00:00If I'm a Linkin Park fan, I want to know, okay, if you guys are going to make new music,
00:05what does it sound like?
00:06Is it familiar at all?
00:07Does it have that really powerful, big, loud chorus vocal?
00:12Is that what we're doing?
00:14And I wanted that to be a resounding yes.
00:17Give the fans something familiar in the first part.
00:20Let me sing all the way to the first chorus, and then introduce this new person.
00:25It's almost like you come to somebody's house, and the person you know shakes your hand and
00:30welcomes you in, and then you meet new people.
00:32He's a genius.
00:34That's perfect.
00:35I'm glad we're here, then.
00:36That's the worst joke of all time.
00:38I'm so sorry.
00:39I apologize to you and to anybody else.
00:42That was horrible.
00:50Playing the song live, you're singing hit songs that you've known forever and the fans
00:54know and love, and then Emptiness Machine happens, and the fans are singing it just
01:00like any other song, and it's just like, whoa.
01:03They sing it just as loud.
01:05They accept it as one of the songs, and it's our song.
01:08It's not just a Linkin Park song.
01:09It's the one that this version of the band made.
01:24Waiting in the distance, just like you always do, just like you always do.
01:33It's almost like fantasy.
01:34It should give you a feeling more than it tells you exactly what's going on.
01:37It's more of a metaphor.
01:39The verse, first verse especially, I wanted a lot of the words to be dangerous words.
01:44Things that are sharp, or dark, or painful, or things like that.
01:48I wanted to establish, whatever this thing is that you're interacting with is not friendly,
01:55and there's an ominous kind of feeling to it.
02:08I don't have a standard way to approach a pre-chorus.
02:12A lot of times, I find that the verse is really where you're doing a lot of the establishing
02:17storytelling, and your pre-chorus is maybe, can be like a change of color.
02:23In the context of this song, I think this pre-chorus is more about the verse is an anxious
02:27verse, and so the pre-chorus is establishing, building tension, as opposed to leaving.
02:35It's staying on track, but it's pushing into a more tense lyric, really.
02:46I think a lot of us in the band, in different ways, have been through a version of being
02:58told how we ought to do things, or what we ought to ... I don't know.
03:02I haven't.
03:03Yeah, right.
03:04Except for Emily.
03:05All the rest of us really have been through a, here's how you should be, or here's what
03:12you're missing, or what, I don't know.
03:14There's all kinds of dumb versions of that, that I have almost this pathological attachment
03:19to.
03:20I keep writing songs about the same thing.
03:21I don't know what's wrong with me, and this happens to be one of them.
03:24It's strange, too, because I feel like my parents are good parents.
03:28They weren't super pushy about, oh, you can't be an artist, or you can't be a musician,
03:34or whatever.
03:35But for some reason, this topic often comes up for me in songs.
03:39The simplification of, you ought to be this, fit in this little box, is so ridiculous.
03:44Maybe I just react to it, and write another song about it, because it's the new, whatever
03:49this month's version of it is, or something.
03:51It's because you're good at it.
03:52That's why you keep writing.
03:54You're welcome.
03:55Don't know why I'm hoping for what I won't receive, falling for the promise of the emptiness
04:06machine.
04:07The emptiness machine, to me, it's like breaking that third wall between you and society, or
04:14some other world.
04:15You'd be exposed, to a certain degree, to be open for criticism, or even loved.
04:22Almost like being loved for somebody you're not, you know what I mean?
04:25I'd rather be hated for who I am, than being loved for who I'm not.
04:30That would be the quote, I think, for what that song means to me.
04:37Second verse lyrics, when I come in, the lyrics weren't something that I would necessarily
04:58write, which was exciting, to be able to bring to life lyrics that I don't know how to write.
05:05He's the genius in this.
05:07I was just like, oh man, don't fuck it up.
05:09On the second verse lyrics, sometimes I'll write a line, even in a singing song, where
05:15I'm like, that's a bar.
05:16I like that one.
05:17There's a fire under the altar I keep on lying to.
05:21In my mind, the way that's read is, I'm praying at the altar, and I'm lying.
05:27I'm a liar to God, or whatever.
05:30That's such a nasty little idea.
05:33We rarely ever do anything that's religious related, but in the context of this song,
05:40it's not like religion, religion.
05:41It's more like a metaphorical thing, that everybody is a part of this machine that is
05:47toxic.
06:03The song is so much about these bad things happening, and scary things, and almost like
06:25an addiction to something that's toxic.
06:28Then why are you putting yourself through this?
06:30The answer is, well, I just wanted to be part of something.
06:32I just wanted to connect with something else, somebody bigger than me.
06:36That's almost the reveal of why we would do that.
07:03That switch up in the last chorus, it's nothing too crazy of a switch.
07:08You're just like, oh, two words.
07:10When I was learning the Linkin Park songs that we do live, you would think that you
07:15understand the lyrics, but when you're learning it, you're like, wait, it's like there's a
07:19the instead of an uh now, and it's like these little things.
07:23I was like, oh, God.
07:24Some of those are big changes.
07:26Some of those are really meaningful, like, oh, I changed it from one thing to the other,
07:31and the meaning of the chorus changed.
07:33Absolutely.
07:34Absolutely.
07:35That's what I found so appealing.
07:38Like on this one, I was like, did we drop the F-bomb on this one?
07:42Yeah, I think we do.
07:43I think that's the move.
07:44Don't have to ask me twice.
07:46Well, yeah.
07:47You'd be the first one to jump on board.
07:51Bridge is a lost art, especially with songs getting shorter.
07:54What happened to the good bridges?
07:56The rage against the machine.
07:57You know who has the best bridges?
07:58Who has the best bridges?
07:59Tom Petty.
08:00Tom Petty.
08:01I aspire to that.
08:03That is like a high bar.
08:05To have the song where you get to the second chorus and you're like, man, that's a good
08:09song and then you get that bridge and you go, oh my gosh, like extra credit.
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