Editing Make Yourself (section)

===Writing and recording===
The songs for the album were written following an exhausting tour for their full-length major label debut ''[[S.C.I.E.N.C.E.]]''. Touring for ''S.C.I.E.N.C.E.'' began in mid-1997, once they had finished recording it, and covered the entirety of 1998, with the band playing over 300 shows that year alone.<ref name="make19"/> The ''S.C.I.E.N.C.E.'' touring cycle concluded in January 1999, following a run of shows with [[Black Sabbath]] and [[Pantera]]. The shows with Black Sabbath were as part of their reunion tour, and Incubus was put on this tour on the insistence of the Osbourne family, who also put them on the 1998 edition of [[Ozzfest]], since [[Jack Osbourne]] liked their music.<ref name="brave">{{Cite web|url=https://bravewords.com/news/incubus-guitarist-mike-einziger-composes-score-for-ozzy-osbourne-documentary-what-a-great-family-for-supporting-my-band-and-me-as-an-artist-theyre-fantastic-people|title=INCUBUS Guitarist Mike Einziger Composes Score For OZZY OSBOURNE Documentary - "What A Great Family For Supporting My Band And Me As An Artist:; They’re Fantastic People"|website=bravewords.com}}</ref> Brandon Boyd reflected in a 2020 ''[[Kerrang!]]'' article, "when we got home, we started coming up with ideas and gave ourselves eight weeks to write the record and in those eight weeks, all the songs that appear on the album came out."<ref name="oral"/> In a 1999 interview, Boyd mentioned that "Nowhere Fast" originated through improvisational live jams during the ''S.C.I.E.N.C.E.'' tour, remarking "we've been exploring [[drum and bass|drum-'n'-bass]] here and there on stage, playing little improvisational ditties in between real songs from the records. [[Jose Pasillas|José]] would start playing a drum-'n'-bass he'd made up, I'd play my [[didgeridoo]] to it, and [it] started forming out of live things like that."<ref name="bio99">Incubus.com biography by Brandon Boyd (1999)</ref> For ''Make Yourself'', turntablist Chris Kilmore intended to use a scratch record of sounds he had recorded over the years. However, it took two and a half weeks for Kilmore to get this record made, which led to him not being present for the early portions of the writing process.<ref name="make19"/>

While the album has since been considered to have a more accessible sound than their previous works, Boyd claimed in 2020 that "we didn’t actually say out loud to each other that we needed to write a more commercial record; we just wrote in the same way we knew how to write and ''Make Yourself'' is what came out."<ref name="oral">{{Cite web|url=https://www.kerrang.com/instead-of-falling-into-some-subgenre-of-rock-we-created-our-own-an-oral-history-of-incubus-make-yourself/|title=An oral history of Incubus' Make Yourself: "Instead of falling into…|date=October 26, 2022|website=Kerrang!}}</ref> However, guitarist [[Mike Einziger]] did note in 2020 that the band wanted to make the album more mature and less "zany" than earlier works such as ''S.C.I.E.N.C.E.''.<ref name="oral"/> In a 1999 interview from when the album was being written, he further said that it was going to have more "ambiance" and be more focused than ''S.C.I.E.N.C.E.''.<ref name="way">1999 interview with Mike Einziger and José Pasillas [https://web.archive.org/web/20231207190321/https://ascensive.wordpress.com/2008/08/27/incubus-interview-98-99-ish/]</ref> In 2020, he stated there was a "genuine creative desire to step up our artistry. We really wanted to become great songwriters [and] graduate from the zany music we spent our high school years writing."<ref name="oral"/> Einziger added that, "I really wanted Brandon to be more vulnerable. We had conversations about that; some of them were uncomfortable. I felt like a lot of the music we’d written up until that point was personal but some of it was almost cartoonish, which is awesome and something that came very naturally to us, but I felt like we could really connect with people and write music that could make more of an emotional connection."<ref name="oral"/> 

Einziger also noted in a 2011 [[Ultimate Guitar]] interview that he knew the band's change in direction would potentially alienate fans of their earlier work, which had more of an experimental funk-based sound. He compared the change in sound from ''S.C.I..E.N.C.E.'' to ''Make Yourself'' to the change in sound from 2006's ''[[Light Grenades]]'' to 2011's ''[[If Not Now, When? (album)|If Not Now, When?]]'', which saw the band temporarily go in a soft [[adult contemporary]] direction.<ref name="abc">{{Cite web |last= |first= |title=Opinion: The 50 Best Albums Of 2011 |url=http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/entertainment/2012/01/opinion-the-50-best-albums-of-2011 |access-date=2024-11-15 |website=ABC News |language=en}}</ref> In this same interview, he said when they started writing ''Make Yourself'', he felt as though the band had naturally come "to the end of an era" with their music, saying this mirrored how they felt when they started writing ''If Not Now, When?''.<ref name="ug"/> He added that on both occasions, he felt like it was time "to do something very different that was going to polarize the people who had been previously listening to us."<ref name="ug">{{Cite web|url=https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/interviews/incubus_the_gravity_of_our_friendship_drove_incubus_back_into_the_studio.html|title=Incubus: 'The Gravity Of Our Friendship Drove Incubus Back Into The Studio'|website=www.ultimate-guitar.com}}</ref>

Tensions arose between band members during the making of the album, which led to them briefly entering group therapy.<ref name=
"spin01"/> Boyd reflected on the tension in a 2001 interview with ''[[Spin (magazine)|Spin]]'', saying that "when we're making music together, it's like five men making love  — in a very platonic sense. It's very erotic because your spirits are intermingling, you're becoming one. It's also why it can get so heated. You're tapping into this electricity that's very primal."<ref name=
"spin01"/>

Regarding his experience writing the album, Boyd remembered in 2020, "when we were touring ''S.C.I.E.N.C.E'', I’d been with my girlfriend for quite a long time, and then it came to light that she’d been having an affair while I was gone, so I was dealing with a pretty high degree of heartbreak when I went into ''Make Yourself''. The writing process ended up becoming like an open poetic therapy session for me. There was a little bit of anger, definitely heartbreak but also a sense of hope around finding a new love. From my point of view, the songs very clearly describe the arc of that experience."<ref name="oral"/> Prior to discovering the affair, Boyd had been dating this woman since 1991, which was the same year that Incubus formed.<ref name="oct97">{{Cite web|url=http://incubus-france.chez-alice.fr/kerrang1.htm|title=Interview Incubus - Kerrang octobre 1997|website=incubus-france.chez-alice.fr}}</ref> In a 2000 interview, Boyd said that when "[[Pardon Me]]" was written, he was also dealing with the deaths of a family member and a friend, in addition to these relationship troubles. He said that he was "being bombarded by life" at the time, and that this inspired the song's lyrical themes.<ref>2000 newspaper article for the 18 February 2000 Snocore tour show at Mid-Hudson Civic Center Poughkeepsie, NY [https://twitter.com/fnmlivedb/status/1494448791558111241/photo/1] </ref> The lyrics to "[[Stellar (song)|Stellar]]" were inspired by Boyd's new girlfriend Jo, who he met during the making of the album.<ref name="bio99"/> She would later appear in the song's music video,<ref name="spin01">{{Cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=m-qexhnZaukC&q=%22Considering+his+androgynous+beauty+and+sweet+demeanor%2C+plus+Incubus&pg=PA74|title=SPIN|first=SPIN Media|last=LLC|date=November 25, 2001|publisher=SPIN Media LLC|via=Google Books}}</ref> with Boyd saying in 2020, "it was a very different kind of love than the love I experienced as a teenager. It felt much more expansive, hence the 'meet me in outer space' imagery."<ref name="oral"/> Boyd wrote the melodies to the song after Einziger showed him the main guitar part for it.<ref name="oral"/>

Regarding the hit single "[[Drive (Incubus song)|Drive]]", Boyd said "a lot of those topics are still things I wrestle with. The song is about reckoning with fear and uncertainty and I’m still in a kind-of active dance with that, as I probably will be my entire life", adding that "just because you write something down, put a melody to it and a bunch of people like it doesn’t mean it was a thought that was complete – it’s not as if I became enlightened around the idea of not letting fear dictate the course of my life."<ref name="oral"/> Einziger said, "I could never have predicted [Drive] was going to be a smash-hit song, but I knew that it felt special to us. It felt like an honest encapsulation of being vulnerable and I felt like people would connect with it."<ref name="oral"/> Before recording the final version that appears on the album, the band worked on a demo version of the song at their homes which closely resembled the final version, with Einziger saying, "I remember [Brandon] singing the lyrics to me in the car as they appear on the album. The version we made before we recorded it properly was really the same."<ref name="oral"/>

When the album was being recorded at NRG in North Hollywood, Chris Kilmore had his own DJ setup in the hallway. He adds, "there were a bunch of other bands there. [[311 (band)|311]] was there a lot of the time, and [[Jurassic 5]] was there a lot of the time. And because I had that turntable setup in the hallway, I was always out there practicing and trying stuff."<ref name="make19"/> The day the instrumental song "Battlestar Scralatchtica" was recorded, Brandon Boyd was missing because he had a dentist appointment. Kilmore states, "we weren’t going to waste a day. So we wrote a cool little track. I was out in the hallway scratching, and [[DJ Nu-Mark|Nu-Mark]] and [[Cut Chemist]] walked by. I was like, 'Hey. Do you guys want to scratch on this track we just did?'. We went in, laid it down, and that’s how 'Battlestar Scralatchtica' came about."<ref name="make19"/> Around the time the record was being made, Kilmore also contributed DJ scratches to the album ''[[Introduction to Mayhem]]'', by the nu/[[rap metal]] band [[Primer 55]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.allmusic.com/album/introduction-to-mayhem-mw0000051839|title=Primer 55 - Introduction to Mayhem Album Reviews, Songs & More &#124; AllMusic|via=www.allmusic.com}}</ref>