My Chemical Romance Almost Left Biggest Hit Off Album

My Chemical Romance came dangerously close to not releasing their biggest hit. Welcome to the Black Parade wasn’t working at the time of the recording sessions for The Black Parade.

Gerard Way talked recently to Apple Music 1 where the singer revealed the truth about the smash tune. He indicated that the band was having a hard time finishing the song.

“Well, it was the hardest one to finish. It ended up becoming deconstructed and kind of broken in order to rebuild it into something better. After you’ve been playing a song for a couple of months, it becomes harder and harder to make those changes as a group.”

Way noted that the band did thing the song had something to it. It just needed to be fleshed out a little bit. A change in creative direction and the overall theme of the album led to the song’s final completion.

Once Way created the Black Parade theme, he knew the song had a place. The new theme allowed the band to zip through the finished track.

“Then we started to kind of breaking the song and then reconstructing it. It was around this time that I wrote the opening melody for piano that [producer] Rob [Cavallo] played. Then once we re-approached it from the perspective of starting with a completely new introduction and a new way to start the song, it helped us fix the rest of it.”

Welcome to the Black Parade was ranked #17 on Rolling Stone’s 2006 Top 100 Songs of the Year list. It was the band’s first and only top ten Billboard Hot 100 hit.

Would Black Parade have been the same without this track? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!