Songfacts®:

• After drummer Tony Thaxton broke his arm in an accident early on New Years Day 2009, he feared he wouldn't recover in time to play on the album. However the band took the mishap as an opportunity to challenge their songwriting process and keep the creative energy flowing up until they entered the studio in May. Guitarist Josh Cain explained in publicity materials "[If not for the situation with Tony's arm] there are some songs that wouldn't have come out the way they did. What this process allowed [us] to do was flesh my ideas out as much as possible. [For example, I was able to give my songs] to Matt to get his thoughts and then have Justin sing to it. Tony was then delivered a song that contained everything."
• This song was one of the ones to benefit from the delay. Cain told Alternative Press: "In February 2009, we had to try new methods of songwriting due to Tony's broken arm. We had to work on our ideas at our individual homes and e-mail them back and forth to each other. I had the idea of 'Hysteria' sitting in my ideas folder on my laptop gathering dust for around a year. I spent a bunch of time with it and flushed out the rest of my guitar parts and then emailed it to Matt. He sent me the song back with bass, keyboards, handclaps, and programmed drums, adding some really great moments to the song. It was a bit different for us, but everyone seemed to dig it. Since Tony had to do drums after his arm had healed, we had no clue what direction he was planning on going with it. I remember sitting in the studio while he recorded the drum parts, finally hearing the song complete. He had put the final piece to this weird rocking song with some great drum fills that fit perfectly with Justin's frantic out-of-breath verse melody and anthem chorus melody making this song a band favorite."