What does New Divide mean?

Linkin Park: New Divide Meaning

Album cover for New Divide album cover

Song Released: 2009


New Divide Lyrics

I remembered black skies
The lightning all around me
I remembered each flash
As time began to blur
Like a startling sign
That fate had finally found me
And your voice was all I heard
That I get what I deserved

[Chorus]
So give me...

  1. 1TOP RATED

    #1 top rated interpretation:
    anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Feb 10th 2015 !⃝

    Fuck sake, it's about leaving negativity behind, and letting go of negative experience. "To reach the truth that lies across this new divide",to get a positive future by letting go of all the negativity that has occurred in the past. "In every loss, in every lie, in every truth that you'd deny. And each regret and each goodbye
    was a mistake to great to hide", simple, it's a sort of numeration of negative experiences, wether it being a break up, a loss by death or even simple, being a test you failed at school. You can get a positive future, let go of the negativity.

  2. 2TOP RATED

    #2 top rated interpretation:
    lakuna
    click a star to vote
    Jul 31st 2010 !⃝

    He loves her but he keeps hurting her. He can't help it, every choice he makes seems to hurt her further and drive a wedge farther between them until they're on separate sides of a huge chasm.

    I remembered black skies / the lightning all around me
    I remembered each flash / as time began to blur

    I see every moment they've shared together race across the 'screen' of his mind.

    Like a startling sign / that fate had finally found me

    This line sounds almost sarcastic, like he's not startled that 'fate' or karma has caught up to him. Like he'd been running from the consequences of his actions and now they've caught up to him.

    And your voice was all I heard
    That I'd get what I deserve

    She can't forgive him for what he's done, and she tells him that he'll get what he deserves. And even though he did it, the finality, the hate that 'I'd get what I deserve' entails, snaps him back to reality.

    So give me reason / to prove me wrong / to wash this memory clean
    Let the floods cross the distance in your eyes

    He's begging her to let him fix it, wash it clean.

    Give me reason / to fill this hole / connect the space between

    To fill the hole the bottomless hole he's dug between them, and realizing he can't fill it/fix it, to connect the sides of the divide and bring them back together again.

    Let it be enough to reach the truth that lies
    Across this new divide

    That's such a desperate line. Like he's praying to God that it's enough to reach the truth (her) that lies across this endless chasm between them.

    There was nothing in sight / but memories left abandoned
    There was nowhere to hide / the ashes fell like snow

    Now that's he's begged, it's all laid bare. There's nothing in sight anymore but his mistakes, and he has nowhere to hide from them and the ash that's falling from the bridges he's burned.

    And the ground caved in / between where we were standing
    And your voice was all I heard
    That I get what I deserve

    The progress he'd attempted, the bridge or connection he'd re-built, or begun to rebuild between them comes crumbling down and she repeats her words.
    She won't forgive him, and it destroys him more than what he did. Not the action, but that because of what he did it's ruined them.

    So give me reason / to prove me wrong / to wash this memory clean
    Let the floods cross the distance in your eyes
    Across this new divide

    He's begging again. Still trying to reach her. And from across the divide she replies to his begging.

    In every loss / in every lie
    In every truth that you'd deny
    And each regret / and each goodbye
    was a mistake to great to hide

    And it drives home her words once more. He keeps replaying them in his head. They're his death sentence.

    And your voice was all I heard
    That I get what I deserve

    So give me reason / to prove me wrong / to wash this memory clean
    Let the floods cross the distance in your eyes
    Give me reason / to fill this hole / connect the space between
    Let it be enough to reach the truth that lies
    Across this new divide

    He won't give up, because he loves her.

  3. 3TOP RATED

    #3 top rated interpretation:
    anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Aug 8th 2009 !⃝

    Well the main metaphor of the song is the ground opening up between two people, symbolizing that something has severed their relationship. The cause of this appears to be that the person the song is directed at has been lying and has been discovered. This person apparently believes that the singer is really at the root of the problem. The singer is asking this person to give them a reason to reconcile the relationship. (sorry for being so cut and dry but it was kind of difficult to explain any other way.)

  4. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Apr 11th !⃝

    Becoming self aware changing acknowledging the truth about a person or situation
    Moving on
    Regardless of loss or distance
    yet hoping one day they will finally see











  5. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Apr 2nd 2023 !⃝

    It's all about betrayed by someone he love, the truth may hurt for a little while but a LIE hurts forever.

  6. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Jan 4th 2021 !⃝

    Hi guys you all is right everyone has a way to express thier pain it can be human emotionally pain or
    Seeking redemption from above

  7. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Aug 4th 2017 !⃝

    The first person was right it's about a relationship I did the same thing and when I tried to fix it it was to late she to said I'd get what I deserve

  8. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Sep 24th 2016 !⃝

    Guys this song is about war. This song was made for WORLD WAR 3. Look this up on YouTube. -------> WW3 NEW DIVIDE and click the second video when it pops up

  9. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Sep 21st 2015 !⃝

    It is about Lucifer. Easy as that. Why? Other anonymous guy explained that allready. I've got the guts to name the entities tho. It's about Lucifer and either Yahweh or Michael.

  10. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Nov 5th 2014 !⃝

    Love this song so much. It sounds like it could be about fighting in a war, he's watching people die and fighting. And like he knows he won't make it, but he keeps fighting. The new divide could be the end of the war, but it's impossible to get across. That's my take. There's a video of the new star trek movies put together with this song, It's on YouTube, check it out. It's really awesome.

  11. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Nov 5th 2014 !⃝

    Wow, a lot of emotion for this song. I do love it though, it is epic. You can put this with any action movie and it would fit. My take on it is, it's about fighting your inner demons, a war with yourself. The voice he talks about, I would say is his. The new divide is the problem you're facing, your inner struggles. Of course, I could be totally wrong, Lol.

  12. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Jun 18th 2014 !⃝

    Well,i read even others interpretations and to be honest,as the main leader of the song doesn't give an idea about the song,we all have the rights to interpret ate it in different manners.To me this songs sounds like this:There is a boy,maybe a rude boy who loves a girl,which cames from another class of mentalitation,of course higher than the one of that boy.He became to behave badly,so she,as his best friend always tell him not to do kinda things,but he do not agree.Always their conversations had ended with her words"You are going to take what you deserve"
    Now,that they both are mature he had found out that he loves her deeply,and he can't do nothing for that.
    On the other hand is she,and she is a stronger personality.Even that she loves him,she can't forgive him after all.Anyway he keeps trying.He want to take just a reason,maybe the most important one,that she still loves him no matter what happened,to continue begging her.As doing this,he remembered all the things that she had said to him.
    Anyway,he still keeps trying.No matter how far they've come,he can't wait to see tomorrow with you...

  13. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Jun 6th 2014 !⃝

    You're ALL idiots. This song has nothing to do with a guy and a girl, good grief, how pedestrian and boring, is that all you monkeys ever think about is your tawdry little relationships? Hell no. Listen to the lyrics. The song is clearly about "breaking up" all right -- but not with some mere human. It's about breaking up with a supreme entity, a monolithic figurehead of power, a god.

    This supreme entity is one prone to thinking everything is always the fault of the person it happens TO instead of the fault of the person who does it TO THEM. That's a convenient self-justifying default excuse this entity has for its capricious whims -- giving with one hand and taking away with the other; luring people with promises of love and salvation into a toxic cesspit of cyclical games of guilt and grace, a trap of self-doubt and self-loathing, a perpetual co-dependency all based on swallowing the premise that you are nothing without Him and can never be anything without Him.

    This supreme entity has clearly presented its lying lures to the narrator, who fell for them and did his level best to hold up his end of the bargain in this sick, one-way, unilateralist relationship with this supreme -- yet ultimately very petty and self-absorbed -- tyrant. This tyrant stakes his whole end-game on a massive PR campaign that he is pure good, that everything he does is unquestionably right (even when it's very wrong, like slaughtering millions of innocents in a single sweep, etc.), and that his love is not just the best love but the only real love, and everyone needs him in order to live and escape a dire fate of eternal torture. His power is perceived to be so vast that the only thing that "threatens" him, so to speak, is that anyone should see through this millenia-old woven tapestry veil of lies and deceit to what is really going on. And even then it only really threatens him in the sense that it could influence other people to open their eyes and wake up to the truth about this so-called "ultimate truth", about this supreme entity, that he is not even remotely as portrayed in these massive PR campaigns, not even remotely as reported by all the masses he has hypnotized and brainwashed into feeding his ego with their "praises" and worship.

    Our narrator (the voice the singer and the lyrics represent) is one such person, because he is one of the few strong enough to stand up and defy this monster and tell him NO. NO I will not accept your lie that I'm nothing without you. NO I will not accept your sick, twisted, jaded view of human nature that says we are all born polluted with evil. See, this guy has just been through an experience where he knows clearly, beyond all shadow of a doubt, it was NOT his fault what happened, but this supreme tyrant is trying to push blame on him as usual. When in fact it was this tyrant whose capricious whims caused such vast suffering in his life, for he'd given him a great gift that could never be replaced, and the recipient had hesitated out of the same self-doubt instilled by the tyrant, and then just when he had been assured and reached his hand out to accept that gift, it was snatched away from him. The better life -- the amazing transformation inside himself to make him a nobler, better person, the freedom and liberation from matters of shame and blame, all of it was exposed as a lie and a sham.

    Now he faces the one who used him so cruelly, and all the earth-shattering, sky-splitting descriptions in this song are METAPHORS for how it feels to stare down something that much bigger, that much more powerful, that much so established that nobody questions it, when you know beyond a shadow of a doubt no matter if the whole world calls it good, it is really truly evil, bad, selfish and wrong -- it is really truly everything it projects onto and accuses the human race of being born as. This supreme entity is in fact the very "devil" it pretends to warn everyone about -- another lying tactic designed to hoodwink the masses about its true nature and intent. But the record of history -- all the misery and suffering -- that does not lie. Not that which humans inflict upon themselves and others, but that which is inflicted upon them.

    So this is the moment when it comes down to the wire, when the bare truth uncovered becomes the ground upon which the righteous defiance thereof makes its stand. The severing of all those hopes and dreams for the supremacy of the universe to be trustworthy and caring is so profound it is like the sky opening up and spilling lightning on the ground, like a chasm opening up between oneself and the world one once knew. And all the while the challenge rings out -- GIVE ME **REASON** TO PROVE ME WRONG AND WASH THIS MEMORY CLEAN -- in other words don't just accuse and condemn -- PROVE IT. PROVE I'm wrong when it's YOU that did ME wrong ... PROVE IT, I DARE YOU -- in fact I NEED you to prove it to get the agony of knowing all of this out of my mind, to wash my awareness clean of a terrible knowledge that only isolates and dooms.

    But the supreme entity is so locked into its ways, so locked into believing its own campaigns, believing its own bullshit, that all it can do is regard everything it inflicts, every misery it visits upon its victims, as being THEIR FAULT somehow. So every loss, every lie, every truth about itself that it denies, every regret a person has, every goodbye or parting of ways, becomes a mistake in its eyes, a "mistake too great to hide" on the part of the one who suffers from those things, when in reality it is inflicted upon them by this supreme entity. This entity is coldhearted toward anyone who sees through his crap and knows what he really is, hence the challenge to "let the floods cross the distance in your eyes" -- in other words, instead of a deluge of wrath let's see some real feeling here, let's see some tears, give me any reason to think there's hope, any reason to make an effort to fill in this huge chasm between us and reconnect.

    Of course all the while the entity is saying "you get what you deserve" in the face of someone else's misery -- that's his whole bullying/abusive justification for every cruel whim he indulges at our (human beings') expense. His answer to everything is "it's your fault" and most of humanity falls for that garbage and that's why our world is so screwed up all the time. People fall for it and then push that same filth onto others until the whole of humanity is poisoned by it. The people who stand up to challenge this despicable supreme tyrannical self-centered hypocrite are the only true heroes in the universe -- that's why simply settling on "there's no such thing" isn't enough. The construct is as firmly embedded in the minds of many human beings as if there were such a thing, so it cannot merely be denounced as silly superstition and non-existent; it must be exposed and adamantly opposed.

    But that can be a lonely and scary path for those brave enough to embark -- where the skies are black and full of lightning, where the earth opens up into a yawning chasm between themselves and this entity, between themselves and all the perpetually infantilizing "comforts" it supposedly can offer. It's like the guy is just staring into this huge smoking crater where his entire LIFE had once been, being told it's all HIS fault and he DESERVES this, and shaking his fist at this despicable unilateralist tyrant and demanding just one good reason why he should trade his eyes and their seeing of the real truth for this toxic shaming, blaming bullshit that isn't even the fact of the matter and/or come crawling back.

  14. jixyoo
    click a star to vote
    Oct 30th 2013 !⃝

    It is about being betrayed by some one you love "and you voice was all i heard and i get what i deserve"
    They are saying Its my fault for loving that person

  15. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Sep 22nd 2013 !⃝

    "New Divide" is obviously a song about betrayal, and it's written in such a way that the POV of the person speaking could be either that of the betrayer or the betrayed.

  16. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Feb 17th 2013 !⃝

    Dark skies-dark words; lightining, flashes -anger, gf screaming (prolly via socrates). Time usually blurs as old offenses become new.

    The fate: every guy's nightmare, ur b**ch in full swing :p. We always surprised to realize she ain't so different. For some, we married mama :D

    The caving/separation became quiet against those words . . . What I deserve.

    Hanging by a thread he begs her for a reason from reaching an obvious conclusion.

    The truth that lies-lies here is used in two senses, first as a measure of distance and to describe how he wants to view her hurting words (i.e u really neva loved me, etc those 'truths' lie across this new divide).

    Past/good memories become tainted/burned/abandoned when viewed thru rage; no more safety(hiding place) in them.

    In every loss/lie . . .truth denied - the chasm as seen from the chorus
    each regret . . . Mistake- the new divide is actually an old one, haunted by his past, he hesitates and pleads for a reason . . .

  17. Robertsons_Girl
    click a star to vote
    Dec 13th 2012 !⃝

    He loves her but he keeps hurting her. He can't help it, every choice he makes seems to hurt her further and drive a wedge farther between them until they're on separate sides of a huge chasm.

  18. nobodyyouknow
    click a star to vote
    Dec 13th 2012 !⃝

    The two lovers are divided by something that he is trying to overcome. He is trying to fix and save the relationship..

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