Songfacts®:

• Staind lead singer Aaron Lewis mellowed out a little by the time they recorded their 2003 album 14 Shades Of Grey. By then, he had his first daughter, whom he wrote about in the song "Zoe Jane." But "Price To Play," the lead single from the album, is fraught with rage as he sings about the price you pay to play the game. The lyrics are short on details but have a specific inspiration, as Lewis didn't like getting rushed back into the studio to follow up their 2001 album Break The Cycle.
  
  "Lyrically, what started the song was my frustrations with having to be back in the studio writing more songs and feeling like we were underneath somebody's thumb," he told MTV. "But it turned into a song that just applies to life in general. And it's kind of tongue-in-cheek because life isn't a game, but it's the price we pay to play this game that we call life."
• The song did well on rock radio and helped the 14 Shades Of Grey album debut at #1 in the US. It sold over a million copies, which is great by most standards but was a comedown compared to the 5 million of Break The Cycle. The next single was "So Far Away," which got more airplay and proved more enduring.
• According to Staind guitarist Mike Mushok, this was the last song written for the album, and it was born out of the frustration that came from having a hard time completing it. "'Price to Play' came from us feeling we were really, really close to having the record out, but we had some other ideas and we wanted to record them," he said.
• The music video was directed by Greg and Colin Strause, whose other work includes "Prayer" for Disturbed and "Crawling" by Linkin Park. It's shot like a horror movie, starring a woman who looks like an older version of the girl who came out of the well in The Ring. In the end, the characters all come together to watch the band perform, so it's not so scary after all.