A Beautiful Lie

A Beautiful Lie is the second studio album by American rock band 30 Seconds to Mars. The album was released on August 30, 2005 through Virgin Records and was produced by Josh Abraham. The album produced four singles, “Attack”, “The Kill (Bury Me)”, “From Yesterday”, and “A Beautiful Lie”; three of the four songs managed to chart within the top thirty on the U.S. Modern Rock chart, with “The Kill” and “From Yesterday” both entering the top ten. It has also gone Platinum, shipping over 1 million copies. Also Going on to be Gold certified in Canada (50,000 copies) by March 2007.

A Beautiful Lie is different from the band’s self-titled debut album, both musically and lyrically. Whereas the eponymous concept album’s lyrics focus on human struggle and astronomical themes, and the music was heavily atmospheric, the lyrics of A Beautiful Lie are “personal and less cerebral”, and the music takes on a youthful, more post-hardcore approach by introducing occasional intense screaming vocals and deemphasizing synth background effects.

A Beautiful Lie was recorded on four different continents in five different countries over a three-year period to accommodate vocalist/guitarist Jared Leto’s acting career. The album’s title track, as well as three other songs, were composed in Cape Town, South Africa, where Leto was later met by his bandmates to work on the tracks. It was during this time that Leto conceived the album’s title. Prior to this, the album was tentatively to be released under the title The Battle of One. The album was leaked onto peer-to-peer file sharing networks almost five months before its scheduled release; however the version of the album that leaked happened to be unmastered.