Songfacts®:

• There are few things more harrowing than watching someone you love go through a breakup. For Papa Roach lead singer Jacoby Shaddix it was his son's heartbreak, and the result was not just sympathy and parental concern, but an entire song. He wrote "Even If It Kills Me" out of a deep desire to shoulder his child's sorrow.
  
  "It was like watching him walk through fire," Shaddix told NME, which is a very rockstar way of putting it, though anyone who's seen a teenager post-breakup will agree it's not far off.
  
  "Seeing that awoke something in me," he continued. "That feeling of 'How am I going to be there for him through this tragedy in his life?'
  
  "It's hard to watch people that you love suffer, and I wanted to put that feeling into song," Shaddix added." I really wanted to carry the pain for him and I realized that when life throws these things at us, sometimes it breaks us down, but sometimes it builds us up."
• The song highlights Papa Roach's continued focus on mental health awareness, a theme they've championed from their early tracks like "Last Resort" and "Never Enough" to later songs like "Elevate" and "Leave A Light On (Talk Away the Dark)."
• Shaddix wrote "Even if it Kills Me" alongside Papa Roach guitarist and keyboardist Tobin Esperance, Anthony Esperance (yes, it's a family business, he's an additional guitarist for the band), WZRD BLD, aka Drew Fulk (Lil Peep's "Runaway," Disturbed's "Hey You") and Andrew Goldstein (All Time Low's "Monsters," Maroon 5's "Beautiful Mistakes"). Drew Fulk and the band handled the production.
• The music video looks like a mash-up of Stranger Things and The Last Of Us, with Jacoby Shaddix fighting a CGI monster but also being taken away in an ambulance. Directed by Jesse Davey and Ed Shiers, it's a very dramatic representation of the lyric.
• On March 26, 2025, Papa Roach released a reimagined rendering of the track. This version offers a fresh take on the original while retaining its emotional core. Le Spirit produced it alongside the band.
• "Even If It Kills Me" climbed to the top of Billboard's Mainstream Rock Airplay chart and charted in 27 countries, which is rather impressive for a song that began as a dad trying to help his kid feel less terrible.