No Roads Left

Background

"No Roads Left" is one of the seventeen songs recorded for Minutes To Midnight in 2006-2007 and is one of the five songs that did not make the album, along with "Across The Line", "What We Don't Know", "Blackbirds", and another unknown fifth song. The demo title for the song is "Patients".

Along with "No More Sorrow", "No Roads Left" is one of two songs that Linkin Park tried recording collectively as a band in one take for Minutes To Midnight. However, neither of these performances made the album and Linkin Park elected to use individual multitrack recordings instead.

The song was released on the iTunes edition of Minutes To Midnight the day of the album's release. Mike is featured on lead vocals on this song. Chester said he recorded vocals for the track, but Mike's ended up fitting better, similar to what happened on "In Between", which is on the album.

In the album listening event with Stryker, Phoenix said, "There are some other songs that are actually even finished, to some extent, that we voted on the album. Fun side note, Chester and Rick were the only two guys that had chosen as their choice all the songs that did make the album. I think we limited ourselves from the seventeen that we had to the twelve that we loved." Brad added, "There's actually a song called "No Roads Left", if you buy the album on iTunes, you can get it, you can get one of those b-sides."

On January 15, 2013, Linkin Park released a "Mastered for iTunes" version of Minutes To Midnight and the version of "No Roads Left" that was included had louder strings and an added sampled drum track over it.

Versions

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

Title	Album	Length	Recorded	Released	Notes
No Roads Left	Minutes To Midnight	3:49	2007	May 14, 2007	iTunes pre-order bonus track. Bonus track on the tour edition.
No Roads Left	Minutes To Midnight	3:48	2007	January 15, 2013	Louder strings. Drum sample from the outro comes in on the first pre-chorus and is looped until the live drums come in. First released in the Mastered For iTunes edition and included in all subsequent issues of the album containing the song.

Live

"No Roads Left" was rehearsed in May 2008 for the June 2008 European Tour in support of Minutes To Midnight. It appeared on rehearsal setlists in Set X to start the encore, along with What I've Done and Faint. However, Linkin Park decided just before the tour began to not play the song at all, and it never debuted live. Instead, the piano version of Pushing Me Away took its place in Set X. The song was heavily requested by fans at Meet & Greets on Projekt Revolution 2008, with Mike going as far as saying that they were still considering adding it to the tour.

In an LPU chat on November 18, 2009, Rob said, "Not sure if we will play No Roads Left live, we did try it out and didn’t love the way it came across live." In another LPU chat on June 17, 2011, Mike said, "We played it in practice once or twice and it doesn't really sound good."

On the A Thousand Suns World Tour, Mike sang verse one and the chorus of "No Roads Left" over Bleed It Out in Chiba, Japan on September 11, 2011 at the 5th LPU Summit. After doing it again on September 13, 2011 in Yokohama, Japan, there have been no more appearances of "No Roads Left" live in any form.

Personnel

• Chester Bennington
• Mike Shinoda
• Brad Delson
• Dave "Phoenix" Farrell
• Joseph Hahn
• Rob Bourdon

Orchestra

• Arrangements: David Campbell, Mike Shinoda, and Brad Delson
• Conducting: David Campbell
• Violin: Charlie Bisharat, Mario DeLeon, Armen Garabedian, Julian Hallmark, Gerry Hilera, Songa Lee-Kitto, Natalie Leggett, Josefina Vergara, and Sara Parkins
• Viola: Matt Funes and Andrew Picken
• Cello: Larry Corbett and Suzie Katayama
• Bass: Oscar Hidalgo

Production

• Produced by Rick Rubin and Mike Shinoda
• Engineers: Dana Neilsen, Andrew Schelps, and Ethan Mates
• Engineer Assisting: Phillip Broussard, Jr.
• Mixing: Neal Avron
• Mixing Assisting: Nicolas Fournier and George Gumbs
• Mastering: Dave Collins

Lyrics

Standing alone with no direction
How did I fall so far behind
Why am I searching for perfection
Knowing it's something I won't find

In my fear and flaws
I let myself down again
All because

I run / 'til the silence splits me open
I run / 'til It puts me underground
'Til I have no breath
And no roads left but one

When did I lose my sense of purpose
Can I regain what's lost inside
Why do I feel like I deserve this
Why does my pain look like my pride
Oh oh
 
In my fear and flaws
I let myself down again
All because
I let myself down
In my fear and flaws

I run / 'til the silence splits me open
I run / 'til it puts me underground
'Til I have no breath
And no roads left but one
No roads left but one

In my fear and flaws
I let myself down again
All because

I run / And the silence splits me open
I run / And it puts me underground
But there's no regret
And no roads left to run