The Hard Way

Background

In late 2006, Clear Channel Music posted the entire The Rising Tied album complete with commentaries from Mike Shinoda before each song. On "The Hard Way", he said, "‘The Hard Way’ is, uhm, another 6/8 time song, uhm, that.. it was funny that Kenna is no both of these 6/8 time sig per song, that I did for Fort Minor album. I think he called me on that: “Why do I have to be on all of the 6/8 songs?”. It was one of those songs, that like every time you write a song, you’ve got a rough title for it, like if I’m standing in a room with a pencil and I’m about to start writing a song, and I may call the file on the computer ‘Pencil’ just to, cause it gotta have a name on the computer. Well this song, I just called it ‘The Hard Way’, because it was a 6/8 time song or a 3/4 time song, so 3 to Hard Way, I thought I was just being silly, and when Kenna saw the words ‘The Hard Way’ on the.. the song title, he was like: “That’s a great song name. I should… we should use that.” So, uhm, we made it happen like that and basically song is, it’s you know, it’s kind of like more introspective kind of thing, which I thought would be a nice way to round out this group of bonus tracks. "

On his June 30, 2020 stream on Twitch, Mike answered a question from a fan about "The Hard Way" and said, "During the Fort Minor stuff, I did the beat and the chorus and then I did the verses after for most of those songs. This was with Kenna. The Hard Way is about making things difficult for yourself; you do things intentionally or unintentionally, subconsciously or accidentally that just make yourself crazy which I feel is a very universal thing. I feel like we all do that at some point, right? We try not to do it."

Versions

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

Title	Album	Length	Recorded	Released	Notes
The Hard Way	The Rising Tied	3:52	2005	November 28, 2005	Features vocals by Kenna.
The Hard Way	Instrumental Album: The Rising Tied	3:54	2005		Official instrumental version.

Live

To date, no version of "The Hard Way" has been performed live by Fort Minor or Mike Shinoda.

Personnel

• Mike Shinoda - Beats, samples, keyboard/piano, vocals, production
• Kenna Zemedkun - Vocals

Lyrics

Album Version

Oh
Oh
Whoa

Come with me / let me walk you thru the world that I currently stay in
You can take a look around and tell me if I'm mistaken
You can meet and talk to / everybody that I live with
Maybe you can tell me why everybody's so distant
Is it me or maybe / when I look around daily
I don't even know the people I can put my trust in lately
People that used to hand with / now they're acting so different
I'm still the same person why doesn't anybody listen
Can somebody please / just explain to me
What happened to the way that we always said we'd be
Right now I don't know why I pushed through the pain that I got through
And I'm losing hope

Deafenin' voices / that frequency inside my head
That says / I'm going at it the hard way
I focus / get everything inside out of my brain
That claims / I'm going at it the hard way

Come with me / let me walk you thru the world that I currently live in
Not a thing is forgotten / not a thing is forgiven
Nobody can hold their own underneath the weight but
Nobody can take the blame for their own mistakes so
What do you do when somebody lets you down
And you wanna say something but you can't cause they're not around
Inside you think they know the extent of the pain
But they won't even admit that they were the one to blame
Can somebody please / just explain to me (Oh)
What happened to the way that we always said we'd be
'Cause right now I don't know why I pushed through the pain that I got through (Oh)
And I'm losing hope

Deafenin' voices / that frequency inside my head
That says / I'm going at it the hard way
I focus / get everything inside out of my brain
That claims / I'm going at it the hard way

Voices (voices)
In my head (in my head)

Can somebody please / just explain to me
What happened to the way that we always said we'd be
'Cause right now I don't know why I pushed through the pain that I got through
And I'm losing hope
Give me one reason not to

Deafenin' voices / that frequency inside my head
That says / I'm going at it the hard way
I focus / get everything inside out of my brain
That claims / I'm going at it the hard way

Oh
Whoa
Whoa
Whoa
Whoa
Whoa