New Divide

"New Divide" is a single by Linkin Park from the Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen soundtrack. The song was premiered on May 18, 2009 at linkinpark.com/newdivide.

Background

"New Divide" was recorded specifically for inclusion in Michael Bay's action movie, Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen. Brad Delson described it as "a heavy song, a high-energy song, and you don't know what's a keyboard and what's a guitar. That appearance versus reality is interesting to me sonically, where things you think are one thing are actually handcrafted, and it's something completely different. It's that 'I don't know what I'm listening to."

Mike Shinoda was rather mysterious when first discussing the song on his blog. On March 28, 2009, he posted on his blog, "We've been working on a new song in the past couple of weeks that has been a lot of fun. The backdrop for the song is built on layered, heavy synths and a sharp performance by Mr. Bourdon. We're keeping the drums a little looser on this track, not doing too much studio trickery... it creates a nice interplay between the organic feel of the rhythm track and the more robotic feel of the keyboards. Bass and guitar are next, meanwhile Chester and I are emailing lyric notes back and forth..." A month later, he officially announced the song would be included in the upcoming movie, Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen. Not only that, he also revealed that the band was taking part in the actual score of the film, and that certain themes in "New Divide" would be included in the score. The score was handled by Steve Jablonsky, a member of famous film composer Hans Zimmer's team Media Ventures. He said, "In a nutshell, Michael Bay sent the new Linkin Park song over to my studio. Hans and I had a listen, and we both thought it was really cool, and it might be interesting to try incorporating some of those elements into the score. So we got the guys from the band down to the studio and talked about how to do that. They're all really cool guys and really excited about adding some of their sounds to the score." The song was mastered in early May by Brian "Big Bass" Gardner at Bernie Grundman Mastering. It turned out that parts of the piece "Nest" would include samples of "New Divide". Finally, Mike revealed the name of the song on May 7, 2009 as "New Divide."

Mike stated that, because the band don't usually write a song to fit with a story, it was a challenge to keep the song true to the spirit of the movie, but true to the band's intentions as well. They were under a lot of pressure. "“New Divide” was tough because, being a song for a big summer movie, it had a tight deadline. To be honest, the movie people had other bands they were considering in the beginning; all were successful bands worthy of having a song teamed with this movie. We were constantly under the time pressure to show Michael Bay and his team that our song would be the best one. Once we delivered it and they came back with a positive response, it felt we had won a race." Director/executive producer Michael Bay said, "I love LINKIN PARK. This is the second film we've worked on together and the fact that they're huge 'Transformers' fans makes it all the better. They really delivered with 'New Divide' — it's a great song that perfectly matches the film's intensity."

For the song, according to the LPTV episode about making "New Divide", Mike wrote four separate demos when trying to find a track that worked. They were titled "Bumblebee", "Starscream", "Optimus", and "Megatron", with "Megatron" becoming "New Divide." When asked on Twitch in October 2020 what happened to the other demos, he said, "As usual, they were just sketches of music so I'm sure they exist somewhere on a hard drive. They weren't better than "New Divide." I think at least two of them sucked. There were always more demos for everything. It's easy to imagine, "Oh, what if one of the other ones was amazing?" Like, probably not, probably not amazing."

Tracklist

CD Single

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
1	New Divide	Linkin Park	4:29
2	New Divide (Instrumental)	Linkin Park	4:29
3	New Divide (A Capella)	Linkin Park	3:55

iTunes EP Single

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
1	New Divide	Linkin Park	4:29
2	New Divide (Instrumental)	Linkin Park	4:29
3	New Divide (A Capella)	Linkin Park	3:55

Live Single

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
1	New Divide (Live)	Linkin Park	4:54

Music Video

Linkin Park worked with Ghost Town Media's VFX team which was composed of Brandon Parvini, Jeff Lichtfuss and David Torno with freelancers Gabriel Perez and Tae Lee. David Torno talked about the creation of the video in a Trapcode article, "With New Divide, we used Particular and Form. The opening shots of this video with the figures flying to and from camera while breaking apart were done with Form and the Auio Reactive option. A camera flythough was hand animated to pass through all of the clips of Chester and then reprocessed a few times to blur and warp it at times. There are a few other random shots that form was used to warp a band member. All of the atmospheric sparks throughout the video that are flying by camera are Particular."

Video Credits

Artist Name: Linkin Park
Song Name: New Divide
Director: Joe Hahn
Director of Photography: Jonathan Sela
Editor: Igor Kovalik
Production Company: cYclops
Producers: Bill Boyd
Video Commissioner: Devin Sarno
Record Label: Reprise Records

Versions

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

Studio

Title	Album	Length	Recorded	Released	Notes
New Divide	New Divide Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen - The Album 8-Bit Rebellion! Iridescent	4:29	March-May 2009	May 18, 2009
Nest	Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen - The Score	2:08	2009	June 12, 2009	Contains instrumental excerpt from "New Divide". "New Divide" was used as one of the themes on the score of the film, and Linkin Park wrote with Hans Zimmer various interpolations on that theme.
New Divide		5:30	2011	2011	Contains the intro known as "Moscow intro". The studio version is part of the concert visuals of the June 23, 2011 show in Moscow which were released by Ghost Town Media.
New Divide (8 Bit Rebellion Version)	8-Bit Rebellion! Ringtones	0:31	2010	April 17, 2010	8-bit version. Intro only.
New Divide (8 Bit Rebellion Version)	8-Bit Rebellion! Ringtones	0:32	2010	April 17, 2010	8-bit version. Chorus only.
New Divide (8-Bit)	8-Bit Rebellion!	2:49	2010	April 26, 2010	Full 8-bit version.
New Divide (Instrumental)	New Divide	4:29	March-May 2009	May 18, 2009	Official instrumental version.
New Divide (Acapella)	New Divide	3:55	March-May 2009	May 18, 2009	Official acapella version.

Live

Title	Album	Length	Recorded	Released	Notes
New Divide (Live)	The Catalyst A Thousand Suns (JP) New Divide (Live)	4:35	July 21, 2009	August 2, 2010
New Divide (Live In Madrid)	A Thousand Suns: Puerta De Alcalá	4:35	November 07, 2010	January 25, 2011
New Divide	Live In Madrid	4:30	November 07, 2010	April 1, 2011	A Thousand Suns+ DVD. Includes bonus MP3 of the show.
New Divide	Live In Red Square	4:22	June 23, 2011	July 21, 2011	Released as a prize for the "Iridescent" "Super-Fun Trading Fun-Cards" game. After all six cards were collected, the person could enter the codes of each card at linkinpark.com to get a free download of the full show.
New Divide (Live)	Burn It Down Living Things (AU Tour Edition)	4:29	July 04, 2011	May 18, 2012	From iTunes Live: London Festival 2011.
New Divide	Live At Admiralspalast Berlin, Germany		June 05, 2012	March 29, 2013	DVD only. Living Things+ bonus DVD.
New Divide	Live In Monterrey		September 12, 2012	June 13, 2014	DVD only. The Hunting Party bonus DVD. Live show filmed at Arena Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico on September 12, 2012.
New Divide	One More Light Live	4:30	June 20, 2017	December 15, 2017

Live

"New Divide" has been a staple in Linkin Park setlists since its debut at the Transformers 2 Premiere in 2009. On the setlists on Linkin Park's 2009 International Tour, the song opened the encore with an extended synth intro.

The song returned during the A Thousand Suns touring cycle, where it opened the first full show of the tour - the album release party in New York, New York after the sequence of "The Requiem" and "The Radiance". When the band began the tour, "New Divide" moved down a few slots in the setlist and its synth intro returned. It remained in this spot until Set B-1 debuted at the last show of the 2010 European Tour, where it moved into the third spot of the encore after "When They Come For Me". This stayed consistent for the following 2010 tours, though "Crawling" was moved into the encore, so "New Divide" was pushed back one slot in Set B on the A Thousand Suns Australian Tour. On the 2011 North American Tour, "New Divide" returned to the being the first full song of the set in Set B-11, which was only played once on the tour. Set B-13 replaced it, and "New Divide" was performed as the second-to-last song in the encore. This was true for Set C-5, as well, but that set was replaced by Set C-13 where "New Divide" was featured near the start of the set. The song stayed in these general positions on the 2011 European Tour and 2011 Asian Tour, as well: in the middle of the encore in Set A and Set C, near the beginning of the set in Set D and Set E, and near the end of the set in Set B. The band opened their shows at the Transformers 3 Premiere and the last show of the world tour in Singapore, Singapore at the Formula 1 Grand Prix with "New Divide" without the normal interludes; instead, a new extended intro titled the "Moscow Intro" was used before the song to open the set.

"New Divide" found itself in the middle of the sets for most of the Living Things era setlists. During the 2012 European Tour, it was featured mid-set between "Somewhere I Belong" and "Lies Greed Misery" in the headline set and near the end of the main set in the festival set. Three new sets debuted on the Honda Civic Tour, "New Divide" being featured mid-set in both Set A and Set C, while being third in the setlist in Set B. The song didn't really move for the rest of the tour, since these setlists were used for the rest of the world tour. At the show in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the song was aborted before the breakdown to address the rowdy crowd.

An abridged version of "New Divide" was performed for much of The Hunting Party touring cycle. For the setlist the band performed on the 2014 Summer European Tour, the song was featured near the end of the setlist, transitioning directly out of the shortened version of "Crawling". "New Divide" was performed without its first chorus and second verse. The song remained the same on the Carnivores Tour, featuring second in the encore in Set A with a transition outro into "Crawling" and third in the encore of Set B before "Until It's Gone". The song was not performed at the first show of the tour in West Palm Beach, Florida due to the band coming onstage extremely late and having to delay the set. On the short-lived 2015 North American Tour, "New Divide" was featured second in the encore after "A Place For My Head" in Set A with its transition outro into "Crawling" and third in Set B's encore, after "Lost In The Echo". The studio version of "New Divide" returned during the run of North American Summer Shows, where it was performed mid-set after Joe's Solo Medley. It remained in this position for the rest of the tour.

"New Divide" was performed mid-set on the One More Light cycle, not really seeing much movement or activity during the tour. Linkin Park performed the shortened version of the song at the Hollywood Bowl tribute show for Chester, as they performed the song instrumentally with a pre-recorded performance of Chester (from the band's 2014 Hollywood Bowl performance).

Variations

Last Updated: August 25, 2018

Type	Description	First Played	Last Played
Intro	Synth Intro	June 17, 2009	September 11, 2011
Intro	Synth Intro w/ Keyboard	August 2, 2009	August 22, 2009
Intro	Short Synth Intro	October 27, 2010	December 8, 2012
Intro	Moscow Intro	June 23, 2011	September 25, 2011
Outro	Transition Outro into "Crawling"	August 6, 2014	January 18, 2015
Alternative	Shortened (No First Chorus or Second Verse)	May 24, 2014	October 27, 2017

Live Guests

Last Updated: September 10, 2016

• Benjamin Chandler (replacing Brad Delson)
• David Schmitt (Breathe Carolina)
• Warren Willis (replacing Joe Hahn)

Promotion

In June 2010, the Linkin Park Underground teamed up with Linkin Park's biggest fansites at the time (LPAssociation.com, LPLive.net, and LPTimes.com) to bring fans giveaways of a free regular LPU9 membership and a grand prize exclusive to each site. To enter, fans simply had to answer a question posted on each site by replying to the news post. The contest was open to international fans and the winners were randomly selected from those who entered between the period of June 1st to June 6th. LPAssociation's grand prize was a set piece from the "New Divide" music video.

Awards and Nominations

Year	Award	Category	Status
2009	Scream Awards	Scream Song Of The Year	Won

Lyrics

Album Version

I remembered black skies, the lightning all around me
I remembered each flash as time began to blur
Like a startling sign that fate had finally found me
And your voice was all I heard that I get what I deserve
 
So give me reason to prove me wrong, to wash this memory clean
Let the floods cross the distance in your eyes
Give me reason to fill this hole, connect the space between
Let it be enough to reach the truth that lies across this new divide
 
There was nothing in sight but memories left abandoned
There was nowhere to hide, the ashes fell like snow
And the ground caved in between where we were standing
And your voice was all I heard that I get what I deserve
 
So give me reason to prove me wrong, to wash this memory clean
Let the floods cross the distance in your eyes across this new divide
 
In every loss, in every lie, in every truth that you'd deny
And each regret and each goodbye was a mistake too great to hide
And your voice was all I heard that I get what I deserve
 
So give me reason to prove me wrong, to wash this memory clean
Let the floods cross the distance in your eyes
Give me reason to fill this hole, connect the space between
Let it be enough to reach the truth that lies across this new divide
Across this new divide, across this new divide

Gallery

• 

  Single

• 

  Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen - The Album

• 

  Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen - The Score

• 

  Original background image used on the cover

In Other Media

• "New Divide" is featured in the 2009 film Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen and was included in its soundtrack album.
• "New Divide" is featured in the 2010 film The Last Shot.
• "New Divide" (in both studio and 8-bit versions) is featured in Linkin Park's 2010 videogame 8-Bit Rebellion!.
• "New Divide" is featured in the trailer for the 2010 videogame Medal Of Honor.
• "New Divide" was released in 2012 as part of a DLC for the 2010 videogame Rock Band 3.
• "New Divide" was used in a 2015 promo video for the Mercedes-AMG C 63.

Cover Versions

American metal act Danger Silent recorded a rendition of "New Divide" in collaboration with hip-hop/pop group SolSmash in 2012. A music video recorded at AVM Recordings in Phoenix, Arizona is available on SolSmash's YouTube channel.

External Links

• New Divide (Music Video): WMG | MTV | Vimeo | VK
• New Divide (Music Video) [Band version]: LPTV
• New Divide (Moscow 2011) - LPTV | Paramount Pictures France
• New Divide (Rio+Social 2012) - The Live Room