Make It Up As I Go
by Mike Shinoda (featuring K.Flay)

Album: Post Traumatic (2018)
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Songfacts®:

  • This was originally written during the sessions for Linkin Park's 2017 album, One More Light, but it didn't make the cut. The track was initially a ballad but Shinoda tweaked the tempo and recruited hip-hop artist K.Flay to help him complete the track. Shinoda told Kerrang:

    "We wrote this at the end of One More Light, but it wasn't quite right. Months later, I came back to it and we wrote everything other than the chorus. K Flay is incredible-she's so smart, confident, an incredible writer, and a great performer."
  • The song finds Shinoda and K-Flay trying to make their way through life but being thrown off course by adversity.

    I keep on running backwards
    I keep on losing faith
    I thought I had the answers
    I thought I knew the way


    "We were talking about how it's comforting to think that anybody knows what they're doing but we're all inventing life moment by moment," K.Flay told Rolling Stone. "That's a headspace I'm in frequently, and I think it was definitely connecting with Mike's headspace, too."

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