Songfacts®:

• This song was written in Cape Town, South Africa where the rest of the band had joined frontman Jared Leto in order to finish the album. It was while there that the album title was changed from the previously planned "The Battle of One" to "A Beautiful Lie."
• The music video for this, directed by Angakok Panipaq, was the first one ever to be shot 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Greenland. The promo for the band's song "From Yesterday" was the first American music video shot in the People's Republic of China. Frontman Jared Leto said on his record label's website: "Shooting in Greenland was a dream come true and one of the most exciting adventures we've ever had as a band. Although incredibly challenging and at times it seemed just out of our reach, once we finally arrived the beauty and magnificence of the terrain, the wonderful culture of the people, and the amazing journey itself were all inspiring beyond belief. Almost everyone has heard of global warming by now but for the people of Greenland it is a real and tangible problem of today, not an issue of tomorrow. This journey changed our lives."
• Leto described the album as: "A story of life, love, death, pain, joy, and passion. Of what it is to be human"
• 30 Seconds To Mars were formed by Hollywood actor Jared Leto (guitars and vocals) and his brother Shannon Leto (drums). They recruited Matt Wachter (bass and keyboards) and later on Tomo Milicevic (guitar). Wachter explained on Virgin Records website that the band's name "actually comes from a thesis that we found online it was written by a former Harvard professor. And one of the subsections of the thesis was titled 'thirty seconds to mars' and he goes on to talk about the exponential growth of technology that relates to humans and saying that we are quite literally thirty seconds to mars. What it means to us is, we thought it best described our music, in short."