Singled Out: Silent Theory's Watch Me Burn

Silent Theory recently released a video for their song "Watch Me Burn," the second single off of their "Delusions" album and to celebrate we asked Mitch Swanger to tell us about the track. Here is the story:

I had written the music for "Watch Me Burn" years ago. Every once in a while I'd pull the music out of the vault and jam it on the piano in hopes that I could magically have lyrics pop into my head, which never happened. I'd start to write a few lyrics, think they sucked, erase them, and throw the song back into the vault. One of my problems is I am a perfectionist so I can be notorious for writing a song, not being satisfied and starting over. That is essentially what continually happened with "Watch Me Burn." When we were writing the album, Delusions, I showed the band the piano piece I had written to see if they wanted to do anything with it, which they did, so back to the drawing table I went.

It was June 2016, and we were getting ready to hit the studio and I had bits and pieces of what would be "Watch Me Burn," but I certainly didn't have a complete song and became panicked. One day I invited Dakota over to help me write the rest. We sat on my back porch and drank beer and smoked cigars and essentially cranked the song out. Side note, Dakota has a really interesting and poetic way of piecing lyrics together, so he's the perfect writing partner because he is able to really think outside of the box. While we were writing the song, we were in the throes of the upcoming presidential election. It didn't matter where you looked or what you did, it was constantly in your face. It doesn't matter what political side you stand on, I think everyone can agree that it was a really ugly election. A lot of "WTF?!" moments. Common themes emerged just like they always do; empty promises and constant threats among everyone. While Silent Theory is not a political band, nor would I ever want us to be, we felt compelled to write about what was consistently surrounding us at the time, which was backstabbing politics. The song ended up being about just that.

We didn't expect the song to have the success that it did. We all enjoy it as a band, but never considered it to be a second single off of our album, following our first single, "Fragile Minds." Enough of our fan base spoke, and we eventually gave in to shooting a music video.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself here and learn more about the album right here!

Singled Out: Silent Theory's Watch Me Burn

Related Stories