Bring Me The Horizon released “Teardrops” on October 22, 2020, taking the anxiety running through POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR somewhere deeply personal. The single examined what happens when distress becomes so constant that feeling anything starts to become difficult. Its video put frontman Oli Sykes underwater to make that struggle visible.
Sykes told NME that the song concerned people being “traumatised into submission.” He was talking about the cumulative effect of bad news, with repeated exposure to tragedy turning human suffering into something people could process as statistics. That concern gave “Teardrops” a specific place within the record’s broader narrative. “Dear Diary,” addressed the mental strain of lockdown, while “Parasite Eve” confronted an emerging crisis. “Teardrops” explored the exhaustion of trying to absorb it all.
The chorus puts that numbness into a blunt observation: “The emptiness is heavier than you think.” It’s a useful way into the song because the problem isn’t a shortage of things to feel. It’s being overwhelmed by them. The lyrics move through fear, isolation and a slipping sense of self, giving the record’s wider anxiety an intimate perspective.
Musically, the track leaned into nu metal, with the combination of melody and heaviness drawing comparisons to Linkin Park. Sykes and Jordan Fish wrote and produced it, with Fish also handling programming and backing vocals. At release, Sykes identified it as his favorite song on the record. He felt it captured something recognizably Bring Me The Horizon without simply repeating an earlier track.
There was room for an unusual production experiment inside that familiar framework. In a January 2021 post on the band’s TikTok, Sykes explained how an elephant’s trumpet became part of “Teardrops.” The process involved finding a suitable recording, persuading his bandmates to try it, then changing its pitch and adding reverb. The finished sound was worked into the track, a small detail that reveals how much experimentation could sit beneath a direct, accessible song.
Sykes took responsibility for the video’s story as well, writing, directing and editing it. Sony Music described the drowning imagery as an expression of his own relationship with depression. Filming required him to spend a full day in an underwater tank. That physical commitment gave the song’s sense of losing control a concrete form: the singer struggling beneath the surface as the music continued around him.
“Teardrops” became the third track on POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR, released on October 30, 2020. The nine song EP placed it between “Parasite Eve” and “Obey.” The single reached No. 39 on the UK Singles Chart and spent two weeks at No. 1 on the Official Rock & Metal Singles Chart.
