![]() We never thought people would like our style, and we never did our style for the radio because they weren’t playing it at all.” “We were just doing what we do, and if we ever thought about whether people would like it we’d never do what we do. “There was no saying, ‘Are we gonna be good enough?’” says Shavo. They paid little attention to what anyone else might want – a masterstroke in hindsight. This maverick approach was the compass by which the whole band steered the album. “Rick had one of those exercise things,” says Shavo, “so they hung Serj upside down and he did some tracks.” Another time, he decided to literally turn things on their head. The band partly recorded the album at producer Rick Rubin’s house, and at one point, Serj set up a tent in Rubin’s studio and sang inside it. The singer went to unusual lengths in an effort to take his already unique vocal style into completely different areas. When Shavo says this, he’s not exaggerating. Also Serj had a lot to do with the vocals and it wasn’t like normal takes.” Everyone gave what they gave, but he did so many guitar tracks and instruments, he was like a kid in a toy store! With Toxicity, Daron really came through and shined. “I mean, a band is a team and you let people do what they’re good at, and then you complement them with what you’re good at. “Yeah, Daron was in there like a maestro,” grins Shavo. All live tracks were recorded at the Hurricane Festival 2005 show, except where noted.In pre-production alone, the band wrote 35 songs that would eventually be spread out between Toxicity and 2002’s Steal This Album! They also brought in a wide array of instruments, including sitar, banjo, piano, keyboards, and an Armenian Oud, a lute-like instrument.Another meaning that can come from the chorus is that while propaganda is rampant, life goes on. However, from the point of a listener, this may well mean again, the reference to the "simple minded". ![]() The chorus is unrelated with the rest of the song: in an interview with MTV, Daron stated that the song was written while he was actually sitting in his car waiting for his girlfriend. The song's lyrics in the verses reference the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and propaganda. At 1:53 in the video a woman is seen flashing her boobs to a camera on the far right, the exposure could have been unoticed or simply missed by the editing and it is uncensored. Unknown to many, there is brief nudity in the video. This could possibly be the pesticide referred to in the song Attack of the same album. The beginning and ending of the video show a helicopter spraying red matter across Grand Rapids (Forming at the end the album's artwork). The music video is mostly footage from one of the band's September 2005 concerts, (filmed at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan) but includes a CGI scene of painting along with the music the audio is dubbed over with the studio track. The song leads up to a massive crescendo, then ends with a repeated portion of the opening riff with soft singing by Malakian. The Eastern-themed instrumental bridge contains at least four overdubbed clean guitar tracks and a well-crafted, syncopated rhythm. Musical discontinuities like this can be found all over the song and creates heavily psychedelic tone. Even stranger is the minor-key bridge, which loyally follows the chords expected from an F# minor song (F#m, D, Bm, E, A, and C#). This produces a direct switch from a major key to the minor key of the same name. The opening guitar riff and early verses use an upbeat melody that follows the F# major scale, but with a flatted sixth (a D instead of a D#). It is difficult to determine whether the key is F# minor or F# major. Musically, "Hypnotize" is somewhat of an enigma. The combination of the two vocalists gives the song a vocal range, with Serj handling the lower verses and Daron delivering the high parts of the refrains. Serj and Daron perform a harmony in the refrain before and after the instrumental bridge. As in many Mezmerize/Hypnotize songs, guitarist Daron Malakian accompanies Serj Tankian in the vocal sections.
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