The Messenger

Linkin Park bassist Dave "Phoenix" Farrell explained to Artist Direct this closing track, in which Chester Bennington's vocals are accompanied by an acoustic guitar: "It's a really stripped down acoustic track. Chester's vocal performance is one of my favorites that he's ever done. His performance is pretty powerful and moving. For the entire album, you get this barrage of sounds and information. It's almost analogous to the technology and the world we live in. You're getting pounded on with what you're hearing and you're not sure of what's going on. The end is just a breath of movement and a step away from that. It's really stripped back and more personal."

Bennington told Reuters that many of the songs on A Thousand Suns show a new maturity among the band members. "With this album, we've taken the microscope off ourselves and opened it up to the world," he said. "A lot of us are dads, we all have families and we're much more mature than we were when we were 19 years old, writing records." Bennington had four sons, and he explained that fatherhood really "chilled" him out. "When I was younger, I liked songs that got people wanting to punch others in the face," he said. "Now, I don't want to scream at people. I want to talk to people. I feel much more able to speak about how I view things in the world." He cited this song, which he wrote, as one example. The frontman called it, "Literally a letter from me to my children" about how much they are loved by their parents. He said he wants them to remember that fact if they ever feel alone in the world. "That's something I don't think I would have been very comfortable singing about 10 years ago."

Bennington told the story behind the song in an interview with Artist Direct: "That song actually came to me almost entirely all at once. The second I heard the chord progression, the melody came and then the words came. It literally dawned on me like a flood, which is very rare. Usually, songs come in pieces, but this song came right away! Thank God, there's technology in my phone that allows me to record ideas whenever they arrive. Initially, I started the song off with a line that's not in there anymore. I began with, 'You are a child with so many choices. The hardest always make us cry.' Right away, I knew I was going to write a letter to my kids, basically. It's telling them you're getting ready to go out into the world, you're going to get kicked around, it's going to be tough and you're going to find yourself in some painful situations, but here's what's important - you're always going to be loved by your family, and that will always get you through. That's going to be the one lifeline that you have which will pull you through all of this chaos around you. Eventually, what ended up coming out of that is the song you hear on the record. It's such a vulnerable, open and very honest song in that way. We really felt like we wanted to replicate that original recording of the guitar and vocal in the phone as much as possible. We recorded the vocal, and we didn't put any special sauce on it or anything. We didn't double the vocals, and we didn't try to go for the perfect performance. I just sang it with my heart. Brad [Delson] played guitar. Mike [Shinoda] sat in the other room, and we all played it together. It was presented in the simplest way, and that's what we've got."