Songfacts®:

• This piano-driven rumination is about "apathy." Frontman Stephen Christian explained to us: "This individual in the song that I'm talking about is just another one of an entire generation that just seems to be so meaningless - everything is so meaningless about anything that has to do with God or drugs, and sex also seems so meaningless. It's like, Eh, whatever."
  
  Stephen went on to say that to him the current generation's indifference to everything is "like a punch in the face." "Why have you never sat down to think about it?," he asks before illustrating his explanation with a quote by French philosopher Pascal - "All of man's misfortune comes from one thing, which is not knowing how to sit quietly in a room." "He was saying that if you just sit down and think about these things, then you can solve them all," said Stephen.
  The Anberlin frontman attributes the current apathetic generation's refusal to think anything through to "our current technological advancements," which means that "no one is ever alone, and no one is ever alone in a room and they just refuse to think about it." As a result, though they have information at their fingertips, they're unable to collate that information and form an opinion. "Therefore, they have no opinion on faith, religion, on where the line is for modesty or not, and sex and drugs, they just never thought it all the way through."
  
  Stephen concluded that this laziness, "crosses boundaries into politics," where instead of investigating and analyzing what politicians are saying themselves, and "figuring out for yourself what you believe and who you're going to vote for, you simply turn on the Internet and find out who your friends on Facebook are voting for, and go with the flow, regardless of party."
• Vital is Florida rock quintet Anberlin's sixth studio album. Aaron Sprinkle, who produced the record, also manned the boards on the band's first three albums and has also worked with a variety of artists ranging from hard-rockers Deftones to CCM singer-songwriter Jeremy Camp. Stephen Christian told us "Sprinkle was absolutely incredible." He added that the band have "always felt like he was the sixth member of Anberlin simply because he did the first three records." And for the first two records, "we literally lived at his house in the basement with him."
  For New Surrender and Dark Is the Way, Light Is a Place the band had gone with different producers as they felt they "had almost hit a glass ceiling." Having become so comfortable with Sprinkle, Anberlin "weren't learning anything new, we weren't growing as musicians." And also, having signed with Universal, they could access different producers.
  After going with Neal Avron and Brendan O'Brien to helm their fourth and fifth albums, and "grown so much and learned so much from these two other producers," the band decided to return to their sixth member for Vital. They wanted to apply all they'd picked up from Avron and O'Brien but adding Aaron Sprinkle's ability to "add bells and whistles, the extras." Christian explained that what the producer brought to the table is, "this special ability to make you want to listen to the song over and over again because of the intricacies."
• Apathy of opinion is a plague of the Internet age, believes Stephen Christian, who thinks it can lead to a breakdown of relationships. "That's definitely quite a personal story," he told Artist Direct regarding this song. "It's the grand separation between loved ones. There are those relationships in life where you never have that last word. You never say what you really feel or you make up some excuse that this is not working out."
  Stephen went on to explain that he had a "dear friend who broke off a long relationship." The singer was "friends with both people," but he "felt like there was no ending, finality, or therapeutic closure." So he "wrote a song from his standpoint saying, 'These are the actual reasons. I can't stay around in a relationship where everything seems so meaningless to you and everything I value you don't value. Everything that shouldn't be valued is valued.'"
  He concluded "this obtuse, obscure relationship formed with no foundation in common bonds. The biggest things in life are what keep you together, whether it's your faith, religion, creed, or these massive views in your life. At the inception of the relationship, there's already a giant chasm. Whether you're attracted to them or you get along, these massive viewpoints will be the destruction of the relationship. That's what the song's about."
• The song features the vocals of Texan singer-songwriter Christie DuPree. She is the younger sister of Chauntelle, Sherri, Stacy, and Weston DuPree and the cousin of Garron DuPree, all of whom comprise the family Indie Rock band Eisley.
• Stephen Christian told Billboard magazine that lyrically, most of the songs on Vital, "are just about relationships and friendships and encounters and experiences, the usual stuff I draw on when I write."