Waiting For The End

"Waiting For The End"
Single by Linkin Park
from the album A Thousand Suns
Working title:	Meadowlands
Recorded:	2008-2010
Released:	October 1, 2010
Format:	CD, Digital
Length:	03:51
Stems:	Guitar Hero: Warriors Of Rock (A Thousand Suns) Rock Band 3 (DLC) Neko Keyboard Sounds and Samples Open Labs SoundSlate Pro Leaked Multitracks
Time signature:	4/4
Tempo:	85
Key:	E Major
Live debut:	September 07, 2010
Last performed:	October 27, 2017
Writer:	Linkin Park
Producer:	Mike Shinoda, Rick Rubin
Label:	Warner Bros.
Linkin Park single chronology The Catalyst (2010) Waiting For The End (2010) Burning In The Skies (2011)
A Thousand Suns tracklist
The Requiem The Radiance Burning In The Skies Empty Spaces When They Come For Me Robot Boy Jornada Del Muerto Waiting For The End Blackout Wretches And Kings Wisdom, Justice, And Love Iridescent Fallout The Catalyst The Messenger

"Waiting For The End" is the eight track on A Thousand Suns and the second single from the album. The song was streamed on Linkin Park's official MySpace page on September 7, 2010 to promote the album prior to the US release. It features a heavy use of electronic elements, primarily revolving around the synths that make up most of the instrumental. The song builds slowly with a reggae-influenced drum beat, ultimately climaxing with a guitar solo featuring heavy use of an octaver and a pitch splitter. The song charted relatively high on the charts, even hitting the number one spot on the US Billboard Alternative Chart, and number two on the US Billboard Rock Chart.

Background

Chester said that "Waiting For The End" and "Iridescent" were tied as his favorite song on the album, stating that he felt the two were very beautiful, and that he particularly loved the summertime vibe in "Waiting For The End" and the lyrical content. On May 7, 2020, Mike filled out a Linkin Park song bracket from Linkin Park Peru on his Twitch stream. He picked "Waiting For The End" as the best song in Linkin Park's catalogue.

Chester commented on the slow-burn success of the song, saying, "It took two years for us to make that record, and it took that whole process for us to really digest the new music, so we knew that it was going to take people time to really let it settle. And 'Waiting for the End' is a perfect example of that ... it's taken it a while for it to elevate up the charts, and it went to #1 at the Alternative charts, and then kinda went back, and then went back to #1. ... People are getting it now. And I think, especially for our fans in the States, it was important for it to marinate for a little while before we came back and started playing these shows."

Discussing the song, Mike said that "Waiting For The End" was a very interesting song for people to hear on the record, as "people who are fans of our band haven’t heard a song that mixes these kinds of emotions and these kinds of lyrics. One minute it’s blazing loud, and the next minute it’s super dark and quiet and even a weird mix of hopeful and fearful. And to me, it’s a very three-dimensional song, and I think it became that kind of a song because of the insane writing experience on it."

He talked about picking "The Catalyst" for the lead single on the album over "Waiting For The End", saying, "When we played the label 'The Catalyst' and said we wanted this to be the first single, they were like "UHHHHH." But we knew we had like 'Waiting For The End' up our sleeves, so we were like, "look, we are going to get to this one, we just want to come out with something really startling first and then we go with "Waiting For The End" which is probably a bigger single." And they were like "ok", but there were people at the label who were like "I think this is a bad idea", but at that time I feel you could do it that way then. I don't think you could do that today, I don't think it would work. When we released that, it worked."

The track originally started as drums and rap and was pretty boring to him, but he thought it had potential. As he and Chester thought of the possible vocal lines for the song, the line "Waiting for the end to come" stood out to him and that line ended up helping them finish the rest of the track.

At the Vienna show on the Post Traumatic Tour, Mike said, "We were listening to the album version of this next song before the show and as we were listening to it we were kind of singing along a little bit and I was just really just enjoying the sound of Chester's voice on it. It's just so good. And I remember - this is actually the song, the way we do it here is a mashup so it's two different songs - but the first thing you'll hear is the Linkin Park song, and I remember what happened was when we were working on the song that this part that we play here was the track. That was the beat that I had made on my laptop and I had a cool rap verse over it that I really liked it, but it wasn't a song, it wasn't really the thing. And sometimes there were these moments. A lot of times he would bring me things and he would be like, you know, 'What do you think of this? What do you think of this?' And he was really deferring to me. He was waiting for me to say 'Oh yeah, that's the one, that's really good' And because a lot of times it was like I bring him stuff, I'd be like 'That's great,' you know. 'Sing it.' And once in a while he would bring something in that was really cool. I was playing the beat and he was like 'Oh man, I had this thing that I recorded the other day.' He pulls out his phone and he's flipping through little things that he recorded on his phone. And the moment he pressed play I was like 'Oh wow! That's the song!' Like 'That's what this song is missing!' And that's the beauty of when you're working with other friends, when you're working with other writers, other people who make music who come with something special and something magical. It wasn't even in the way necessarily that he sang it. Was just the idea of it. It was just so pure and so great."

At the crescendo of the chorus on "Waiting For The End", vocals are mixed with pedals, guitars, and scratching to create a unique robotic effect. While Delson played the riff, Shinoda manipulated an Electro-Harmonix HOG (harmonic octave generator), which was connected to an expression pedal to control the octave sweep and a resonant filter to add some edge. Layered on top of the guitars is a track of Hahn scratching Bennington's chorus. The HOG is used again on the song's spacey, pad-like guitar, but followed by an EHX Holy Grail reverb pedal and a Fulltone Tube Tape Echo.

In 2015, after Mike revived Fort Minor with "Welcome", he stated that "Waiting For The End" is one of the songs in Linkin Park's discography since the coming of the project that had elements of Fort Minor in them.

On September 14, 2020 while listening to the album on his stream, Mike said: ""Waiting For The End" had its issues too... I knew that it was good, and I was intimidated by diving into it and I didn't want to screw it up. I remember having the beat and most of the sounds and rapping over that, which became the bridge. I kept waiting for certain things, something to pop up that I could stick in the song and jump off of that point. And then Chester brought in the 'Waiting for the end' vocal line and then I was like, 'Yo, now that is the song.' But it wasn't pulling our hair out trying to get it right, that was really being patient for the right pieces to come together."

Remix

Multiple remixes of the song were done. The Glitch Mob's remix of the song appeared on the song's single and was later included in the 10th anniversary edition of their album Drink The Sea. An EP of different versions of the "Waiting For The End" remix by DJ Lynnwood & Dave Dresden was released online, which included the extended, edited, and instrumental versions of the remix. Dresden said, "A proper follow-up to our collaboration on the Silversun Pickups "Lazy Eye" remix. This remix was commissioned by the label but the whole project was shelved. Enjoy this exclusive track for your DJ set." KickDrums also did a remix of the song, which was uploaded to their official Soundcloud page. Mike Shinoda was a fan of their track "Just a Game". The single was also remixed by the San Diego-based remixing duo Dirty Pop. The track can be found in the 2011 compilation Fresh Club Music Vol.11. Producer DrewG said, "I've always been a huge Linkin Park fan since the day Hybrid Theory went on the shelves of the local Sam Goody that I worked for. Life changing record... I can't tell you how many hard times that album got me through."

Tracklist

CD Single

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
1	Waiting For The End	Linkin Park	3:51
2	Waiting For The End (Glitch Mob Remix)	Linkin Park	4:54

Digital Single

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
1	Waiting For The End	Linkin Park	3:51
2	The Catalyst ("Guitarmagedon" DIOYY? Remix)	Linkin Park	3:06

2020 Digital Single

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
1	Waiting For The End	Linkin Park	3:51
2	The Catalyst ("Guitarmagedon" DIOYY? Remix)	Linkin Park	3:06
3	Waiting For The End (The Glitch Mob Remix)	Linkin Park	4:53

Music Video

Lyric Video

Like other lyric videos from A Thousand Suns, the lyric video for "Waiting For The End" was created by a fan. The author of the video was #BLAH82, the same fan who created the lyric video for "The Catalyst". It was uploaded to Linkin Park's official YouTube channel on September 07, 2010.

Music Video

The official music video for "Waiting For The End" was directed by Joe Hahn and edited by his longtime collaborator Igor Kovalik. The video was announced on October 4, 2010 with a 30-second snippet being posted by MTV ahead of the release. It premiered on Friday, October 8th via MTV Buzzworthy before being added to Linkin Park's official YouTube channel.

Joe described the video on his blog, "The clip is an experiment in making the most digital version of ourselves in the spirit of the visual pallette of A Thousand Suns. If you have been following our visuals throughout this album, this is the next step in our journey. I wanted to push ourselves so far down the digital path that it eventually felt spiritual. As we live our lives in the digital noise of today, we can find our center of humanity in the midst of the chaos. This is my illustration of that. I hope you enjoy this clip as we do."

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 gave an in-depth look into the creation of the video in a Trapcode article:

"For Waiting For The End (WFTE), Brandon had tweaked and played with Form for a few days to develope a look which was based on some graphics we had made for the concert tour a few weeks prior. Basically running the footage through Form three different times to create a layered effect. The first layer being the main particles which held most of the fidelity of the image that shows and then two more passes to create floating yet somehow still attached brighter particle accents. All of these were based off of luma values from the source footage and audio reaction to different audio stems of the song. Various color grading was placed on top of that and then a focal depth plane was added and radomized to throw the focus in and out of the Form particle field just to give it more depth.

Once this entire pass was done, all of the artists sat down to watch it and to start picking it apart for weaker shots that either didn't work as is and needed more impact and also had to find spots for the director's creative notes that involved the 3D enhancements and geometric shapes/lines. A lot of 3D object tracking was done with Syntheyes to allow us to attach various 3D elements directly onto the band members, stuff like crazy polygon shapes flying of Mike Shinodas back, skull sections that are diconnected yet move with Chesters head, and various other geometric shapes that extrude or move with the shot.

After a few weeks of design, tracking and processing, the entire video was then put back through Particular using the Layer Emitter option to add the subtle particle cloud that emits from every shot. Optical Flares was then placed on top of that to make everything pop. Some more controled shots like Chester's arms peeling away and the last shot of Chester's face decintergrating into particles was a combination of Form and Particular to accomplish the fluid movement. Both of those shots were double processed through Form, by double processed, I mean that the source footage was put through our initial Form preset we built earlier and then I had pre-rendered it then put it back through some slightly different settings of the same Form pass. This gave the image an extra gritty feel. A Particular layer was added and hand keyframed to follow the path that I wanted the particles to peel away to and then using the fade in and out curve for the scale, I blended both plugins together.

The Linkin Park Thousand Suns 2010 Concert Tour was actually where the WFTE base foundation was created. Our team was put in charge of creating close to three hours of animated content that is being used as stage projection for the band while on tour. Some of the work has already been seen in New York, Buenos Aires and Santiago Chile."

Mike Shinoda said "Waiting For The End" is one of his favorite videos Linkin Park have done. The video was converted into full 3D by Passmorelab and received critical acclaim, earning Linkin Park and PassmoreLab numerous awards and praise at 3D film festivals worldwide.

Video Credits

Artist Name: Linkin Park
Song Name: Waiting For The End
Director: Joe Hahn
Producers: Bill Boyd
Video Commissioner: Devin Sarno
Record Label: Warner Bros. Records

Fan Footage Video

In celebration of the North American Tour 2011, Linkin Park asked fans to film with camera or phone their performances of "Waiting For The End" at their January 26th show in Chicago and their January 28th show in St. Paul. Starting at 12:00 noon on January 27, fans could upload their videos to the band's official website. The deadline being January 29. Joe Hahn said, "We don't only want to see the band on stage; we want to see you in the crowd, your friends, the people around you singing, even footage from the parking lot or outside and around the venue...whatever you think looks cool."

The live video was put together using the fan footage as well as footage shot by the band. The names of the fans or their Twitter handles are shown throughout the video. The audio was taken from the DSPs. It was released on February 15 through Linkin Park's official YouTube channel.

The Glitch Mob Remix

A visualizer was created by Lake Hills for The Glitch Mob remix of "Waiting For The End" and released to digital platforms on December 4, 2020 in celebration of the 10 Year Anniversary Edition of The Glitch Mob album Drink The Sea on which the remix is included as a bonus track.

Versions

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

Studio

Title	Album	Length	Recorded	Released	Notes
Waiting For The End	A Thousand Suns Waiting For The End Schutzengel	3:51	November 2008-August 2010	September 7, 2010	Includes transition to "Blackout".
Waiting For The End	A Thousand Suns	3:51	November 2008-August 2010	May 29, 2012	Different vocal effects. Includes transition to "Blackout". First released in the HDTracks edition and included in all subsequent issues of the album.
Waiting For The End	Papercuts - Singles Collection 2000-2023	3:51	November 2008-August 2010	April 12, 2024	Different vocal effects. Lacks the transition to "Blackout".
Waiting For The End	Papercuts - Singles Collection 2000-2023 (Digital Re-Issue)	3:51	November 2008-August 2010	May 06, 2024	2010 mix. Lacks the transition to "Blackout".
Waiting For The End (Non Rap Version)	Waiting For The End (Non Rap Version)	3:17	2010	2010	Radio edit. Shorter intro. Mike's first verse is missing.
Waiting For The End (Extended Version)	DTVideos Extended Vol.26	4:58	2010	2011	Extended intro. Additional beats throughout the song. Extended outro. Music video found on a "DTVideos" DVD.
Waiting For The End	A Thousand Suns Instrumentals	3:56	2008-2010		The CD dates from September 15, 2010. Official instrumental version.

Remix

Title	Album	Length	Recorded	Released	Notes
Waiting For The End (The Glitch Mob Remix)	Waiting For The End Drink The Sea (10 Year Anniversary Deluxe Edition)	4:53	2010	October 1, 2010	Remix by The Glitch Mob.
Waiting For The End (DJ Lynnwood & Dave Dresden Remix) (Extended)	Waiting For The End (DJ Lynnwood & Dave Dresden Remixes)	6:30	2010	June 8, 2011	Remix by DJ Lynnwood and Dave Dresden. Uploaded to DJ Lynnwood's official SoundCloud page on June 8, 2011.
Waiting For The End (DJ Lynnwood & Dave Dresden Remix) (Dubstrumental)	Waiting For The End (DJ Lynnwood & Dave Dresden Remixes)	6:30	2010	June 8, 2011	Remix by DJ Lynnwood and Dave Dresden. Uploaded to DJ Lynnwood's official SoundCloud page on June 8, 2011.
Waiting For The End (DJ Lynnwood & Dave Dresden Remix) (Edit)	Waiting For The End (DJ Lynnwood & Dave Dresden Remixes)	3:56	2010	June 8, 2011	Remix by DJ Lynnwood and Dave Dresden. Uploaded to DJ Lynnwood's official SoundCloud page on June 8, 2011.
Waiting For The End (DJ Lynnwood & Dave Dresden Remix) (DJ Friendly Edit)	Waiting For The End (DJ Lynnwood & Dave Dresden Remixes)	5:13	2010	June 8, 2011	Remix by DJ Lynnwood and Dave Dresden. Uploaded to DJ Lynnwood's official SoundCloud page on June 8, 2011.
Waiting For The End (KickDrums Remix)		3:10	2010	April 30, 2012	Remix by Alex Fitts of The KickDrums. Uploaded to Alex KickDrums' official SoundCloud page on April 30, 2012.

Live

Title	Album	Length	Recorded	Released	Notes
Waiting For The End (Live In Madrid)	A Thousand Suns: Puerta De Alcalá	4:04	November 07, 2010	January 25, 2011
Waiting For The End	Live In Madrid	3:52	November 07, 2010	April 1, 2011	A Thousand Suns+ DVD. Includes bonus MP3 of the show.
Waiting For The End (Live)	iTunes Festival: London 2011	4:10	July 04, 2011	July 8, 2011
Waiting For The End	Live In Red Square	4:05	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.
Waiting For The End (Live From Berlin, 2010)	A Thousand Suns - Live Around The World	3:56	October 20, 2010	June 12, 2012
Waiting For The End	Live At Admiralspalast Berlin, Germany		June 05, 2012	March 29, 2013	With "Until It Breaks". DVD only. Living Things+ bonus DVD.

Live

"Waiting For The End" was debuted at the KROQ Kevin and Bean Breakfast Show, before the A Thousand Suns tour officially started. Once the tour officially started in New York City, "Waiting For The End" was always played after "Jornada Del Muerto" at ever full show for the rest of the cycle, with the only exception being the band's show in Madrid, 2010, where it was played after "When They Come For Me". The song was frequently played for radio and TV performances, including Saturday Night Live, and even the A Thousand Horizons event, though the song wasn't technically performed by the band at this show. Instead, both the studio version and the Glitch Mob Remix were played over the speakers. "Waiting For The End" was the only A Thousand Suns song to be played at every show of the cycle.

"Waiting For The End" was one of the few songs to survive past the A Thousand Suns cycle. Starting with the Living Things cycle, "Waiting For The End" was given a new intro with Mike rapping the third verse of "Until It Breaks" over a modified version of the verse beat, and a new outro dubbed the "Wall of Noise Outro", which featured Chester singing the final refrain over a steadily building instrumental. This version of "Waiting For The End" was played at every show throughout 2012 and 2013 except for the KROQ Dressing Room rehearsal, where the outro wasn't played, and the Rio+ Social, where the studio version was played for the only time during the Living Things cycle. Both sets of the 2012 European tour had "Waiting For The End" after "Points Of Authority". The song opened the Sirius XM's Town Hall performance. Once the band kicked off the Honda Civic Tour, three new sets debuted, two of which stuck around until the end of 2013. Both Sets A and B initially had "Waiting For The End" after "Points Of Authority", and later "Lies Greed Misery". Set C had "Waiting For The End" after "When They Come For Me". A shortened version of "Waiting For The End" was performed for the first, and only, time at the iHeart Radio show, dropping the first chorus and second verse. The one-off setlist for KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas 2012 had "Waiting For The End" after "Lies Greed Misery". The sets for 2013 featured mostly the same setlists as 2012, and "Waiting For The End" didn't move positions.

2014 featured "Waiting For The End" in the same form as the Living Things tour. The three shows in January all featured "Waiting For The End", the first and last having the song after "New Divide", and the headlining set having it after "When They Come For Me". The new, experimental start to The Hunting Party touring cycle had "Waiting For The End" in a new position, after "Burn It Down". It was played in this position every time the song was played until Set B debuted during the Carnivores Tour, where the song was after "Numb". The mostly cancelled 2015 North American Tour featured almost identical sets to the ones at the end of 2014, and the position of the song didn't change. However, starting with the summer shows in 2015, "Waiting For The End" was played in new positions. The festival sets had the song after "Faint", and the headlining setlist featured the song in the encore for the first time, after "Crawling". Starting with the 2015 Chinese tour, "Waiting For The End" opened the encore for the first time, since "Crawling" was dropped, which is the first time the song opened the encore. It opened the encore for every show of both the 2015 Chinese tour and the 2015 European tour except for the final show in Roma, Italy, where the song was played after "A Place For My Head" due to it being played by fan request. The song was originally on the setlist for the band's show at BlizzCon, but was dropped last minutes due to time constraints, making the band's show at Monster Mash the last time the song was performed on the touring cycle.

The One More Light tour cycle was the first cycle where "Waiting For The End" was consistently dropped from a setlist, with the band not performing it during festival sets. However, the track was present during headlining shows, where a new intro featuring a mashup with "Remember The Name" was performed. During the One More Light European Tour, "Waiting For The End" ended up being performed at some festivals. At Linkin Park's Hollywood Bowl tribute show, Mike performed a brand new piano intro before kicking into the Apaches Intro with "Until It Breaks" for the first time since 2015. Sydney Sierota from Echosmith and Steven McKellar from Civil Twilight (who joined the band earlier in the set during "Nobody Can Save Me") performed the song with the band.

"Waiting For The End" returned to its staple status for the From Zero World Tour, being played at the band's private reunion show as well as all the subsequent shows. The song was played with a new intro, with Joe playing samples while the tremolo picked guitar part from the verses plays in the background, and no outro for the first time since the "Wall of Noise" outro debuted in May 2012. "Waiting For The End" is among the songs that had their keys changed to better suit Emily's vocal range, getting transposed up to Ab major from E minor.

After Mike brought Fort Minor back after nearly nine years of inactivity, he played a one man show in Los Angeles. At this show, "Waiting For The End" was performed as a mashup with "Hands Held High". The first verse of "Waiting For The End" was performed normally before Mike started rapping the first verse and sung the chorus of "Hands Held High" over a modified version of the intro synth. After that, he rapped the second verse of "Hands Held High" over a modified form of the verse beat, rapping the line "When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die" five times to close the song instead of finishing the verse.

During the Post Traumatic Tour, Mike performed a mashup of "Waiting For The End" and the Fort Minor song "Where'd You Go." The only parts of "Waiting For The End" that were featured were the instrumental and Mike's first verse. Taka from the band ONE OK ROCK (who joined Linkin Park at the Hollywood Bowl for "Somewhere I Belong") join Mike for the mashup during his set at Identity LA. When Matt Harris joined the band, he began playing a new guitar part during the bridge of the mashup. Mike eventually began singing a "Waiting For The End" acapella with the crowd in Chengdu, China, the acapella quickly being turned into an extended outro of the mashup. Mike performed this outro in a similar fashion to how he performed the extended intro at the Hollywood Bowl. In San Francisco, Mike performed the first verse and chorus of "Waiting For The End" as an intro rather than an outro.

Variations

Linkin Park

Last Updated: October 3, 2024

Type	Description	First Played	Last Played
Intro	Apaches Intro w/ "Until It Breaks" Verse 3	May 16, 2012	October 27, 2017
Intro	Piano Intro w/ Verse 1 + Chorus	October 27, 2017	October 27, 2017
Intro	2024 Intro	September 5, 2024	September 28, 2024
Outro	Wall Of Noise Outro	May 18, 2012	October 27, 2017
Outro	Short Wall Of Noise Outro	December 13, 2014	December 13, 2014
Alternative	Shortened (No First Verse or Second Chorus)	September 22, 2012	September 22, 2012

Fort Minor

Last Updated: December 25, 2015

Type	Description	First Played	Last Played
Mashup	Waiting For The End/Hands Held High	June 29, 2015	September 8, 2015

Mike Shinoda

Last Updated: April 28, 2020

Type	Description	First Played	Last Played
Intro	"Waiting For The End" Sing-a-long	November 06, 2018	November 06, 2018
Outro	Short Piano Outro	August 14, 2018	August 14, 2018
Outro	"Waiting For The End" Sing-a-long	August 22, 2018	September 8, 2019
Mashup	w/ "Where'd You Go"	May 12, 2018	September 8, 2019

• NOTE: All extensions from Mike Shinoda sets are to the "Waiting For The End" / "Where'd You Go" mashup, not the individual song itself.

Live Guests

Last Updated: August 26, 2018

• Benjamin Chandler (replacing Brad Delson)
• Sydney Sierota (Echosmith)
• Steven McKellar (Civil Twilight)
• Takahiro Moriuchi (ONE OK ROCK)
• Warren Willis (replacing Joe Hahn)

Awards and Nominations

Year	Award	Category	Status
2011	Billboard Music Awards	Top Alternative Song	Nominated
2011	MTV Video Music Awards	Best Special Effects	Nominated
2011	Teen Choice Awards	Choice Rock Track	Nominated

Lyrics

Album Version

Yeah
Yo
 
This is not the end, this is not the beginning
Just a voice like a riot rocking every revision
But you listen through the tone and the violent rhythm and
Though the words sound steady, something empty's within 'em
We say yeah / with fists flying up in the air
Like we're holding onto something that's invisible there
'Cause we're living at the mercy of the pain and fear
Until we dead it / forget it / let it all disappear
Yeah
 
Waiting for the end to come / wishing I had strength to stand
This was not what I had planned
It's out of my control
Flying at the speed of light / thoughts were spinning in my head
So many things were left unsaid
It's hard to let you go
 
I know what it takes to move on (Oh, woah, oh)
I know how it feels to lie (Oh, woah, oh)
All I want to do is trade this life for something new (Oh, oh)
Holding on to what I haven't got (Oh)
 
Sitting in an empty room / Trying to forget the past
This was never meant to last
I wish it wasn't so
 
I know what it takes to move on (Oh, woah, oh)
I know how it feels to lie (Oh, woah, oh)
All I want to do is trade this life for something new (Oh, oh)
Holding on to what I haven't got (Oh)
 
Yeah, yeah
What was left when that fire was gone
I thought it felt right but that right was wrong
All caught up in the eye of the storm
And trying to figure out what it's like moving on
And I don't even know what kind of things I said
My mouth kept moving and my mind went dead so I'm
Picking up the pieces now where to begin
The hardest part of ending is starting again
 
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, woah
All I want to do is trade this life for something new
Holding on to what I haven't got (Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, woah)
 
This is not the end, this is not the beginning
Just a voice like a riot rocking every revision
(I'm holding on to what I haven't got)
But you listen through the tone and the violent rhythm and
Though the words sound steady, something empty's within 'em
We say yeah / with fists flying up in the air
Like we're holding onto something that's invisible there
(Holding on to what I haven't got)
Cause we're living at the mercy of the pain and fear
Until we dead it / forget it / let it all disappear

Non-Rap Version

Waiting for the end to come / wishing I had strength to stand
This was not what I had planned
It's out of my control
Flying at the speed of light / thoughts were spinning in my head
So many things were left unsaid
It's hard to let you go
 
I know what it takes to move on (Oh, woah, oh)
I know how it feels to lie (Oh, woah, oh)
All I want to do is trade this life for something new (Oh, oh)
Holding on to what I haven't got (Oh)
 
Sitting in an empty room / Trying to forget the past
This was never meant to last
I wish it wasn't so
 
I know what it takes to move on (Oh, woah, oh)
I know how it feels to lie (Oh, woah, oh)
All I want to do is trade this life for something new (Oh, oh)
Holding on to what I haven't got (Oh)
 
Yeah, yeah
What was left when that fire was gone
I thought it felt right but that right was wrong
All caught up in the eye of the storm
And trying to figure out what it's like moving on
And I don't even know what kind of things I said
My mouth kept moving and my mind went dead so I'm
Picking up the pieces now where to begin
The hardest part of ending is starting again
 
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, woah
All I want to do is trade this life for something new
Holding on to what I haven't got (Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, woah)
 
This is not the end, this is not the beginning
Just a voice like a riot rocking every revision
(I'm holding on to what I haven't got)
But you listen through the tone and the violent rhythm and
Though the words sound steady, something empty's within 'em
We say yeah / with fists flying up in the air
Like we're holding onto something that's invisible there
(Holding on to what I haven't got)
Cause we're living at the mercy of the pain and fear
Until we dead it / forget it / let it all disappear

Gallery

• 

  Single

• 

  Promo CD

• 

  DJ Lynnwood & Dave Dresden Remix

• 

  Drink The Sea (10 Year Anniversary Deluxe Edition)

• 

  Schutzengel (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

• 

  Video premiere announcement

In Other Media

• "Waiting For The End" is featured in the 4th episode of Season 11 of the TV series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, titled "Sqweegel".
• "Waiting For The End" was released in 2010 as part of a DLC for the 2010 videogame Guitar Hero: Warriors Of Rock.
• "Waiting For The End" was released in 2011 as part of a DLC for the 2010 videogame Rock Band 3.
• "Waiting For The End" is featured in the 2012 film Schutzengel and was included in its soundtrack album.

External Links

• Waiting For The End (Music Video): LPTV | WMG | MTV | VK
• Waiting For The End (Lyric Video): LPTV
• Waiting For The End (Pop Up Video): MTV
• Waiting For The End (A Thousand Suns Tour 2011) - LPTV
• Waiting For The End (Rio+Social 2012) - The Live Room
• Waiting For The End (Telekom Street Gigs 2012) - WMT