When nu metal came along I fell for the new sound just like the rest of us, but there was one band that I gravitated to more than any other because they had something different going on, something SPECIAL. A big part of that OF COURSE had to do with the amazing creative bond that formed between insanely talented frontman Chester Bennington (gods, how we miss him) and the legendary Mike Shinoda, but more than that it’s the fact that these guys kept exploring and evolving their sound as the years went by to become something truly, undeniably SPECIAL. THese are my ten very favourites from them …
10. ONE MORE LIGHT (One More Light)
As fitting musical farewells go, there really haven’t been many others over the years that can match this. The masterful title track on their final (and EXTREMELY divisive) final album is a pretty highlight on an album which saw the band at their most evolved and DEFINITELY far removed from where they started out. Released after Chester took his own life, its haunting, mournful understated quality and incredibly moving lyrics took on new, heartbreaking meaning, making it JUST the goodbye that our boy deserved.
9. BURN IT DOWN (Living Things)
Personally, I loved how they really embraced the more electronic sound they’d started experimenting with in their later years, and their fifth album in particular is RICH INDEED with this sexy, sexy sound. This is UNDENIABLY the best example of them letting rip on this record, a wonderfully addictive little earworm that effortlessly showcases Chester’s powerhouse vocal work as well as Mike’s quirkily talented keys.
8. SOMEWHERE I BELONG (Meteora)
Yeah, sure, I love their later, more experimental stuff, but I can’t deny that their blistering sophomore record is undoubtedly THEIR VERY BEST, and this is pretty much the DEFINITION of their classic early Linkin Park sound that everybody (including me) fell in love with. MIke sure knows how to pen a pounder, and Chester lets rip in full force on a powerful musical rant on the unbearable existential questions that many of us face on a daily basis.
7. THE LITTLE THINGS GIVE YOU AWAY (Minutes To Midnight)
One of my very favourite things about LP was always how fiercely intelligent these guys could be in their songwriting, and their third album, which marked their first real departure from the “classic” sound, is truly AWASH with great examples of their lyrical smarts. The album’s closer is definitely the most interesting of the bunch, a powerful, mournful and truly beautiful song which also delivers a searing indictment of the Bush presidency’s epic indifference to the people’s suffering in the wake of Hurricane Katrina …
6. IRIDESCENT (A Thousand Suns)
It may have really broken out as the main hit single from the soundtrack of the third Michael Bay Transformers movie,Dark of the Moon), but this song really does stand just fine on its own as a powerhouse ballad of intense, haunting beauty, or as a spectacular centerpiece on one of the band’s very best records, a song of hope in the face of indescribable strife and chaos that perfectly fits on an album about apocalyptic doom and how we deal with it.
5. IN THE END (Hybrid Theory)
My favourite track on their debut album is a typical thumper, a particular standout on a record already fit to bursting with incredibly memorable numbers. I was young, dumb and still very much finding my way in the world when this came out, and I had NO LUCK in romance back then, so I knew EXACTLY where Chester and the boys were coming from on this song about trying to save a relationship that’s already doomed to fail.
4. ROADS UNTRAVELED (Living Things)
One of the great fundamental truths about music is that sometimes the best tracks on an album aren’t even the singles, and this is BY FAR the band’s very best album track, a gleefully odd little ballad inspired by the offbeat works of Bob Dylan which perfectly encapsulates a record where the boys bascially just decided to do what they wanted and really go mad with it, and I just love them for it.
3. THE CATALYST (A Thousand Suns)
Bringing their apocalyptic concept album about nuclear destruction to a spectacular crescendo, this really is LP at their most experimental, offbeat and downright ingeniuous, a thumping beast of a track driven by a relentless building beat and vocal through-line that brought us one of the band’s most deliriously addictive tracks. The chorus (beautifully calling back to the album’s haunting opener, The Requiem) just might be my very favourite EVER piece of lyrical work from Shinoda and Bennington …
2. NUMB (Meteora)
The band’s best album closes out which is, UNDENIABLY, their most iconic track EVER, instantly recognisable to even casual listeners who really don’t know LP well at all. Why? Because it’s an absolute MASTERPIECE. Seriously, this track is PERFECT, there’s no fat on it, it’s trim and tight and crafted to a truly insane level of musical precision by a band who were already at the very HEIGHT of their powewrs. Most of all it was a sign that these guys really were just getting started …
1. LEAVE OUT ALL THE REST (Minutes To Midnight)
So you of course have to ask, what could POSSIBLY be better than Numb in my opinion? It’s THIS stone-cold classic, featuring Chester at his most soulful as he belts out a beautifully moving power ballad about being remembered well after you’re gone which shows that even back then Chester was already wrestling with the possibility that he might not be around forever. It’s a whole lot more powerful now, of course, but right from the start it’s always been that one truly indispensible Linkin Park track that I just CANNOT live without …
“Adults shouldn’t participate in fandom or enjoy it” is another manifestation of privilegeandclassism.
If it never crossed your mind that some people might not have been ableto do either when they were young(er), because they simply couldn’t affordto spend the time or money, I’ve got news for you - and they’re both depressing and frustrating.
Sometimes you have to wait until you have a job to be able to finally buy the toy you’ve always wanted. Sometimes you have to wait until you’ve moved toward a more financially secure place in your life to be able to spend time talking about your interests online.
You don’t know people’s lives - why would you immediately default to judging them?
So when Death arrives in bedsheets like a child in the yard I inhale, perform a miracle where I turn bread into toast, and seek to ready my soul.
Every last thing, everybody arrives and I have three, seemingly revelatory thoughts:
We think the heart is the mind and then we think the mind is the mind.
Sometimes, in a sexy mood, I’ll say, destroy me. Mostly though, tbqh, I’ve been like, wait, no, don’t.
We wait, ah, whether we know it or not, for a day like this: a last one.
Satisfied, the child floats towards me in the narrowing and relative grass. My vision pares down to a point. It reminds me of something.
I remember that I am a goat. No, that’s not it— it’s the toaster. I remember to unplug it from the wall.
Proud of myself, I lean through the door, a motion I expect to feel silky & ethereal, but which in fact translates to my tripping over Nothing and tumbling out into the grass.
I look up at the ghost, in what is now a vanishing thimble of sight.
She is pulling her sheet off in one long, fluid tug. The yard turns to static before she is finished, but I feel positive that, had I been able to see it, she would’ve had a face.
Chessy Normile, Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party (Copper Canyon Press, 2020)
20 years ago, the fourth single, making the heart beat faster, was released, the single In The End, the first famous album Hybrid Theory, created by the great American rock band of all time Linkin Park.
