The End is Where We Begin by Thousand Foot Krutch

Introduction
The Internet has revolutionized the music industry, mainly in distribution, not only of the actual music, but in information and promotion as well. The obvious thing the Internet has done is changed the way people buy music. Brick and mortar music stores are becoming a thing of the past as more and more people buy their music online because it’s so much easier, cheaper, and faster. Not only are full albums cheaper online, but now it is possible to buy individual songs, which is great if there’s only one song that a person would want off of an album. It used to be someone would have to pay $10 to buy the one song off of an album they wanted from a brick and mortar store, but that is no longer the case. The Internet has also made finding out information about a band easier. Anyone can now go to a band’s website to find out their tour dates, other albums by them, both old and new material, and just about anything else anyone could possibly want to know about a band. And if it’s not on the band’s website, it’s on Wikipedia or another website.

With Web 2.0, interacting with bands has never been easier. There are blogs, fan sites, facebook pages, twitter accounts, and endless other ways in which people can tell a band how much they love them, ask them questions, send them their own music video of one of the band’s songs, or any other way fans and bands can connect with each other. The Internet has now made it possible to release an album without a record label. It used to be impossible for bands to release an album without a record label, but sites like YouTube replace the need for radio airtime, which labels usually facilitate, and sites like kick starter allow bands to raise money for their new albums from fans instead of needing restrictive recording contracts from record labels. Thousand Foot Krutch used kick starter for the release of The End is Where We Begin instead of using a record label. They raised over $105,000. Their goal was $40,000. Thousand Foot Krutch is currently in the process of developing a mobile app, which will be one more way for fans and the band to keep in touch.

The Internet allows many different people from diverse backgrounds to be able to get together and discuss music. Different backgrounds, different values, and the fact that all people are just different lead to interpretive disputes of music on the Internet. Music, like other forms of art, often has many different ways to interpret it, and fans gather on the web to discuss their personal interpretation. Sometimes the author’s background can shape the way people interpret their music as they want to interpret what the artist intended to say instead of what it means to them. That’s why musicians, like Thousand Foot Krutch, intentionally write their songs a little vague so that they will reach out to a wider audience. Not only does this mean more money, but it means that their music has a greater effect on society. Any band with any sort of popularity at all is going to have something made by fans on YouTube in their honor. This could be a cover of one of their songs, a music video, or just using the song in a video not related to the band in any other way. There are all kinds of remediation in the music industry.

Interpretive Disputes
Thousand Foot Krutch actually wrote an article for Newreleasetuesday.com that explained the meaning to every song on the album. Nearly every discussion on the Internet about the meaning or intention of a song from The End is Where We Begin contains a quote from this source. What this tends to do is one person finds the article and then quotes it saying it is the “correct” interpretation. This may be the intention of the band, but there’s almost always more than one way to interpret a song. It depends on what it means to an individual person. The song “So Far Gone” is one of the songs that gets a lot of debate. It’s fairly clear that it’s a love song, but for whom is the love? If the songwriter was a secular band, people wouldn’t think twice about it being written about a girl. However, because Thousand Foot Krutch is a “Christian band,” the question gets raised about whether or not it is written for God. In the comments section for this song on YouTube, AnicanZone writes, “For those who keep saying Atheists should not be listening to this song because it's a message about God, well I as an atheist listen to this song and just think of it as a long song towards a woman, not God. Even though it is actually about God, I don't think of it that way and still enjoy this song, so yeah, I'll still listen to this song even without believing in God.”

“Fly on the Wall” is a song with highly complex lyrics, which leads to many different interpretations from listeners. As this song is so highly complex, it is difficult to find anyone that has a coherent meaning of the entire song. Many of the attempts at interpretation will break the song down by stanza and/or line and interpret them separately, but they never relate each interpretation to the other. The best example of this is a comment by TWPotts on songmeanings.net that is far too long to quote for this assignment. Again, YouTube has its debates as well, but this comment section is not nearly as heated as the one on “So Far Gone.” At least part of the reason for this is because no one is real confident in the analysis that they are giving. Not one commenter that did not quote the New Release Tuesday article got anywhere close to the meaning that Trevor, the lead singer of Thousand Foot Krutch, gives, which is, “This song is about someone speaking to their addictions and written from the point of view of me describing it in a dream.” Many of the comments attempt to relate the song to a dream of a happier world, which really has nothing to do with the addiction theme. Even if addiction was replaced with the more general theme of someone speaking to their vices, the interpretations given by the majority of the commenters still would not be close to the author’s intention. What the author intends to convey is not always what the reader, or listener, picks up on.

Authorial Intention
On half of Thousand Foot Krutch albums, there is an introduction track to the album. The End is Where We Begin is one of these albums. This track is called “The Introduction,” and unlike Set it Off and Welcome to the Masquerade, the other two albums that have introduction tracks, The End is Where We Begin has one additional introduction track, “This is a Warning (Intro),” and an “Outroduction” to the album. Some people hate these tracks, and some people love them. It really just depends on taste. Uphillsucks claims that the purpose of these tracks is to make the album longer so they will make more money selling each track. It’s unlikely that anyone would buy these tracks individually, however, and most people who download these songs are people who have bought the full album, which means the band doesn’t make more money off of it. Even if the band did do it for money, there’s no way they would say it. Most commenters do enjoy the tracks, saying that it’s something that most bands don’t do, which in turn makes Thousand Foot Krutch stand out a little in a genre that is fairly saturated. Trevor, the lead singer, says that since the album name had a somewhat sci-fi ring to it, he wanted to throw in a track that had a “mainframe” character with a “voice that was somewhere between Optimus Prime (Transformers) and Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey.” This mainframe character is referred to again in the song “Light up the Sky.”

“Light up the Sky” is a song that is compared to Rage against the Machine a lot, and for good reason. The song does sound a lot like a Rage against the Machine song. Nearly every comment thread anywhere about this song mentions Rage against the Machine as the possible inspiration for the song and it must have been intended as a Rage against the Machine tribute, except Trevor McNevan. He points to U2’s “Vertigo” as the inspiration for “Light up the Sky.” This song really couldn’t have much less lyrical meaning though, and that’s why most people point to the musical content instead. It’s a song that was intended to be a Queen-like stadium rock song, which did end up working out as this song as well as “Let the Sparks Fly” were both picked up by ESPN and played during their various programs. Trevor also started his career as a rapper, or at least a rap-influenced rocker, so this song was also intended to be a tribute to those roots. It doesn’t feel as much like a rap song as other songs on the album such as “I Get Wicked,” so that would explain why there’s not a lot of chatter in Internet discussions about it being an “old-school” Thousand Foot Krutch song. “Down” gets a lot more discussion of it being an “old-school” song, which is understandable as it does sound a lot like “Puppet” from Set it Off.

Remediation
As mentioned earlier, “Light Up the Sky” and “Let the Sparks Fly” have been used by ESPN and other sports programming at various times since the album’s release a few months ago. The lead single on the album, “War of Change,” was used as the theme song for WWE’s Pay per View Event, Over the Limit 2012. Getting these songs this much airtime during television programs with high ratings is good promotion for both the band and the record, which will help sales. “War of Change” also has many covers on YouTube, as do many of the other songs off of The End is Where We Begin. “War of Change” has more drum covers than guitar covers, which is rare for most rock songs. This is most likely because of the second pre-chorus being as drum intense as it is. Most of the drum covers are approximately the same quality and are relatively well done. All of the guitar covers except one that I found bothered me though because they didn’t play the pre-chorus guitar part, because it must be too difficult to play. I don’t know though, as I’ve never played guitar, but I’m assuming it must be difficult because only one person attempted to play it. I don’t know why someone would cover a song that they can’t play, but plenty of people do. While the one that did attempt the pre-chorus may not have been the best at the rest of the parts of the song, the fact that the pre-chorus was tried was notable and I enjoyed the video.

The title track for the album, “The End is Where We Begin,” also has some unique covers done by fans. Most of these covers are guitar covers, which doesn’t make sense to me because the verses are mostly bass, so the people covering the songs are just standing there for thirty seconds waiting for a guitar part to come up in the song. Surprisingly, I was unable to find any bass covers of this song. There are plenty of songs on The End is Where We Begin, and on other Thousand Foot Krutch albums, that are better candidates for guitar covers than “The End is Where We Begin.” “Light Up the Sky” has the same issues as “The End is Where We Begin” as well, but that seems to be one of the most covered songs as it does have a less traditional guitar sound. The best cover I found off of the entire album was one done by mattcalproductions of “I Get Wicked.” I liked this one because unlike most covers that just copy the song note for note, this one added in its own personal flare which added a lot of value to the cover. It may not have been as good as the original song, but at least it was something different. The End is Where We Begin has a strong presence on YouTube from fans who remediate the work of Thousand Foot Krutch.