Black Heart Inertia

Album: Monuments and Melodies (2009)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song and "Midnight Swim" are the only two new tracks on Incubus' best-of collection Monuments and Melodies. The two songs were recorded in Los Angeles during guitarist Michael Einziger's winter break from Harvard University, where he explained to Billboard magazine that he'd "just taking courses for personal enjoyment."
  • Einziger told Billboard magazine that Monuments and Melodies started out as "a contractual obligation." He added that he and his bandmates "weren't really excited at first" about putting together a greatest hits package. But they eventually changed their minds. Einziger explained: "It was almost like we were trying to come up with an excuse to go on tour for the summer, and we started really thinking about the idea of putting out a greatest hits album and having that as the excuse to accompany the tour we were planning. And then as we started planning it, it became really obvious that greatest hits records are really important to the legacy of any band. I was introduced to most of the groups I grew up listening to - artists like Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley and the Doors - through their greatest hits records. So we began realizing that it's in fact really an honor to be able to put together a greatest hits package, and it started becoming nostalgic, like watching a home movie. It's really cool to take a step back and look at this collection of music we've spent all these years writing and playing. It's humbling."

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