More The Victim

"More The Victim" is a song from the Meteora recording sessions was officially released on the 20th Anniversary Edition of Meteora.

Background

"More The Victim" was one of the 15 songs that made it to the end of the sessions for Meteora in 2002. On the band's song board at NRG Studios, its demo title, "Cumulus", was seen as the very first song on the board that Linkin Park was working on.

In 2013, Linkin Park released "Cumulus", an instrumental demo, on the LP Underground XIII CD. In the booklet, Mike Shinoda wrote: "We tried many times to make this song work, but it always seemed too poppy for the album(s) we were currently working on."

The existence of "More The Victim", the vocal version of the song was revealed for the first time in the Meteora 20 tracklist. Mike Shinoda said that version is "basically the furthest we got with it, in terms of a demo." He added about the first three songs on the Lost Demos CD: "I really wanted to keep it true to the initial intention, because I didn't want to taint this time warp. What I love about the three new songs is that all of them represent a different facet of the band, as it was in 2003." The instrumental on "More The Victim" is an evolved form of "Cumulus", with a slightly different sample pattern, a different guitar part, live drums, strings, scratching, and more.

Brad Delson did a track-by-track commentary of the Lost Demos disc for the "Super Deluxe Box Set" book on which the song is listed as "Cumulus/More The Victim". He wrote:

"Mr. Hahn's scratching is instantly recognizable. Riveting how a pre-existing sample, rubbed shrewdly on a record, breathes a distinctly human element into the musical bed. Joe's flourishes can be ambient, roaring, or restrained. Often, when the vocals recede, Mr. Hahn's turntables emerge center stage.

Love Mike's verse. Love Chester's vocal in the Pre. Love the interplay between Rob's kit and Mr. Hahn's records.

The joke is you have your whole life to write your first album and, if you're lucky, three weeks to write the second. While we definitely had the luxury of more than three weeks, crafting the follow-up to our meteoric debut was a totally different experience. Keeping pace with it all was an adventure and then some. Listening back to the experimentation in these demos brings that experience back to the surface. Hybrid Theory was so packed with great songs, we were determined to follow with another timeless body of work. Incredible we're here celebrating Meteora 20 years later."

Words that Chester spray painted on the Meteora art wall of "somebody angry broken" are from the bridge of "More The Victim."

After premiering the song on the Howard Stern show, on February 14, 2023, Mike explained how he wrote the lyrics about something Chester told him: "I remember that, when we were writing that, that was one of ones that I came in with something for him, that I was like, 'Oh, this is about your thing. I know your story enough at this point.' No names or anything, he was telling about somebody who was always talking to them, always felt like a competition for who had the worst. You'd say like, 'Oh, this bad thing happened,' and they'd be like, almost like a little kid would do, where they go like, 'Oh, that's nothing, check this! Like, this happened to me!' There's always this competitiveness like, he was like, 'I can't stand this, this drives me crazy, I hate them,' like, 'I'm so angry.' In the studio, when we get on to those lyrics, and we get into the core of what the song is about, I was trying to get him in the booth as quick as possible, like, 'Okay, I got these lyrics, it's good, I'm positive this is the one,' 'Oh, are you sure?' 'I'm positive! Let's go, let's record it!' Because I wanted to have that intensity that he was feeling when writing the lyrics, I wanted to him to have that intensity on the mic."

Phoenix said that Linkin Park intended to release the extra songs from Meteora at some point. He said, "I vaguely remember after Hybrid Theory, we had a couple of different things that popped up that needed an extra track or something that was previously unreleased. There was a specialty album maybe for Japan and with that also we did "My December" for a KROQ release, and all this stuff. I remember thinking a little at Meteora, even if this song or a couple of songs, even if we don't put them on the album, there's always going to be spots where it's going to be awesome to use them. And then I think that we just never used it, we just pressed forward and it never circled back to that."

Release

"More The Victim" was debuted for the first time on Howard Stern with Mike Shinoda as a guest on February 14, 2023, with "Fighting Myself."

Versions

Note: Only the date of the very first release of each version is listed.

Title	Album	Length	Recorded	Released	Notes
More The Victim	Meteora (20th Anniversary Edition) Lost Demos	2:41	2002	April 7, 2023
Cumulus (2002 Demo)	LP Underground XIII	3:04	2002	November 18, 2013	Instrumental demo.

Personnel

Linkin Park

• Chester Bennington: Vocals
• Rob Bourdon: Drums
• Brad Delson: Guitars
• Joseph Hahn: Records, Sampling
• Phoenix: Bass
• Mike Shinoda: Emcee, Vocals, Sampling

Production

• Written by Linkin Park
• Produced by Don Gilmore and Linkin Park

Lyrics

I've— I've— I've— I've—

I've listened endlessly to your injury
You wanna talk about your sores?
You wanna talk about suffering?
Maybe sympathy is all you're really hungry for
'Cause you just criticize and you fingerpoint
And you say that they beat you down
You may be victimized, but you're still the one
Who won't just get up off the ground

I used to be as innocent as you
My excuses ran out, ran out of things to complain about
Fear will always find a way to show right through

You want to be more hurt than me
You want to say you're more the victim
You wanna complain and pass the blame
You want to say you're more the victim

You— You wanna— You— You— You wanna— You—
You— You wanna— You— You—

You wanna talk constantly about misery
And how you've been done so wrong
You wanna bend your honеsty and exaggerate
With thе stress that you've undergone
There's never a compromise, no one can say
That they've ever been hurt before
They may be victimized, but you'll always say
That you're a victim so much more

I used to be as innocent as you
My excuses ran out, ran out of things to complain about
Fear will always find a way to show right through

You want to be more hurt than me
You want to say you're more the victim
You wanna complain and pass the blame
You want to say you're more the victim

You wanna be just another someone
Somebody angry, somebody broken
You wanna be that, then be it all alone

You want to be more hurt than me
You want to say you're more the victim
You wanna complain and pass the blame
You want to say you're more the victim

You want to be more hurt than me
You want to say you're more the victim
You wanna complain and pass the blame
Pass the blame, pass the blame

Gallery

• 

  Lost Demos

• 

  LP Underground XIII

External Links

• More The Victim (Official Audio): YouTube