Vulnerable (The Used album)

Musical style

Lead singer Bert McCracken said of the album: "This record’s really about becoming more than just who you are, and allowing yourself that vulnerability to be a more powerful person. It’s a lot more positive than a lot of records we’ve written in the past. I think everyone could use some positivity nowadays."

McCracken also said about the music: "There’s a lot of hip-hop influence, beats and drum and bass kind of stuff, but it’s also still a The Used record, by all means. Just like any other Used record, it’s a horse of many colors: There are a lot of soft and heavy sounds, there are a lot of brutal, sharp, bright sounds, and the tempos are anywhere from ultra-slow to super fast and heavy. There are a lot of different conceptual feelings on the record."

Release

The first single, "I Come Alive", was released digitally on January 10, 2012, and released to radio on February 14, 2012. "Hands and Faces" became the second single, and was released digitally on February 21, 2012, through the band's website and on iTunes.

In the days leading up to the release of the album, the band streamed many tracks from Vulnerable through a variety of music websites. On March 20, 2012, "Shine" and "Put Me Out", were released to stream online. On March 21, 2012, another track, "Now That You're Dead", was also made available to stream online, followed by the tracks "Kiss It Goodbye", "Moving On", and "Hurt No One", the latter were all made available to stream on March 22, 2012. On March 24 The Used posted another song, "Give Me Love" on the Kerrang! website. "Put Me Out" impacted radio on August 14, 2012. The band released a music video for "Put Me Out" on September 17, 2012. On March 11, 2013, the band released a music video for the single "Hands and Faces".

Re-issue version

The album was re-released on January 22, 2013 under the title 'Vulnerable (II)', featuring a second disc with several B-sides, acoustic tracks and remixes.

Additional track information

The Used recorded 16 songs during the Vulnerable recording session. The 4 b-sides from the session are titled "Surrender", "The Lonely", "Machine", and "Disaster". Some were released as bonus tracks and were all later included on the reissue of the album along with acoustic and remix versions of some of the albums songs. A hidden track titled "Kinda Hectic" is included on the album too. When inserted to a PC onto iTunes the song plays at the end of track 10 (from 2:42 to 3:23) but when inserted into a cd player, the song plays on track 11 in negative time (from -0:43 to 0:00).

LPs

The album has been released on standard black vinyl, limited edition 180 gram transucent red vinyl, and limited edition 180 gram transucent blue vinyl (limited to 300 copies). The limited edition transucent blue vinyl was a repress/reissue of the album released on Monday August 6, 2012.