"Burn It Down" is a song by American rock band Linkin Park. The song was released to radio stations, as well as a digital download, on April 16, 2012, as the lead single from their fifth studio album Living Things. The song was written by the band and produced by co-lead vocalist Mike Shinoda and Rick Rubin, who co-produced the band's studio albums Minutes to Midnight (2007) and A Thousand Suns (2010). A music video for the song was directed by Linkin Park turntablist Joe Hahn. As of February 13, 2013, "Burn It Down" has sold over one million copies in the United States, making it their eighth million selling single.

The song's working title was "Buried at Sea" and was recorded in February 2012, as revealed by numerous LPTVs (behind-the-scenes footage) released in April and May 2012. Lead singer Chester Bennington talked about the song in an interview with MTV, saying what made the song interesting was "the really high energy and the really strong electronic melodies and hooks kind of set this song apart, which is why we chose it as our first single."Mike Shinoda, the band's rapper and producer, noted that the song's meaning can be open to numerous interpretations, with an example being "what we do in pop culture, where we build somebody up to be the next great thing and then we just like to destroy them at the end of the day, and we've lived through that, so I think there's a lot of personal energy that went into the connection of that story." In an interview with The Huffington Post, Shinoda clarified that his explanation of "Burn It Down" was based on the band's personal experiences, saying:

...We're talking about my personal story and his personal story, and there's also a layer of pop culture that plays a role in the lyrics of the song. For example, people build up a certain celebrity or musician or actor or whatever and they're popular one minute and the next thing, you know either they've done something wrong or they've done nothing wrong and there's just a bad rumor that goes around about them and then everybody's attacking that person. That's just the way things are. We've actually lived through that as a band. All that stuff plays a role.

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