“This was actually the last song we made for the record. Joe came up with the music and I liked it a lot, but I was just so buried in all the other songs and trying to finish lyrics. I think he was getting nervous because I hadn't addressed it; he was a bit like, ‘Hey? Are we doing something with this one?’ But it kept coming back to me and eventually I really sunk my teeth into and came up with a concept and lyric idea on a day off in the studio. I went in there by myself and didn't know how to turn anything on; I was just singing over that song and it all came to me. I didn't even have it written down, the chorus just came out.
“The Numbers is about the direction that power flows in – a president is only a response to what people want, for better or for worse. The idea crystallised around the time of the U.S. election which was still, at that point, almost a year away from happening. With every election, the punk rock community talks about their varying opinions on voting. No-one has more opinions on voting than the punk rock community and a lot of it's like, ‘It's Hitler vs. Stalin!’ or, ‘Your vote doesn't matter!’ or, ‘Corporations control the world anyway!’ – all those tropes that are everywhere, but especially in punk rock, and [said as an] indictment. But we still haven't figured out a better way for humans to coexist than democracy and the idea of representation. There are a lot of flaws in it, for sure: people with money have an advantage and an outside influence on corporations, institutionalised racism and gender [inequality] all play a role in power. But you can still vote bad guys out of office, you know? It's not a dictatorship and it's not like a corporatocracy. The interesting thing is people think if you shrink government then the power would then transfer to people. But look what happens, at least in [America], when you shrink government: power transfers to corporations who don't answer to voters, they answer to shareholders. The power’s not coming back to you.
“For all its flaws, [democracy] is still the best thing we have. The Numbers reminds me that we wield power, yes it can be a frustrating process when you don't get what you want the next morning, but you wield power. And you don't need to take it from me. Look at any major events and changes in history: they always come from the bottom up with people putting pressure on people in power.”