Random chance played a part in the biggest hit to emerge from Aremian American metal oddities System Of A Down. “Chop Suey!“, propulsive first single from the band’s 2001 sophomore album “Toxicity” catapulted the band to international fame and helped “Toxicity” eventually attain 6x multi-platinum status. Acclaimed producer Rick Rubin (Slayer, Johnny Cash) was behind the boards for that release and revealed how one of the lyrics for the song came about by mere chance.
Appearing recently on ‘The Joe Rogan Experience‘, Rubin commented:
“My experience is, when you are open and looking for these clues in the world, they’re happening all the time. And they’re happening, often right when you need them… This System Of A Down song called ‘Chop Suey!‘… I think. You know that song? It has this big bridge section in it where Serj [Tankian], lyric writer—the singer—didn’t have words for this one part of the song.
And we’re sitting in the library in my old house and he said ‘I don’t have words for this’ and we were finishing and it’s like, ok. ‘Any ideas?’; he didn’t have any ideas. So I said, ‘Ok, pick a book off the wall.’ He picked a book randomly off the wall, I said ‘open it to any page [and] tell me the first phrase you see.’
He opened it, first phrase he sees: that’s what’s in the song, and it’s a highpoint in the song. It’s incredible, like magic.”
When asked by Rogan what part it was, Rubin paused before offering:
“It’s the part, ‘Father, into your hands. Why have you forsaken me?’ It’s wild… The context, it doesn’t really make sense to what’s going on, it’s rad.”
Both Rubin and Rogan then proceeded to watch the music video for the song, with Rubin notably nodding his head the entire time. “Chop Suey!” has long since established itself as System Of A Down‘s defining song, with it’s official music video having racked up over 1.2 billion views on YouTube since being uploaded in 2009. The track has also earned over 889 million plays on Spotify as of press time.
