Whilst talent will get you so far in the world of music, it’s well-known that everyone needs a bit of luck to take that jump up to the next level. From The Beatles to modern pop stars like Ed Sheeran, every artist of note has had fortune play a role in their ascendance. The same applies to alternative metal heroes System of a Down, as the producer of all five of their albums, Rick Rubin, recently revealed.
Rubin explored luck’s role in conceiving music when speaking on The Joe Rogan Experience in October 2022. He explained that serendipity appears with the helping hand you’ve been looking for the entire time when you need it. In particular, Rubin looked back at System of a Down’s signature hit ‘Chop Suey!’, from 2001’s Toxicity.
The song is a highlight of the turn of the millennium, featuring one of frontman Serj Tankian’s most iconic vocal performances and lyrical moments, with the rest of the group also shining, hopping from the atmospheric sections to the visceral ones in the blink of an eye.
The track also has a memorable video featuring Tankian eating chop suey with fans and guitarist Daron Malakian donning creepy body paint. As of 2023, it has over 1.2billion views on YouTube, making it the tenth highest-viewed rock video on the platform.
When discussing the role luck has in creating music on Joe Rogan, Rubin revealed that the famous bridge section of ‘Chop Suey!’ – “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit/ Father, into your hands/ Why have you forsaken me?” – was stumbled upon by pure chance.
He said: “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. There’s a System of a Down song called ‘Chop Suey’, and it has this big bridge section in it, where Serj (Tankian), the 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, it’s like, ‘Okay, any ideas?’ – he didn’t have any ideas.”
Continuing: “I said, ‘Okay, pick a book off the wall’. He picked a book randomly off the wall. I said, ‘Open it to any page, 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 high point in the song. It’s incredible. It’s like magic.”
