This song is one of the oldest on the album and I could talk forever about the journey the track has taken to the final product you hear today. Instead of writing it out here are some “These Walls,” facts.
1. “These Walls,” while again not always specifically about a certain person is certainly autobiographical. The part where I talk about traveling east, and going down south refers to my time spent living in New York and Texas. Artistically I think I am trying to say that the walls that I discuss are not physical. While that point may be rather obvious (and even more obvious as you watch me walk around Vegas with a box on my head in the music video), other lines like that also subliminally refer to more obvious references to the boxes as a metaphor for depression.
2. The girl box in the video is my wonderful beautiful wife Anjali. (We got married a month after it was filmed). While she wasn’t too keen on putting a box on her head and walking into a crowded Mexican restaurant people do crazy things for love and she certainly passed any of my tests.
3. The percussion in what we for a year referred to as the “breakdown” part (The part in the video where the white headed boxes do a choreographed dance) was played by instruments Jon found in a garage sale. We bought moraccas, Bongos, Tamborines, A Frog (which was my personal favorite), and whatever else he could buy for a dollar a piece from the garage sale.
4. The vocals were recorded three times, twice at Jon’s house, and once at Mauros studio in west Las Vegas. I believe Jon probably clocked in 200 hours editing this song alone. I bet at any one point in the final track there is at least 10 different vocal tracks playing at the same time and blended together. Not as many Max Martin and Taylor Swift do but hey not to shabby. At one point this song had 96 tracks (way too many) and toward the end production was a game on trying to figure out what we could leave out.
5. No I did not buy all of those Twinkies in the Walmart scene. But I did want to.
lyrics
These Walls that I built in my soul
Trying to keep all control of the scars
With a century to guard all the pain in my heart
Making sure nothing comes and nothing goes
These Walls and I stare through the bars
At a world that is calling me forth
See the laughter and fun
Hear the beat feel the drums
Of a sound that I used to know
And I’ve been in love and didn’t know it
I felt pain but couldn’t show it
I’m scared to breath, I’m scared to drown
I need relief, to feel the sound,
To hear these walls come tumbling down
My baby she holds me at night
And she shines with the light in her soul
And I can’t lose but I can’t win
When I can’t let her in, and I’m still afraid
And I’m still afraid and
And I traveled East
But couldn’t find it
I went down south
To take some time and
It’s all a blur
It’s all a dream
And I lost her
And won nothing
And now it’s just these walls and me
And I spend my days just waiting on the darkness
And I spend my nights just waiting on the day
These walls
These walls are a terrible trick
They are high and they’re thick and they’re strong
And it’s all I can do, is keep waiting on you
And if it’s all the same, I’ll stay inside here
It is warm, and it is quite here
You keep your drums, you keep your sounds
Until the day that I am found
The day these walls come tumbling down
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