Make Yourself
defiant, urgent, half-sardonic
A self-made-man anthem that treats identity as something you have to actively construct or risk having built for you by outside forces. Incubus frames self-determination in blunt, almost crude physical terms—being assembled, molded, or violated—to argue that passivity toward one's own formation is a kind of danger.
self-determination resistance to external control identity construction autonomy vs. conformity personal responsibility
Who's speaking
The narrator speaks in first person about his own self-making, then pivots to a direct second-person address warning a listener against letting others shape them. The voice is confident bordering on aggressive, functioning more as a pep talk with teeth than a confession.
What happens
The song opens with the narrator asserting that he built himself rather than letting outside powers shape him, since the alternative would have left him weak or submissive. It then turns outward, warning the addressee that surrendering to being molded by others leaves them fragile and exploitable. The chorus distills this into an imperative to reconcile with and construct oneself. The final verses escalate the self-making claim into a vow of total self-ownership, using blunt sexual language to claim even one's failures and mistakes as self-authored rather than imposed.
How it's built
Built on a verse-verse-chorus-verse-chorus shape with the chorus functioning as a plainspoken thesis statement repeated almost like a mantra. The second verse escalates the first's conditional, hypothetical tone into declarative present-tense defiance, marking a clear turn from reasoning about self-making to enacting it. The repeated closing command functions as both outro and rallying cry, stripping the song down to its single imperative.
Section by section
Opening verse
The narrator lays out a counterfactual: without self-construction, he'd have been shaped by unnamed powers and left submissive. This establishes the song's core opposition between self-made and other-made identity.
Second verse
“you're strong, until the wind comes”
Addressing the listener directly, the song argues that identity built by others looks sturdy only until tested, using fragile material imagery to suggest that externally imposed selfhood collapses under pressure. The accompanying sexual metaphor intensifies the warning into something closer to exploitation than mere influence.
First chorus
The imperative lands as plain, almost therapeutic advice, reframing the earlier aggressive imagery into a simple health-and-agency argument, which gives the song a didactic center between its harsher verses.
Final verse
“fuck me in my own way”
The declarative repetition claims ownership not just of success but of one's own mistakes, insisting that even self-sabotage is preferable to being controlled by others. The chant-like repetition pushes the idea past argument into assertion.
Craft
- extended metaphor
- Being shaped by external powers is rendered as literal crafting—paper mâché, assembly, falling apart—turning abstract conformity into a tactile image of fragility.
- conditional-to-declarative shift
- The song moves from hypothetical 'if' statements about self-making to flat assertions of having already done it, dramatizing growing resolve.
- provocative diction
- Crude sexual language stands in for being controlled or violated by others, making the stakes of passivity feel visceral rather than abstract.
- repetition
- The title phrase recurs insistently at the end, turning the song's argument into a chant-like command rather than a conclusion.
Reading it
Most plausibly this is a late-90s/early-2000s alt-rock statement of individualism, pitched against generic social or industry conformity rather than any single target. The crude language can be read as a deliberate puncturing of self-help platitudes—making the message of self-ownership feel lived-in and unpolished rather than inspirational-poster clean. An alternative reading hears it as addressed specifically to a music industry pressuring the band to be shaped into a marketable image, given the album's era and themes, though the lyric itself stays general enough to support the broader reading.
Context
This is the title track from Incubus's 1999 album Make Yourself, released as the band was transitioning from a more funk-metal sound toward the alt-rock melodicism that would define their mainstream breakthrough. I don't have confirmed details on the song's specific writing circumstances, so I'm cautious about asserting a direct biographical target.
Listen for
- the shift from conditional 'if' phrasing to flat declarative claims as the song progresses
- the contrast between the clean, instructive chorus and the coarser verse language
- the paper mâché imagery as the song's central image for fragile, externally-built identity
- the climactic repeated line functioning almost as a release or catharsis
About Incubus
Incubus is an American rock band from Calabasas, California. The band was formed in 1991 by vocalist Brandon Boyd, lead guitarist Mike Einziger, and drummer José Pasillas while enrolled in Calabasas High School and later expanded to include bassist Alex "Dirk Lance" Katunich, and Gavin "DJ Lyfe" Koppel; the latter two were eventually replaced by bassist Ben Kenney and DJ Kilmore, respectively.
1991 - present / United States
Full biography and catalogue