Songfacts®:

• Slipknot's .5: The Gray Chapter is their first album not to feature bassist Paul Gray, who accidentally overdosed in 2010. The album title and many of the lyrics reference their fallen colleague particularly on this song. Frontman Corey Taylor told Kerrang!: "It's a song about the kind of person that Paul was, just his love for not only music in general, but for this band, and just how amazing a personality he was."
  
  "And the name 'Skeptic' refers to the fact that he when everyone would be in the dumps and negative, or just feeling like nothing could get done, he would be the guy who was completely sceptical of all the odds against us," he continued. "He'd just be like, 'Screw that, we're gonna do this, and we're gonna do it amazingly."
  
  "He was the beating heart of it, " Taylor concluded, "and this song is a celebration of who he was."
• Asked by Larry King what Gray would think of the .5: The Gray Chapter album, Taylor replied. "I think he would've loved it. I mean, it's essentially the story of the last four years, dealing with the aftermath of his death and all of us trying to kind of get back to a place where we wanted to make music again."