Songfacts®:

• After appearing at the 2007 Video Music Awards, frontman Brent Hinds (guitars/vocals) got involved in a brawl, which resulted in him being hospitalized with a life-threatening brain hemorrhage. He told MTV News that when he returned home, the songs he began churning out reflected the spiraling dizziness he felt in his brain. The singer explained: "The music I was diving into was more of a laid-back feel, because of the state I was in - the recovery state, in your pajamas, just taking it super easy. I had extreme vertigo... my equilibrium was totally messed up. For nine months, I was dizzy... I kind of got used to it after a while, and I didn't mind that, but after a while, I told Brann (Dailor, drums), I was like, 'Man, I'm kind of getting tired of feeling euphoric.'"
  Inspired, he took those experiences and worked them into a story about an out of body experience, which became Crack The Skye. Hinds told MTV News with a laugh: "We're not really in this record. I mean, not as much as in previous albums. But, I can look at some of the lyrics, like, 'I flew beyond the sun before it was time,' I look at that lyric as being about the VMA night, you know? Like I went beyond the sun before it was time. I took it too far, and they were trying to pull me back in."
• Guitarist Bill Kelliher told The Skinny magazine that this "was one of the songs I didn't see ending up on the record – it wasn't one of my favorites until it was completely finished." He added: "When we were putting it together, Brent and I started writing the beginning of the song, then a couple of parts in the middle. Parts of it were comprised from a bunch of riffs we had leftover from other songs and a few more that we threw together until it started taking shape and sounding cool. But it still just didn't kick my ass like the other songs. Then when the lyrics came around and the vocal patterns came over it, I loved it. I said 'holy s--t, this song has turned 180 degrees.' When Brendan [O'Brien, producer] was listening back to it as we were playing it for him in our practice space, he was like 'OK, that song's whatever, but as soon as Brent started singing it, that's when his ears perked up and he said 'oh, this song we need to focus on, it's a hit'. He knew right away it could be a single."