, a couple of them a lot of Linkin Park fans will recognise the sound, while others are different, all the way down to some really stripped-down hip-hop sounds. And within each piece, there are different parts.

Lil' Jon (contactmusic.com 22 August 2005):
They came and hollered at me and I told them I have a catalogue of over 600 tracks. They sat down and I said, 'Pick what you like.'

Mike Shinoda (SoundCloud 27 January 2010):

These are the beats that made up some of the soundtrack of 2005's MTV VMAs. I scored the show with Lil' Jon. If you rap or sing over one of these beats, make sure to let me know at www.mikeshinoda.com.

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 01 March 2010):
Kinda random: in the past few months, a bunch of you were recently talking about the “score” I created for the 2005 MTV VMAs (I did a small selection of beats for the show, and scored it with Lil’ Jon, who contributed his own tracks. We did not collaborate on any, FYI).
Some of you have already found the tracks on my soundcloud page, but I figured I’d post them here. Enjoy!

Never Let Me Down

Rock Phenomenon

Sailing Through The Clouds

Same Direction

Second To None

Slow Ya Roll

The Instrumental

The Raid: Redemption Soundtrack

Mike Shinoda (Japan Cinema 02 February 2012):

At the start of a project like this, I try to zero-in on some ideas of what might work, and what might not. Think of it as a painter’s palette: you choose what colors to use, and what to avoid. It gives the piece a tone. In this case, I think some of the standout sounds–the breakbeats and the heavy synths and samples–were an early decision that helped define the score’s direction. And I decided to avoid guitars, which I thought made things feel brutish, if that makes sense. The distorted electro sounds set up the right aesthetic.

Mike Shinoda (Japan Cinema 02 February 2012):

I like the story. It’s not about a deep narrative, it’s about keeping things going so the action makes sense, and you feel like things have motivation. When the folks from Sony first reached out to me, rather than saying, “We want a Linkin Park score,” they cited other things–my remixes, my Fort Minor project–which all were really fun songs to make–the remixes were things that I did in my spare time. They were fun and easy to do. So I thought, “if that’s the type of thing they want, maybe this will be fun and easy.”

Mike Shinoda (Japan Cinema 02 February 2012):

It was as fun as I had hoped. It was a fresh project, and the director (Gareth Evans) gave me a ton of creative space. I’m grateful for that. It made room for Joe (Trapanese) and I to make some bold decisions, like the dubstep stuff in one of the early SWAT team scenes, and the reoccurring keyboard arpeggio from “RAZORS.OUT.” which is the song at the end.

Mike Shinoda (Japan Cinema 02 February 2012):

On a song, you are expressing your own emotions and telling your own story. You’re making something which is the center of focus for that experience. A score is mostly about supporting someone else’s story, and often about playing a supporting role. I tend to naturally make things that are very up-front and attention grabbing with Linkin Park, so I have to switch gears for a score.

Mike Shinoda (Japan Cinema 02 February 2012):

[...]I think this film was asking for a score I could do pretty naturally, so I wouldn’t be spending a lot of time figuring out the right sound, and I could just do my thing and learn the workflow a little better.

This Is Life Theme

Truth Inside A Lie

Wake Me Up

Avicii (Rolling Stone 09 February 2013):

If you put me in a room with someone like Mike [Einzinger] or an amazing singer, I have the melodies in my head and I know exactly where to take everything, but I’m not able to do it myself, I’m not able to sing. So when I’m with someone who does sing and all these acoustic instruments, I know exactly what to do with it.

Avicii (Askmen June 2013):

I think a lot of it has been mixed up. I’d say it’s more folk-influenced than country, first of all. For me there are two types of country: There’s the shoot-yourself-in-the-head country and then there’s really good country music. There are definitely some cool inspirations to be had from that. When I sat down and decided to do my album everything kind of happened organically. A lot of what I was listening to at the time, personally, was Of Monsters and Men, Mumford and Sons and stuff that my manager, Ash [Pournouri], presented to me. That really helped shape the artistic direction of the album.

My dad has always been a big Ray Charles fan, and I’ve grown up listening to all kinds of music. I went to the studio with other songwriters like Mike Einziger from Incubus, who plays amazing guitar. With Mike, I played him a reference track and was like "F*ck, let’s try to do something like this. Let’s try to fuse this with electronics. Let’s try to fuse acoustics and organic feeling melodies with scale. Let’s turn this music into house because no one’s ever done that.

Mike Einziger (Radio.com 18 July 2013):

It doesn’t matter how many times you write a song, for people to respond to it in such a drastic way is never expected. It’s never expected in Incubus, and it was not expected with this collaboration with Avicii and Aloe [blacc, whose vocals are featured].

Mike Einziger (Radio.com 18 July 2013):

Over the last six or eight months that Incubus has been on hiatus, I’ve been writing lots of music with lots of different people, the connection that Avicii and I have with each other was unexpected. I think it was surprising to a lot of people that know me and also know him. We seem to operate in what seems to be different musical universes but when we got together the way that we started writing together, it couldn’t have been more organic and effortless.

Mike Einziger (Radio.com 18 July 2013):

[Einziger confessed that he] was not that familiar with Avicii’s music when [they] first met up to discuss music.

Mike Einziger (Radio.com 18 July 2013):

Someone from his camp contacted me and asked if I’d be interested in working on something with him. At first I was puzzled thinking, ‘How would that work?’ But then I was like, ‘Why in the world would I not?’

Mike Einziger (Radio.com 18 July 2013):

He came down with some lyrics that he had written already. It was almost like a poem. So we started taking the lyrics that he’d written and applying them to our new melodies.

Mike Einziger (Radio.com 18 July 2013):

Electronic music in that sort of form, even to this day, I still consider it a little alien to me cause it’s like a different musical universe.

Mike Einziger (Radio.com 18 July 2013):

Just before our [ultra] performance there were stripper girls with G-strings dancing on the stage and here we are with Mac Davis, and Dan Tyminski, one of the greatest country/bluegrass musicians. To go from that stripper-ish dance party environment to a bunch of musicians on stage, it looked and felt out of place. But that was the goal. That was what we set out to do. After we were finished writing all this music, Avicii asked me, ‘I want to play this live. Can we do this?’ I said yeah, and he said, ‘This is going to piss a lot of people off.’ I said, ‘Perfect, let’s do it.’

Aloe Blacc (Rolling Stone 28 August 2013):

As a songwriter, it is wonderful for the world to appreciate the lyrics you write. As a singer, it is even better for people to become a fan of your voice. I'm very happy that I have the chance to earn the respect of new fans with both my lyrics and my voice. A friend of mine told me he had to educate his coworker whom he overheard complementing Avicii's voice. He leaned over and said, "That's not actually Avicii singing, that's Aloe Blacc."

Aloe Blacc (Rolling Stone 28 August 2013):

The call from Avicii did come as a surprise but I am up for experimenting. Mike Shinoda, who knows of me through a mutual friend from my hip-hop days, suggested to Avicii that I sing on his album. We initially met at Westlake Studios in L.A. where Michael Jackson recorded the Off the Wall and Thriller albums. It was there that I recorded the vocals to "Black & Blue" written by Mac Davis and also wrote a fresh idea with Avicii. Not too long after, he invited me to Mike Einziger's home studio for a session to write what would become "Wake Me Up."

Aloe Blacc (Rolling Stone 28 August 2013):

The lyrics started on the plane trip home after IWC's annual Gala event in Geneva. When I wrote the lyrics I felt like I was making a strong statement but I never imagined that they would touch so many people. In the studio, Mike sat next to me with his guitar and started strumming chords. I sang to him the chorus that I thought would work but was not sure about the second half: "All this time I was finding myself and I didn't know I was lost." Mike thought it was perfect. With that, I started to get the sense that we had something big on our hands.

Mike Einziger (HitFix 12 September 2013):

It’s the biggest song I’ve written in my career. It’s crazy to be part of something like this. I certainly didn’t expect it to happen when I first got that email to work with Tim. I just thought, ‘this could be something fun’.

Mike Einziger (HitFix 12 September 2013):

He showed up about four hours late. He was so apologetic, I actually felt bad for him. He basically told me he hoped to write an album of songs that were timeless sounding, that didn’t sound like they would just be cool in one specific period of time. The music he was referring to was folk inspired or bits of country or bluegrass.

Mike Einziger (HitFix 12 September 2013):

We got the guitar part nailed down very quickly and then we arranged it into a verse, chorus and bridge and wrote all the melodies and vocal melodies.

Mike Einziger (HitFix 12 September 2013):

We recorded all the parts in my studio and I dumped it into Tim’s laptop. He does all his work on his laptop. He messed around with the arrangement. I got up the next morning and he’d emailed me. He was all excited about it. He’d put some finishing touches on it—the things he does— and it just sounded awesome. We had no idea it was going to become the No. 1 song in the whole wide world.

Mike Einziger (HitFix 12 September 2013):

[Working with Avicii reminded Einziger] to just really being open to doing something new and unexpected. I really didn’t know what was going to come out of that collaboration. I’m really thankful and happy that I was open to working with Tim and trying something.

Mike Shinoda (KROQ 16 September 2013):

I actually met with [AVICCI] and we played around with some music. I don’t actually think that any of those demos are going to end up in the world, but when we did meet and were throwing around ideas, I [asked] him, ‘Oh, have you ever heard of this soul singer I believe is from L.A. called Aloe Blacc. He’s really interesting and I like him and he’d sound great on this song that you wrote.’ He said, ‘send me a link or something.’ So I actually introduced him to Aloe, and that ended up being the song.

I think that EDM is at a place where it can either repeat itself, stay kind of stagnant and eventually get boring, or people can do what Steve is doing, what Avicii is doing, what a lot of these other guys are doing and start experimenting and taking chances.

Aloe Blacc (NextShark October (?) 2013):

The initial inspiration came to me during a flight home from an IWC event in Geneva. I was reflecting on how much my life has changed since the success of “I Need a Dollar” and how it feels like a dream that I never want to end. I wrote the lyrics to “Wake Me Up” in my phone and thought that they could come in handy because the words felt rather strong. It wasn’t long before I received the call from Avicii to work on his album.

Aloe Blacc (NextShark October (?) 2013):

I haven’t heard anyone who is officially a country musician refer to the elements in “Wake Me Up” as country so I prefer to call it a folk-inspired dance song. I have been experimenting with folk music for quite some time and released an acapella folk song called “Bus King” on my 2006 album Shine Through. There are similarities between folk and country music that generally hinge around the instrumentation, but I think there are folks who know better than I do how to explain the difference.

Aloe Blacc (NextShark October (?) 2013):

Actually, “Wake Me Up” was a collaboration between only myself, Mike Einziger, and Avicii. Mac Davis was involved in a different song altogether. Davis wrote a song called “Black & Blue” and Avicii liked it but wanted a soul singer to record it. While Avicii was in a session with Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park, Shinoda suggested to Avicii that I sing the song. Avicii then invited me to Westlake Recording Studio in Los Angeles to record “Black & Blue,” but unfortunately, Mac Davis was not at this session. I didn’t meet Davis until rehearsals prior to joining Avicii on stage in Miami to perform at the Ultra Music Festival to debut his new music live on stage. Collaboration is wonderful when you have talented people who also conduct themselves professionally. Working on “Wake Me Up” was quite simple. Avicii invited me to join his session with Mike Einziger and I came prepared with the lyrics for “Wake Me Up.” When I arrived, Einziger had already created the guitar part, so all I had to do was create a melody to fit my lyrics with the chord progression. With the recording of a guitar and vocal acoustic demo, Avicii was able to remix and arrange the music by increasing the tempo, and adding drums and synths. Everyone had a role to play and it worked really well. There were no creative clashes.

Avicii (LAWeekly 08 November 2013):

First of all, I'd say the song is more folk-influenced than country. But yes, definitely, there are some cool inspirations to be had from this folk sound and I hope this album brings more acceptance and awareness to that sound across the globe.

Avicii (LAWeekly 08 November 2013):

I made this track, and the album for that matter, with no particular audience in mind. The blend of genres just resonated really well with such a vast audience. There was complete transparency while creating this album; everything happened organically, there was never a plan behind anything.

Aloe Blacc (LAWeekly 19 November 2013):

I received a phone call from my record label asking if I wanted to record a song with Avicii. I said it'd be interesting. Avicii had been in the studio with Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park. I've never met Mike, but we know each other through a mutual friend named DJ Cheap Shot who I used to work with as a hip-hop artist back in the '90s.

Anyways, Avicii was with Mike Shinoda showing him a song written by Mac Davis, who is an old school legendary songwriter who used to write for Elvis Presley and other folks. Mike Shinoda suggested that he get Aloe Blacc to sing the song. So that's why Avicii ultimately contacted me.

Aloe Blacc (LAWeekly 19 November 2013):

A couple weeks later I went to Europe to do some shows and other things. This was this past January. On the flight home from Geneva I was writing lyrics. The initial lines "wake me up when it's all over/when I'm wiser and I'm older" came to me on the plane. When I got back, I had time set up to go back into the studio with Avicii and finish what we had initially started writing, but he calls me and he says, "I know we have a recording date, but I'm over here at [incubus member and "Wake Me Up" guitarist] Mike Einziger's house and we just started on some music that sounds great. We'd like for you to come finish the lyrics and melody with us."

By 8pm I made it to Mike's house. As he played the chorus on guitar, I thought to myself, "The lyrics I wrote on the plane are really strong and probably the best thing to deliver here, because I don't want to walk into this room empty handed." I respect Mike and Avicii, so rather than wrestle around trying write something brand new, and knowing that my wife would want me home within a few hours -- she was in the early stages of pregnancy -- I started singing the lyrics, "Wake me up when it's all over."

Once we knew we had the chorus right, all I had to do is finish the lyrics. Then I went into the booth and recorded the song over the guitar Mike had just recorded, and that's the version I went left with. I made it home by midnight.

Aloe Blacc (LAWeekly 19 November 2013):

I didn't know it would be a massive hit. I knew people would like it. I really liked the lyrics I wrote, and I knew I was in a room with two really good artists in their respective fields, so at least our fans would like the song, and maybe collectively that would allow it to be popular, but we didn't know if it was a hit.

Aloe Blacc (HuffPost 31 July 2014):

I started writing the lyrics at the top of 2013, travelling back from Switzerland. I started in hip hop music back in the 90s and I never expected to be singing and have an actual career as a musician but I'm travelling all over the world and I thought 'Life is a dream, wake me up when it's all over'. I was invited to the studio with Avicii and Mike Einziger from Incubus and when I got to the studio, they had already come up with a chord progression of the song. I came in with the lyrics and I just developed the melody as I heard the chords, and we all thought it was something very strong. We finished the song that night as an acoustic version, then Avicii made the dance mix in a couple of days, and that's what we released to the world, and that was his release.

Aloe Blacc (HuffPost 31 July 2014):

The song matters more than I do, and that's evident by how many people love the song. At the end of the day, when I'm dead and gone, the song will still live on. It doesn't matter -- I'm just lucky enough to be able to be the person to bring it into the world.

Walking Dead

Z-Trip (Arizona Republic 25 April 2005):
I just said, "You're from Phoenix, I'm from Phoenix, let's do a track together." Everyone thinks he's just doing the screaming thing and I'm the mashup rock deejay. We're sort of thumbing our noses for those that were dissing us. In a weird way, we have the last laugh because the song is blowing up. I'm so stoked that Phoenix (radio) is all over it. Because if they weren't... I would have been totally let down.

Z-Trip (PopMatters 26 April 2005):
He and I actually met each other on the road—I’d opened for them three times on three separate tours. We’ve spent quite a bit of time together. I’m friends with the band, we’re all homies. They’ve always looked out for me and I try my damnedest to look out for them. I think they’re real genuine people, and I dig where they’re coming from. It was just one of those things [where] I’d always wanted to do something with Chester, not even so much because he’s Chester from Linkin Park—that’s obvious. I wasn’t really that excited about that aspect, as much as I was about this [other] aspect, which is the bigger thing which I think is a shame because I don’t think a lot of people are going to know—but he’s from Phoenix and I’m from Phoenix. There’s a karmic element there for me with that song. You’ve got two guys who came from nothing and have made something for themselves, and that was the thing I was trying my hardest to make happen, and see happen. Just two guys making music. Z-Trip and Linkin Park aside, it was Zack and Chester. “Hey, what do you want to do? Let’s make a song.”
Basically. If I could call the song “Representing Arizona”, that’s what I would call it, but it just wouldn’t have the same ring to it. But really, that was it. It helps that he’s a recognizable name, and he’s obviously a big draw, but as much as he’s a draw into my world I hope that I’m a draw into his world. There’s a lot of people in my world that are very super-critical about music, that have written Linkin Park off as being a pop band, or whatever. Just like I got written off for being the DJ who mixed rock records. It’s the concept that I think he and I both strive to smash, which is that you may think you have us pidgeonholed or figured out, but we’ve got a lot more to offer. It’s a very dark track, it’s getting a lot of play on the radio right now.
Modern rock radio. Which is kinda cool. Think about it: I’m a hip-hop DJ and I’m getting played on modern rock radio. Obviously it’s through the help of Chester, but again, it’s more about bridging gaps, versus trying to cross-over. If he and I had sat down and tried to cross-over, it wouldn’t have come off as genuine. We sat down, literally looked at each and said, “What kind of song do you want to make? Let’s make something dark, let’s go more of a Depeche Mode or Nine Inch Nails dark song.” He and I said, “Yeah, let’s do it, cool.” It wasn’t like we had an agenda to do anything, it was real organic, and that’s why I think it works so well. It’s real.

Wednesday Was A Good Day (Mike Shinoda Remix)

Whatever The Fuck

Wonderful

Edited March 20, 2017 by lpliveusername

lpliveusername · October 31, 2015

Fort Minor chat transcripts.

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Mike Shinoda

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