Background Information
The song's working titles were "Fear" and "When My Time Comes" according to the booklet. While writing, the group went through over thirty lyrical variations before completing the album version. The song combines various synths and samples with raw guitars and drums and powerful vocals. A demo which features Mike Shinoda doing lead vocals can be heard on the Making of Minutes to Midnight documentary, as well as the Linkin Park Underground 9.0 CD where it is entitled "Fear". The song starts with a string sample and electric piano intro, followed by the verse. At the end of the song of the album version, a crowd can be heard which leads into "Bleed it Out", a song that features the background sound of a crowd throughout.
In a Kerrang! review/interview of the band, and the album, vocalist Chester Bennington had this to say about the song, "We knew this was going to be a single from the very beginning, so we worked really hard on making sure it had great lyrics. I'm singing 'Pretending someone else can come and save me from myself' during it because it's supposed to feel like an apology letter, as though I'm moving on but I want people to remember the good things and not the bad things. A lot of the song is about humility." Mike Shinoda has also stated that Rick Rubin (producer for Minutes to Midnight) was the first to have said "This sounds like a massive single".
Read more about this topic: Leave Out All The Rest
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