WE ARE THE FALLEN Singer Talks About Making Of 'Tear The World Down'

ARTISTdirect.com editor Rick Florino recently conducted an interview with WE ARE THE FALLEN singer Carly Smithson. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

ARTISTdirect.com: Do you feel like [WE ARE THE FALLEN's debut album] "Tear The World Down" came together quite naturally?

Carly: We worked very hard and not really at all [Laughs]. It was crazy! It was very fluid. I've never been in such a perfect environment. It was amazing to be with four other people that completely understand each other and me. It was an incredible experience, and it will be for the next hundred years!

ARTISTdirect.com: Did you all instantly click?

Carly: Honestly, I met Ben [Moody, guitar] one week and, maybe three weeks later, we were announced as a band and had a single. Our original plan wasn't to put out a record; it was to put out two songs every eight weeks. When we sat down to do two songs, we did about 15, so we created a record very fast. It was weird.

ARTISTdirect.com: At the same time, it probably feels like you've had this record forever.

Carly: These are moments, memories and things we've been holding onto. A lot of the songs are ideas that we'd wanted to write about for ages but it wasn't the right situation in the past. There's a song called "St. John". I had the idea for that song for a long time, but it would've been weird to many songwriters. To these guys, it's not. John gave me this incredibly crazy track that was just the perfect combination of music and theme. It creates this "Wizard of Oz" meets "This Is Halloween" story. As soon as I heard the track, it was perfect for the concept I had.

ARTISTdirect.com: Was the concept for the "Bury Me Alive" something you came up with or Jaime King?

Carly: It was really bizarre. I'd started the song in Atlanta and when I met the boys that was the icebreaker that started the whole record. It was the first song we did together. We saw "Drag Me to Hell" one night and, at the end of the movie, the girl falls into a grave. It's raining, and she's trying to get out. We were like, "That's really cool!" I'd left California and gone back to Atlanta where it's quite Southern. I'd been in the entertainment industry for so long and I had so many people that I watched success and fame ruin. They were so pure and lovely, and they fell to the earth. I'd watched the industry consume them and them consume themselves. It's like that line, "I watched you let yourself die." You let the awesome person you are just waste away and now you're just that networker or social butterfly. It's basically that "You stabbed me in the back to get ahead" kind of lyric. After seeing "Drag Me to Hell", I changed the lyric to "Bury Me Alive" at the beginning. It means the same thing, but it's a little bit more visual. When we got the treatment in, we'd never met Kyle or Jaime before, but they just had this vision that was mirroring what we were feeling when we were putting together the song. It was honestly perfect. We all agreed on it unanimously. It was like they'd been in our brains. They hit the nail on the head with everything down to a "T." The video complemented the song perfectly with the stained glass — even to be somewhere that was so creepy, because it was a graveyard and a mausoleum, it was so beautiful that you forgot where you were. It had such beautiful marble in the flooring, and everything about it was so stunning.

ARTISTdirect.com: Why'd you choose to cover [MADONNA's] "Like a Prayer"?

Carly: We had talked about covers for awhile. Ben went camping on a weekend trip and called us saying, "Let's pick the most obvious pop song ever and change it! Make it sound haunting and evil." So we chose "Like a Prayer". It was such a perfect idea. Who's more iconic than Madonna? She's been an inspiration to so many people including myself. As a first cover, it's so left-field but not. It just works. We had the choir come in and we were chanting and laughing at the end. There are tribal drums. It's just this massive wall of sound. It's a really incredible piece. The bridge feels like Hell has opened up and is hooking you down. It's a very dark bridge when it comes out of that second chorus. It's wonderful to sing.

Read the entire interview from ARTISTdirect.com.