"Prove You Wrong" is the first bonus track off of Mike Shinoda's debut studio album, Post Traumatic. It was released as part of a double single with "What The Words Meant".
Background
At the show on March 5th, 2019 in Hannover, Germany, Mike said, "I put this song out on Spotify, Apple, and all of that stuff very very recently. It was one of the songs that I had written while I was writing Post Traumatic that I didn't feel like had a place on the record. And then I put it on the vinyl. And then everybody complained that it was only on the vinyl. So I put it on the streaming services, so I just put it up on all of those so you can check it out."[1]
When introducing the song on March 15th, 2019 in Padua, Italy, Mike said, "Yeah, I don't have anything else to say about it."[2]
In June 2020, when asked why "Prove You Wrong" didn't make Post Traumatic, Mike said, "I just needed to choose. I didn't want to put every song on there. So I figured I'd leave a couple off. It didn't make the cut, it sounded different enough from the record enough that I said, "I'll just release this later.""[3]
Mike looked up the song's lyrics in response to another question and said at the end of June 2020, "I feel like this song was really a lot about feeling like somebody didn't have your back, somebody didn't have my back, or betrayed trust, you know. So, it's really about wanting somebody to support you. I feel like sometimes what's worse than somebody not supporting you is somebody lying about it. Or that you expect them to and then they don't. I think this song wasn't my parents or anything, but I feel like that's one thing that's so tough a lot of people when they talk about their deep issues, their real stuff that they deal with. It's like your parents or certain people in your life you expect more of them, or you expect them to have your back on certain things. And when it's somebody of importance, it's more hurtful or shocking when they don't. So parents are like that, that just sucks."[4]
Release
On November 20th, 2018, Warner Records announced that Post Traumatic would be re-released as a 2 LP color vinyl, featuring two new songs - "Prove You Wrong" and "What The Words Meant" for $44.98. The two tracks would come on a 10" bonus vinyl.[5]
On February 20th, 2019, Mike announced that the songs would be available on streaming services for the first time beginning on February 22nd.[6][7][8]
At the March 6th, 2019 show in Oberhausen, Germany, Mike said, "I put out a vinyl version of Post Traumatic. And I included two new songs on it. And then everyone who didn't have a record player was like, "Mike I don't have a record player, how can I listen to these songs?" And so we ended up putting them up on Spotify and Apple and all of that."[9]
On April 19th, 2019, fans Inca Schulz and Sky Buerhaus released a fan lyric video for "Prove You Wrong", saying, "This project involved 70 people. 70 faces you may have seen at a show of his. People from all around the world: Bolivia, Ecuador, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, USA, Italy, Germany, etc - and we’re all connected by music. By the thing that is the #LPFamily. And boy, how much we’ve grown in the last years!"[10] In response to the video, Mike tweeted later that morning, "I was in the studio all morning, just saw this amazing surprise the fans made! Thank you"[11]
"Prove You Wrong" was added on the fly to the set at the Bremen, Germany show on March 3rd, 2019 after Mike saw a sign in the front row asking for "Prove You Wrong" to be played.
Mike noticed someone in the crowd with a sign after "It's Goin' Down" (not on the setlist), walked up to the edge of the stage and said, "This guy wants to know if I will play "Prove You Wrong." He then addressed the audience, "Alright you guys, somebody put up a... we have a "Prove You Wrong" song. I mean we are just fucking learning this song, we literally like don't know how to play it. I will fuck up a lot of words. It's going to be a mess. He wants to do it, alright we'll do it. World premiere." After the song, Mike said, "Thank you for holding up that sign and inspiring us to get over our like, our little fright about doing it for the first time."
It became a regular addition to the setlist from that point forward through the end of the touring cycle.
