Mountain Lion

Album: Single Release Only (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • Future User is a project co-founded by Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave bassist Tim Commerford with keyboardist Jordan Tarlow, drummer John Knox and guitarist Brendan O'Brien (best known as the producer of albums by the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam and The Fray). Tarlow explained the band's name to Radio.com: " It means a bunch of different things," he said. "But the acronym FU is a great one. [laughs]"

    "But ultimately it came from the child of a drug user. That's a future user. And the person that's using the resources today that we need for future that we won't have, that's a future user."
  • Tarlow explained that this song "is about sports and trying to be the best that you can be. "
  • In the song's music video a skateboarder appears to inject himself with a steroid. The video's intent was to address what Commerford sees as misplaced outrage over performance-enhancing drugs. "The amount of attention given to PEDs is incredible," he told Rolling Stone, "especially when you consider the amount of drugs - recreational, illegal and pharmaceutical - that America supports and profits from."
  • Road racing cyclist Lance Armstrong, a close friend of Commerford, makes a cameo at the end of the video with some strong trash-talking. Commerford told Rolling Stone that Armstrong's audio was taken from a real-life incident. "Lance is a friend, an awesome person and, as far as I'm concerned, a punk rocker," he said. "We're 'cycling buddies' and kind of go after each other in a trash-talking."
  • The song's spoken-word interlude is pulled straight from Commerford's real-life rivalry with Armstrong: "We'll jokingly leave each other voice messages like, 'Dude, I'm gonna crush you the next time I see you. I'm gonna take you down.' I thought it'd be cool to put one of his voice messages in the song," he said. "When it came time to make the video, I asked him to recreate the voicemail and he was totally cool with it."
  • Marvel comic book legend Stan Lee also makes a cameo appearance in the clip.

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