I Don't Know What To Say

Album: Amo (2019)
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Songfacts®:

  • Oli Sykes wrote this song about his childhood friend Aidan who died from cancer at age 26. At one stage, he'd got the all-clear and the Bring Me the Horizon vocalist gave Aidan a shout at the band's 2016 Teenage Cancer Trust show at the Royal Albert Hall, but then the cancer came back in 2017 and he passed away just a month later.
  • Sykes told Kerrang that though he spent a good chunk of his childhood with Aidan, he was reluctant to write about him, fearing he was overstepping his bounds. However the band had pinned on the studio wall something Aidan had said before he died: "The world's already full enough of defeated people, I will not be one." Sykes thought maybe he could write something based around his fallen friend's quote.
  • The song title refers to Sykes not knowing what to say to his dying friend as Aidan was nearing the end. "When you know someone is definitely going to die, I don't know what to say," he explained. "You can't go, 'It's gonna be alright.' Everything else in the world seems so futile."

    Sykes added that he felt bad that he didn't get to see Aidan before his passing. "I knew I should have just gone," he said. "You just don't know what's right or what's wrong at that point. It's just a crazy thing. Things just started coming out."
  • Sykes told NME in a video interview that during the song he's "nervously saying things" to Aidan as he didn't get to see him before he passed away. He added: "It was scary to think about, because how can you talk to someone before they die? You can't tell them it's going to be alright when you know it's not. It's also about how brave he was."
  • The song is the last track on Amo. Keyboadist Jordan Fish told The Sun: "It's a different type of song for us. We wanted a combination of dark, Bjorky electronic sounds with The Verve's swagger. It's a weird concoction but it felt like a good one to finish with."
  • The song features the Parallax Orchestra, who previously accompanied Bring Me the Horizon at their Teenage Cancer Trust concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London on April 22, 2016.

Comments: 2

  • Stoical Sunshine from PhOli himself said on the video that it was his childhood friend Aidan who died from cancer. He stated it on this NME interview: https://youtu.be/76W0CQpEmAM
  • Jenna from HellThe friends name is Tom as in Tom Searle from architects and he was 28 not 26 y'all.
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