Welcome to the Black Parade Lyrics

How to Format Lyrics:

  • Type out all lyrics, even repeating song parts like the chorus
  • Lyrics should be broken down into individual lines
  • Use section headers above different song parts like [Verse], [Chorus], etc.
  • Use italics (<i>lyric</i>) and bold (<b>lyric</b>) to distinguish between different vocalists in the same song part
  • If you don’t understand a lyric, use [?]

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About

Genius Annotation

This song is on My Chemical Romance’s third studio album, entitled The Black Parade. The song, as well as the rest of the album, follows The Patient, a man who is dying, through death and beyond.

MCR frontman Gerard Way said in an interview:

I’d like to think that when you die death comes for you however you want, and I feel that it’s your strongest memory—either from childhood or adulthood. […]

For this particular character […] called ‘The Patient,’ his strongest memory is of being a child and his father is taking him to this parade.

So when death comes to him, it comes in the form of a Black Parade.

Q&A

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

What is the Black Parade?
Genius Answer

MCR frontman Gerard Way has expressed a belief that when someone dies, they are greeted with their fondest memory. The protagonist of TBP’s fondest memory was a parade his father took him to, so he sees this after his death.

What did My Chemical Romance say about "Welcome to the Black Parade"?
Genius Answer

In an interview, Gerard stated that “Welcome to the Black Parade” was his favorite song on the album.

[“Welcome to the Black Parade”] personifies the whole record. It’s basically the one song that sounds up the song for the record and all the risks we took jammed into one mini-epic. And it still retains everything that made us special.

Guitarist Ray Toro described the song as the band’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

[“Welcome to the Black Parade”] is probably the most epic song on the record. I love how it came together. It’s a song that we had been writing since the start of the band, but it started out in a very different form. […]

It didn’t make our first indie record because we just didn’t have the time to finish it. We brought it back for Revenge, and it was another situation where it just wasn’t feeling right. So it didn’t make that record. […]

Gerard felt that the lyrics weren’t saying anything to him, and neither was the chorus. So we changed a few things. What’s really cool when you write music is sometimes all you have to do is change a chord progression and that completely changes the face of the song.

So we basically just changed one note in the chorus and it let Gerard go somewhere else that he wouldn’t have gone, and that’s where the hook of the song came from.

Credits
Phonographic Copyright ℗
Copyright ©
Additional Piano
Assistant Engineer
Assistant Mixing Engineer
Background Vocals
Bass Guitar
Coordinator
Horns Arranger
Lead guitar
Lead Vocals
Mastering Engineer
Mixing Engineer
Recording Engineer
Rhythm Guitar
Snare Drums
String Arranger
Synthesizer
Recorded At
El Dorado, Burbank, California
Release Date
September 12, 2006
View Welcome to the Black Parade samples
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