Frontwoman Hayley Williams discussed this song about carving out a life for yourself with Kerrang! May 9, 2009:

One line goes, ‘The truth never set me free, so I’ll do it myself.’ We’re in a situation where we’re still young and it’s hard being the ones who are going out and doing something a little different to other people our age. Some friends are going to college and some are at home who are like, I don’t know what I’m doing.‘ It’s a case of where people expect things to fall into their lap. You have to take risks to find out what you want.

Hayley Williams in a Track by Track description of ‘brand new eyes’ for Alternative Press said:

This was one of the first music demos I got [for brand new eyes] from Josh [Farro, guitar]. He recorded the guitars and put some fake drums to it, and I thought it wasn’t going to work. Ha! He even wrote the melody for the tag at the end of the chorus– you know, the part where I say “more” about a billion times. The original lyric was “Whoa”, of course. (We like “whoas” a lot.) The chorus came together in about five minutes, only I had no idea what it was about. It was just a bunch of words that came to me. A month later, when I finally got everything together for the verses, it ended up being about how I feel it takes a lot of risk to live fully.”

While not directly inspired, Hayley stated that this song gave her the ability to express her ideas which were previously shown in a song she liked, that being “One Life, One Chance” by H2O.