Born to Lose

Album: Reign Of Terror (2011)
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Songfacts®:

  • Sleigh Bells are a Brooklyn noise-pop duo comprising guitarist and producer Derek E. Miller and vocalist Alexis Krauss. This was released as the first promotional single from their second album Reign Of Terror. The song was made available for streaming online on December 15, 2011.
  • Krauss is chillingly dismissive of the subject of this track who has a death wish. ("Heard you say suicide in your sleep/Just get on with it/You were born to lose"). The song is one of several cuts on the album that feature dark lyrical content. However, when pressed by NME as to what lies behind them, Miller remained tight-lipped. "There's a theme," he said. "It's responding to events in my life. With (first album) Treats… I was in shock and denial when making it. I'm not interested in getting into the details of what was going on, but I listen to it now and again and I'm like. 'The person who made this was avoiding something.' That worked for the record, but I couldn't avoid it anymore. I don't like talking about my emotions; that's my way of dealing with it, because I'm frustrated and unable to communicate. That's why I write songs."
  • Miller was asked by Digital Spy the reasoning behind the album title. He replied: "I went through some really difficult stuff with my family - nothing that I'm really interested in getting into. It came out of a really, really, really hard time, a really difficult time in my life. It's probably a little more literal than people think. It's not just something that we thought sounded cool. It felt that like that was actually occurring on a personal level. I'm not going to call it my own Reign of Terror, but..."

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