Songfacts®:

• Taking Back Sunday's third album, Louder Now (2006), opens with a monstrous guitar riff that launches the track "What's It Feel Like To Be A Ghost?" and signals the emo gods' intention to refashion themselves as a hard-rocking band. In reality, Taking Back Sunday always considered themselves a rock band and were uncomfortable with the emo label, despite their penchant for youthful, angst-ridden lyrics on earlier tunes like "You're So Last Summer."
  
  Frontman Adam Lazzara, who was in his early 20s when Louder Now was released, considers the album a "post-adolescent pre-midlife crisis" that chronicles his uncertain steps into maturity in his life and music. He told CBS News in 2006:
  
  "I just call it that because it's my way of not feeling like I'm alone in how I feel towards life. There's part of me that wants to think that there are other people my age that don't really know their place in the world and are trying to figure it out, not knowing if it's the right thing. It's the whole 'teetering on the edge of adulthood' and trying to figure out if it's worth it or not."
• This was used on the soundtrack of the 2007 movie Transformers.
• The repetition of the title phrase in the chorus captures the feelings of isolation and loneliness the band were experiencing at the height of their career. The song's theme also inspired the album's artwork, which depicts a retro movie-ticket booth with ghostly images reflected in its glass.
  
  "If you look closer at the album cover, you see all the reflections in the window so it makes everyone like an apparition, you know?" Lazzara told CBS News. "We wanted to touch on the feeling that you can be in a room packed full of people and still feel alone."
• Taking Back Sunday released their first two albums, Tell All Your Friends (2002) and Where You Want To Be (2004), on the independent label Victory Records. The latter is considered their breakthrough release and garnered a lot of attention with major record labels who scrambled to sign the band while they were touring the country with Jimmy Eat World. They ultimately chose Warner Bros. Records, who gave them plenty of time to work on their major-label debut, Louder Now. The band recorded the album at Barefoot Studios in Los Angeles, but they wrote most of it out of a rented room in Manhattan. Some of the songs were written while they were still on tour, including "What's It Feel Like To Be A Ghost?," which had its debut before a live audience.
• Taking Back Sunday weren't worried about being labeled sellouts by their fans because the band's goal was always to get their music out to as many people as possible and they knew Warner Bros. could help them do that. Entering the big leagues also meant they had the clout to work with just about anyone they wanted. The band met with several renowned producers - like Rob Cavallo (Green Day), Gil Norton (Foo Fighters), and Howard Benson (My Chemical Romance) - before choosing Eric Valentine, who produced Third Eye Blind's 1997 debut album and Queens of the Stone Age's Songs For The Deaf (2002).
• "What's It Feel Like To Be A Ghost?" lent its name to a two-part episode of Degrassi: The Next Generation during the teen drama's sixth season in 2007. Taking Back Sunday makes a cameo appearance during the second half, where they perform the Louder Now track "MakeDamnSure" at a university concert.
• Louder Now peaked at #2 on both the all-genre Billboard 200 albums chart and the Rock Albums chart. They'd never appeared on the latter chart before, proving their attempt to make a big rock album worked. They continued to reach the Top 10 of the tally on their next four albums.