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- I made this thread so we can collect information/facts about Linkin Park songs.
- For Fort Minor, Dead By Sunrise, etc. go here

- Updates here

- You can post quotes (from Linkin Park members or anyone else who worked on the songs) from LPU chats, LPTVs, interviews, live shows, and anything else you think is relevant to the thread
If you want something to be added to the list, please post the source of the information
- I am accepting suggestions for the format of the list
- If you have a better title for this thread, let me know

XERO

Reading My Eyes
Mike Shinoda (Osaka 12 August 2006):
What we wanna do is take you back a long time. Long for us it is. We started our band... actually, before we were called Linkin Park we were called Hybrid Theory. And before Hybrid Theory we were called Xero. A lot of people don't know that one. So almost ten years ago, back when we were called Xero, we wrote a song that we kind of haven't played it since. And we were just messing around in practice before we came here, and somebody brought up that idea. We didn't know if we could still play it. And as soon as we played the first couple of notes, it all came back and we just... we went straight through the whole song. So that to us indicated that like "hey, maybe we should play this song." This song was actually realized before Chester was even in the band. But he's gonna sing it with us tonight. This song is called Reading My Eyes.

Mike Shinoda (LPU Chat 22 August 2006):
[...]the xero song (reading my eyes) we played recently in japan is almost 10 years old, so i guess it's just a reminder how time flies...[...]

Mike Shinoda (LPU Chat 22 August 2006):
RME: we actually just got the idea while we were in rehearsal. once we figured out the first few notes, the whole song came back to us. that was pretty cool, seeing as how
we hadn't played it in almost 8 years
maybe more?
we actually had to download it online to remember how the song started!

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 17 June 2008):
firstly, looks like won the Best International Video - Group award from MUCH MUSIC…big up to canada! we love you guys, thanks :)
now, for the meat of this post:
i may have posted this before somewhere, but i thought since we’re playing “reading my eyes” a bit on stage, i’d give you a little background. i think we wrote the song back in ‘97 or ‘98. it was an original demo from when the band was called XERO, which means it was written (and originally performed) by me and my friend mark. this was one of the songs on the demo we would send out to record companies to try and get signed, and it was on some of the demos we passed out to friends and new fans (the blue cassette with the baby on the cover).
we decided to put it in the show because a lot of the hardcore fans wanted to hear us play it–the only time we played it with chester before this tour was in tokyo, 2006.
looking back at the lyrics, it’s crazy; some of it’s really dated, some of it’s still dope, and some of it makes virtually no sense whatsoever. but i’ve seen some really bad “interpretations” of the lyrics on so-called “lyric websites” that are WAY OFF…so i figured i’d give you the real lyrics. here you go:[...]

 

Mike Shinoda (München 21 June 2008):
What we wanna do right now is take you back a step. We haven't played this song on this tour, it's the first time in a long time we're playing this song. This is actually from a demo from before we were Linkin Park, before we were Hybrid Theory, back when we were called Xero. This song is called Reading My Eyes.


HYBRID THEORY EP
Carousel
Brad Delson (Onstage 1 January 2002):
We'll be using sound checks on the headline tour to work out some new and old material to incorporate into the set, songs like “My December” and “Carousel.”

Rob Bourdon (LPU Chat 18 November 2009):
I do remember performing Carousel, And One, High Voltage and Part of Me. I think we were called XERO when we called Carousel and Part of Me, and it was probably in a small club in LA or Arizona.

 

Mike Shinoda (Reddit AMA 12 August 2015):
[Why were songs Part of Me and Carousel (from Hybrid Theory EP) never played live?]
We played those songs a ton when the band name was "Hybrid Theory," and once we had a whole album to play, those kinda just went away.


Step Up
Brad Delson (Onstage 1 January 2002):
I'm using two extra Boss effects pedals, the Auto-Wah and the Phaser, to re-create the guitar sounds on another old song we'll be playing called “Step Up.”

And One
Mike Shinoda (Rock Am Ring 3 June 2001):
We're gonna play another song it's not on the album. It's real old. It's the first song that we wrote when Chester came in to the band. It's called And One.

Rob Bourdon (LPU Chat 18 November 2009):
I do remember performing Carousel, And One, High Voltage and Part of Me. I think we were called XERO when we called Carousel and Part of Me, and it was probably in a small club in LA or Arizona.

Part Of Me
Mike Shinoda (ShoutWeb October 2000):
Every time we write a song it starts from something different. I wrote a song from a sample that Brad collected of a car alarm. He got woken up or something to a car alarm from a garage in the parking lot underneath his apartment. He recorded it. I sampled it. I looped it. He wrote a guitar part to it and we wrote a song around it. That was an older song of ours that is not on the album.
That was called "Part of Me". It was part of an EP that we put out with a baby on the cover. That was a little project we put together when Chester first came to California. It was the first time we were in the studio. Actually it was with Mudrock who did Godsmack's tracks. He was someone we had met who was really nice and we could do something for a small amount of money.

Rob Bourdon (LPU Chat 18 November 2009):
I do remember performing Carousel, And One, High Voltage and Part of Me. I think we were called XERO when we called Carousel and Part of Me, and it was probably in a small club in LA or Arizona.

 

Mike Shinoda (Reddit AMA 12 August 2015):
[Why were songs Part of Me and Carousel (from Hybrid Theory EP) never played live?]
We played those songs a ton when the band name was "Hybrid Theory," and once we had a whole album to play, those kinda just went away.

 

Ambient

Mike Shinoda (linkinpark.com chat 11 January 2002):
[mike, gray wants u to know that the last track of the EP sounds like a video game theme]
i know
i didn't plan it that way, it just happened

HYBRID THEORY
Papercut
Brad Delson (Yahoo! chat room by hob.com 30 November 2000):
"Paper Cut" is my favorite right now because I think it best integrates all our influences into one song and does it in a way that's tasteful and cohesive. In other words, one criticism that people have leveled at existing bands is that their songs don't always sound organic, that some of the songs might sound forced.
And our goal has always been to integrate these influences in the most seamless way, and I think Paper Cut does that really well.
Mike Shinoda (Yahoo! chat room by hob.com 30 November 2000):
Brad's answer was well put-together because we've had this conversation a number of times and we both agree that "Paper Cut" is our favorite at the moment, and I agree with everything he just said about it.
Mike Shinoda (Shoutweb Fan Q&A 2001):
[Ross Smith of New York, NY asks: I have listened to “Esaul” which seems pretty much like an unfinished version of “A Place For My Head”. Just wondering if you guys did a lot re-writes before going into the studio to get your songs to be “perfect”, because you essentially created one of the tightest albums I have ever heard. The song structure is, well, perfect.]
We have been re-writing the older songs, like that one, for a few years before we even got signed. And some of the songs, like “Papercut”, just came together relatively quickly.
Mike Shinoda (Rock Extreme 2001):
[Most people have heard your first single, “One Step Closer”, but few people have gotten to hear everything else you have to offer, what do you expect to be the next single off of your album?]
Umm, honestly we don’t know, but my favorite songs are “Papercut” and “In The End” because both of the songs are well rounded and show what the band has to offer.
Chester Bennington (LPU Chat January 2002):
Favorite song to play is Papercut
so I guess thats my favorite song

Mike Shinoda (linkinpark.com 7 October 2002):
a bit of trivia: some songs never lose their working title. "papercut" was a working title, as was "points of authority". but usually songs get renamed. "in the end" was originally called "untitled", which we liked until d'angelo came out with a song of that name.
but sometimes, some of us never get past the working title. originally, forgotten was called "rhinestone," and no matter how much i ask him not to, brad still calls that song by its old name. haha

 

Chester Bennington (LPU Chat 2 August 2011):
[What’s your favorite Linkin Park song?]
I’d probably say Breaking the Habit and Papercut are probably my favorites.

 

Mike Shinoda (Do Androids Dance? 26 September 2013):
When mixing a Linkin Park song, there are always layers, and they major issue is figuring out what will the hierarchy of sounds will be. On our earlier material, live drums, guitar and bass took the stage. Still, if you listen to the beginning of Hybrid Theory, “Papercut” had jungle and hip-hop elements in the song. [Linkin Park's] intention was always to show people what we liked to listen to. As time passes, the balance gets shifted in different directions when our interests change. The sound of Linkin Park at any given time is usually a reflection where we’re at at the moment. Of course, we try and stay respectful of whatever genre it is that we’re playing with. The final sound of our tracks is not a “surface-y” thing, its definitely more analytical.


One Step Closer
Mike Shinoda (Dynamic Rock 2000):
I think a song should be as available as the band feels comfortable with it. Our first single, "One Step Closer", is a song we definitely want people to download and pass around as much as they want. We feel the same about "Points of Authority" and "With You". That's why they're available on our website.

 

Mike Shinoda (ShoutWeb October 2000):
Yeah, I got red hair. The video is very green and very dark. It was shot in Los Angeles in an underground, abandoned subway tunnel that is adjacent to an abandoned V.A. hospital. It's an extremely scary place to hang out and shoot a video. The air was very thick and filled with minerals and dust and dirt. It's very hard to breathe down there. But we endured. We had a lot of fun. Somebody just told me that they heard that most bands don't have a good time shooting their video or they don't like their first video. I think we had a blast. Our DJ and I went to art school together. I graduated with a major in illustration at the Arts Center in Pasadena. He left after his first year to go do special effects in the film industry so when it came time to do the video, he was right there with the idea for the treatment for the video. He knew who he thought we should look into for directors. We hooked up with Gregory Dark who is amazing. Joe and Gregory hit it off. Gregory is an extremely experienced and talented individual and really helped us achieve our goals as far as a first video goes. Our budget wasn't so huge. It was our first try at being in front of a camera in that way. We had a lot of fun. It came out great. Joe did a great job. Gregory and everybody in the crew kicked ass. It was awesome. You'll see. It's very dark but it's really colorful at the same time. We have floating monks.
I'm serious. We have floating monks. We have awesome artwork in the background by some friends of ours from school. Just in general, we were really happy with it.

Mike Shinoda (ShoutWeb October 2000):
Yes, "Plaster" was the working title. "One Step Closer" was maybe a little bit more descriptive. I actually wrote that and a bunch of people went "uh... I don't know". Even I went "ugh" and I thought for a minute that it wasn't a good idea to write that song and it sounded kind of bad but then we just went full speed ahead and said screw it. So far it's become one of the more memorable parts of the album. We're happy that people have something like that to hold on to as far as remembering. The song is generally about being at the end of your rope. It's very descriptive and I think that's why people gravitate towards it. It's a very self-descriptive song and it's easy to understand and probably very easy to relate to.

 

Mike Shinoda (CDNow 2000):
Let me explain it this way: We were in the studio working on lyrics for a very long time and some days got to be really long and frustrating and that song was written [during] one of those periods of time, where we were extremely frustrated with writing; we were extremely frustrated with a lot of things going on in our personal lives, so we just let it all out.

 

Brad Delson (Yahoo! chat room by hob.com 30 November 2000):
The response to "One Step Closer" has been really overwhelming in a good way. We hear stories all the time of people who seem to have been really moved by the song, and in that regard I think it was an excellent choice for us to meet the world. Even better would be for people to actually get our full record - because even though "OSC" is a really solid singular track, if people listen to the entire record they will get an idea of what we're trying to do musically and creatively. And that's just starting to happen. We're just starting to get feedback from people who have heard the whole thing.
Mike Shinoda (Theprp.com 09 December 2000):
Our DJ, MISTA HAHN, wrote the treatment for the video. It's a scary look into his head, isn't it?
Mike Shinoda (Rock Extreme 2001):
Its very self-explanatory I think that the reason that people are gravitating towards it is because it is so self-explanatory, me and Chester were just fed up with everything that was going on and we got to the end of our ropes and wrote the song.
Mike Shinoda (Shoutweb Fan Q&A 2001):
“One Step Closer” was just for fun. It was an escapist action movie video. Our next one though (for “Crawling”) is going to be a story – not one that follows the song’s story, but a story about the way a song can help you get through problems.

Chester Bennington (Rolling Stone April 2002):
It is hard for me to say which tracks on this record are the most powerful as my opinion was so off on the last one. I would never have thought One Step Closer would have been as big as it was. I didn’t even want that on the album! I thought it was weak in comparison to Crawling, In the End, Pushing Me Away, and Points of Authority. Those were the songs that I thought had set the standard for the [first] album, and viewed One Step Closer as underneath that bar. I thought that song was ignorant in a certain way.

Mike Shinoda (Kerrang! 26 January 2008):
This was written in my apartment. The music came together quickly but the lyrics took a few tries. I wrote 'Shut Up' as a rough example for Chester to scream and we kept that lyric. I remember thinking that was a great calling-card song. It said, 'Hello, we are going to crush you.'

 

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 20 February 2008):
a few weeks ago, one of our top LP fan sites, LP association, posted an old demo version of one step closer, back when it was still called “plaster.” they did a piece on the article which seemed to be searching for facts and trying to figure out the authenticity of the recording. i heard it, and i thought i’d try to help out.
the track found on their link is actually a rough of the song in its final stages, after we had finished all the recording, but before a final mix. we were trying to decide who should mix the album, and we had our hearts set on andy wallace. our A&R guy’s boss at WB was david kahne.
according to our A&R guy at the time: david was one of the people who wasn’t 100% impressed with our band and our sound, and wanted to take a crack at mixing this song in order to improve things (and obviously try to convince us to let him mix the record). this may or may not be true, but that’s what we were told. obviously, david did a good job (the lpassociation mp3 is his mix)...but we decided to stick with our gut and go with andy. we had a feeling that andy, who mixed nirvana’s “nevermind,” would be a better fit for us.
some of the differences you can hear between “plaster” and the final album mix (by andy wallace)...
the main things that i remember sticking out to me when i first heard it was that david’s mix made the verses sound thick (because of the low end) and therefore the choruses lost a little bit of their punch.
some samples also stood out. the camera shutter-ish samples you hear in david’s mix are actually in the final andy wallace mix as well, but they’re mixed quieter (and thinner, i think). we liked them quieter in andy’s mix because they put more emphasis on the groove of rob’s drums.
finally, a deciding factor for brad and i against david’s mix was the edit to the “shut up” stuff—putting it in the intro. it made it sound like a remix, and ruined the surprise of the “shut up” coming in during the bridge (our thought was: if you’ve already heard that vocal part, the bridge packs less of a punch. it ruined the climax). that made me feel like we didn’t really see eye-to-eye on this mix, so although the mix was good overall, we chose to have andy mix the song and album.
in david’s interview with lpassociaton, he is (understandably) fuzzy about the details of our relationship back then. maybe it’s because he was dealing with many bands, while we, on the other hand, were only dealing with one album, and one label. hopefully i can help out by putting some details out there. david wasn’t involved with us when mark was in the band-he may have heard of us, but he didn’t work on our stuff. he did, however, get involved a bit once we were in the studio, by hearding demos and giving feedback-the same thing many label people and A&R folks do.
as you’ve heard, though, much of the feedback we got from the label at that time didn’t line up with the album we wanted to make or the band we wanted to be, so we chose to follow our own path.
the good and bad news about “plaster” is that i can’t think of another, earlier demo of the song that would really exist. the only step before this one probably wouldn’t have included any lyrics, but all the instrumental tracks would essentially be the same. as we wrote the song, we immediately recorded it, so that is to say there is only one recording; the first notes of the demo were in the same protools file that the song was finished in. there are no “live” demos, nor “garage recordings” of the song. so this version of “plaster” might be the earliest version out there.

Chester Bennington (KROQ's Kevin and Bean Breakfast Show 7 September 2010):
There are definitely moments on every record where at the end I go "why... did I... do that?", you know?
Crawling was that one for me on Hybrid Theory.
One Step Closer would hurt but it was easier to sing, and on this one Blackout was that song and I was just sitting going "I don't know what I'm gonna to do to get through this one track every single night", you know?
And now I'm gonna have to do all 3 of those freaking songs in the set every single day.

Chester Bennington (Kerrang! 29 January 2011):
When we were recording it, (producer) Don Gilmore was really drilling me and Mike (Shinoda) about lyrics, and it had gotten to the point where we had rewritten some songs 30 times! I remember walking into the control room, handing Don the lyrics and he grabbed them, passed them in front of his face without even looking, handed them back to me, and told me to do it again. I lost my f---ing mind, thinking, 'This guy's a f---ing maniac!' But that kind of inspired the lyrics - 'I cannot take this anymore/I'm saying everything I've said before/ All these words make no sense,' and the chorus, 'Everything you say to me takes me one step closer to the edge.' - it all came from that frustration. So I guess in the end he inspired me the way he wanted to.

 

Chester Bennington (LPU Chat 2 August 2011):
I think that a lot of the songs we still play from Hybrid Theory are songs we really enjoy playing. I think that we…I really enjoy watching the crowd explode now as much as it did ten years ago when we played One Step Closer, so that’s pretty cool.

Chester Bennington (VMusic 12 August 2012):
I would not leave 'One Step Closer' off of a festival setlist. No matter how many times we play that song or how old that song is, there's something that happens when that song starts getting played. 'In The End' is the same. Each record has a song that needs to be played. 'One Step Closer' is top of the list.

Chester Bennington (Zane Lowe on BBC Radio 1 3 June 2014):
Just from crowd responses, you know, over the last 15 years of playing these live shows, the crowd always loses their mind for One Step Closer. Even when we wrote that song it wasn't my favorite song, but it's become one of my favorite songs to play live because everybody loses their minds. It never fails. It's always the song that once it starts, the crowd loses their minds.


With You
Mike Shinoda (Dynamic Rock 2000):
I think a song should be as available as the band feels comfortable with it. Our first single, "One Step Closer", is a song we definitely want people to download and pass around as much as they want. We feel the same about "Points of Authority" and "With You". That's why they're available on our website.

 

Mike Shinoda (Yahoo! chat room by hob.com 30 November 2000):

We met the Dust Brothers when we were looking for somebody to produce the album, and we decided after meeting that we'd try a song together. They gave us a track with drum loops and different Moog and synth sounds, and we ended up mostly centering in on those Moog and synth sounds, coupling them with guitar and live drum.

Chester Bennington (Kerrang! 23 January 2008):
[Don Gilmore, the producer told them he didn’t like any of their songs.]
Well, actually he liked two – Points Of Authority and With You. We basically had to write a new record in two months. We stayed at Mike’s house around the clock and wrote that album.

 

Chester Bennington (LPU Chat 2 August 2011):
I would say that Crawling has caused me the most trouble live more than any other song. Just because it’s that one long note the whole time, but I think probably Crawling and probably With You was hard when we used to play that one.


Points Of Authority
Mike Shinoda (Dynamic Rock 2000):
I think a song should be as available as the band feels comfortable with it. Our first single, "One Step Closer", is a song we definitely want people to download and pass around as much as they want. We feel the same about "Points of Authority" and "With You". That's why they're available on our website.

 

Rob Bourdon (Rolling Stone 14 March 2002):
Brad wrote this riff, then went home. Mike decided to cut it up into different pieces and rearranged them on the computer. [shinoda rewrote Delson's riff so completely, Bourdon says,] that Brad had to learn his own part from the computer. [Delson wasn't bugged.] Mike is a genius, [he declares.] Trent Reznor-talented.

Mike Shinoda (linkinpark.com 7 October 2002):
a bit of trivia: some songs never lose their working title. "papercut" was a working title, as was "points of authority". but usually songs get renamed. "in the end" was originally called "untitled", which we liked until d'angelo came out with a song of that name.
but sometimes, some of us never get past the working title. originally, forgotten was called "rhinestone," and no matter how much i ask him not to, brad still calls that song by its old name. haha

Chester Bennington (Kerrang! 23 January 2008):
[Don Gilmore, the producer told them he didn’t like any of their songs.]
Well, actually he liked two – Points Of Authority and With You. We basically had to write a new record in two months. We stayed at Mike’s house around the clock and wrote that album.


Crawling
Mike Shinoda (ShoutWeb October 2000):
The chorus melody for "Crawling" was originally the bridge of a song that sucked that we wrote. That other song we didn't like and we weren't going to use it so we had this melody. It just occured to me to take this melody that I liked and to write music around it. I did that and then Brad came in and added a little more and helped me out with it. Chester wrote some new words. Everybody worked around it.

Chester Bennington (Much 25 November 2000):
Crawling is a really like... a really emotional song, it's got a lot of deep lyrics. It's kind of like admitting something that you don't really like to admit, which is, you know, having a problem with yourself. You know what I mean? And sometimes you have to like learn how to deal with living inside your own skin and being the person that you are. And that's not something to be ashamed of or anything like that. It's just something that isn't always peachy. You know what I mean? You're not always gonna be exactly the person that you wanna be or the person that you thought you were. You know? You gotta live with yourself for the rest of your life.

 

Mike Shinoda (Shoutweb Fan Q&A 2001):
“One Step Closer” was just for fun. It was an escapist action movie video. Our next one though (for “Crawling”) is going to be a story – not one that follows the song’s story, but a story about the way a song can help you get through problems.


Chester Bennington (BBC - Evening Session Interview with Steve Lamacq 13 June 2001):
In a song like 'Crawling' we are talking about self-consciousness or the lack of self-confidence. That's a big part of that song because when you get into those situations with a lot of people looking at you, you find faults in yourself and you get nervous and want to change them. Things like that are really charged topics to be talking about, and when we started to write lyrics we found ourselves energised and interested in writing these songs and going after them with a lot of intensity. Sitting in front of a computer thinking about the crap you did before you go to bed, that you thought you could have done better - that will freak you out sometimes.

 

Brad Delson (Madison.com 31 January 2002):
What happened when Chester joined the group, we moved from 'Hey, these are the kind of singing parts we want,' to 'Wow, these are singing parts that we never even thought of,' because his range and versatility are such that, like 'Crawling,' who would think to write that melody? You couldn't because there are very few people in the world that could probably sing that. So that's an example of when I say he really expanded our writing ability in the sense that he has such a range vocally.
He really was kind of the final piece of the puzzle, and he brings vocal talent that, when we were looking for a second vocalist, we didn't see anything close to his talent in anybody else.

 

Chester Bennington (Rolling Stone 14 March 2002):
It's easy to fall into that thing — 'poor, poor me', that's where songs like 'Crawling' come from: I can't take myself. But that song is about taking responsibility for your actions. I don't say 'you' at any point. It's about how I'm the reason that I feel this way. There's something inside me that pulls me down.

 

Mike Shinoda (linkinpark.com 17 July 2002):
as we work on things, we start to narrow down to a smaller of songs. inevitably, when some songs are less interesting, but have a great guitar part or sample, we try to take that part and put it into another song that seems to be coming together better. so we combine similar songs to create a better song.
originally, the chorus to crawling was a bridge from another song. chester and i needed a chorus to put in that song, and he just sang it there with no guitars. after we recorded the vocal track, i wrote the guitar under it. and we took it into the studio and everyone added their magic.

Chester Bennington (NoiseCreep 16 July 2009):
Crawling is about feeling like I had no control over myself in terms of drugs and alcohol. That feeling, being able to write about it, sing about it, that song, those words sold millions of records, I won a Grammy, I made a lot of money.
It's not cool to be an alcoholic -- it's not cool to go drink and be a dumbass. It's cool to be a part of recovery. This is just who I am, this is what I write about, what I do, and most of my work has been a reflection of what I've been going through in one way or another.

Chester Bennington (KROQ's Kevin and Bean Breakfast Show 7 September 2010):
There are definitely moments on every record where at the end I go "why... did I... do that?", you know?
Crawling was that one for me on Hybrid Theory.
One Step Closer would hurt but it was easier to sing, and on this one Blackout was that song and I was just sitting going "I don't know what I'm gonna to do to get through this one track every single night", you know?
And now I'm gonna have to do all 3 of those freaking songs in the set every single day.

 

Chester Bennington (LPU Chat 2 August 2011):
I would say that Crawling has caused me the most trouble live more than any other song. Just because it’s that one long note the whole time, but I think probably Crawling and probably With You was hard when we used to play that one.

Mike Shinoda (MSN Music June 2012):
The '80s references were even more apparent on the first two records. If you listen to "Crawling" and "Pushing Me Away," if you don't hear Depeche Mode in there, I don't know what you're listening for.

 

Chester Bennington (O Globo 3 August 2012):
There are some songs that we can not stop playing. Hardly anyone will come out of a show without hearing our "In the end", "Numb", "Crawling" and "Faint", for example. And it is pleasant to see the audience happy. Of course there are those that we no longer so fond of playing, like "Runaway", but fans love. I do not understand why, because I think this is bad music today.

 

Runaway

Chester Bennington (LPU Chat April 2003):
It's kind of hard to say which song was most difficult to write/record- Runaway took literally like 6 years to write and Somewhere I Belong took the entire length of recording- it was the first thing written during Ozzfest and last one we finished in the studio. Those 2 songs made me want to kill myself because I knew they'd both be good but they took SO LONG>

 

Chester Bennington (Kerrang! 3 November 2010):
Yeah, we decided that we will no longer be playing Runaway [from Hybrid Theory] live! In my opinion, it's one of the worst songs we've written! People love it, but we have better ones. To be honest, it doesn't seem real that it's been 10 years, so we haven't really thought about it. When we get to 10 albums, then we'll do something special!

 

Chester Bennington (LPU Chat 2 August 2011):
[You should play Runaway.]
Ha ha, I hate that song.

 

Chester Bennington (O Globo 3 August 2012):
There are some songs that we can not stop playing. Hardly anyone will come out of a show without hearing our "In the end", "Numb", "Crawling" and "Faint", for example. And it is pleasant to see the audience happy. Of course there are those that we no longer so fond of playing, like "Runaway", but fans love. I do not understand why, because I think this is bad music today.

 

In The End

Mike Shinoda (ShoutWeb October 2000):
He plays full melodies that are only harmonics on his clean guitar that sounds like a keyboard or sounds like a harp or sounds like bells. People have said that it sounds like a hundred different things and they're always thinking that it's not guitar and it is. The whole verse for "In The End" is harmonics. That high-pitched noise is Brad playing.

 

Mike Shinoda (Shoutweb Fan Q&A 2001):
[Malu Faccio of Eagle Pass, TX asks: What was it that triggered/inspired you to write the lyrics, “I tried so hard, and got so far, but in the end, it doesn’t even matter..” for the song “In The End”? What was the experience that made you write them?]
Those just popped out. I think I was reacting to the things we as a band had gone through in the beginning. The song almost doesn’t know if it wants to be optimistic or pessimistic – the beginning is a little dark, but you can’t tell (lyrically) if it resolves or not. That’s what I like about it.

 

Mike Shinoda (Rock Extreme 2001):
[Most people have heard your first single, “One Step Closer”, but few people have gotten to hear everything else you have to offer, what do you expect to be the next single off of your album?]
Umm, honestly we don’t know, but my favorite songs are “Papercut” and “In The End” because both of the songs are well rounded and show what the band has to offer.

 

Mike Shinoda (linkinpark.com chat 11 January 2002):
anime: akira, i guess. ghost in the shell is good. and obviously princess mononoke
(in the end video was inspired by it)

 

Nathan “Karma” Cox (MTV.com 20 August 2002):
Any criticism I have ever gotten for that video, has always been, ’What’s up with the whale, dude?’ That was Joe’s thing.

Joe Hahn (MTV.com 20 August 2002):
It’s not like I pulled it out of my ass. It made sense to me.
It’s more of an elemental thing. Where when you think of a whale you associate it with water, but it’s a contrast to the environment, ’cause there’s no water in the environment. So it was basically a way to visually connect the ground to the sky to the tower, where we were.
When you hear the song, there’s basically a cycle going on in the song. And that’s what is going on in the video, there’s a life cycle taking place from the environment that’s desolate, it’s all dry, and basically goes from that point of there being nothing to the end, where a whole evolution takes place.

Nathan “Karma” Cox (MTV.com 20 August 2002):
The song could be taken in a negative context, this dismal kind of thing, ’I tried so hard and got so far/ But in the end it doesn’t even matter.’ It had this positive tone, but the words were really negative. So the world that they start in is dismal, desert, emptiness, and it starts to rain and then the world becomes a beautiful place.

Nathan “Karma” Cox (MTV.com 20 August 2002):
They didn’t realize they were going to be up there for another six hours, with the wind blowing on them. Actually, we laughed through the whole process. They weren’t too pissed off.

Nathan “Karma” Cox (MTV.com 20 August 2002):
We were thinking, ’Who would our dream guy be?' We were both big fans of ’Dark City,’ but we didn’t think Patrick Tatopoulos would ever do a video. The guy’s just huge.
He showed up in our office with his portfolios of artwork from movies that we love. We were like kids in a candy store. We were glowing.
He’s a genius.

Joe Hahn (MTV.com 20 August 2002):
We were successful enough that we didn’t have to do a performance video with skateboard kids running around, even though that’s what the label wanted. It was kind of a battle to get this video made.

Nathan “Karma” Cox (MTV.com 20 August 2002):
Originally, the label thought it was a too light. They wanted me to give it some teeth. So I created the rain scenario and the cycle of life that would go ugly for a while and these thorns that would come out of the ground and the label eventually bought it and dug what we were doing.

Joe Hahn (MTV.com 20 August 2002):
No one really understood ’cause it’s not something that was done before. Now there’s a lot of videos out there that look like it ’cause there’s a tendency with music in general to copy things that are successful.

 

Mike Shinoda (linkinpark.com 7 October 2002):
a bit of trivia: some songs never lose their working title. "papercut" was a working title, as was "points of authority". but usually songs get renamed. "in the end" was originally called "untitled", which we liked until d'angelo came out with a song of that name.
but sometimes, some of us never get past the working title. originally, forgotten was called "rhinestone," and no matter how much i ask him not to, brad still calls that song by its old name. haha

Chester Bennington (VMusic 12 August 2012):
I would not leave 'One Step Closer' off of a festival setlist. No matter how many times we play that song or how old that song is, there's something that happens when that song starts getting played. 'In The End' is the same. Each record has a song that needs to be played. 'One Step Closer' is top of the list.

Chester Bennington (VMusic 12 August 2012):
I don't really participate in picking singles. I learnt that after making Hybrid Theory. I was never a fan of 'In The End' and I didn't even want it to be on the record, honestly. How wrong could I have possibly been? I basically decided at that point I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, so I leave that to other people who are actually talented at somehow picking songs that people are going to like the most. It also gave me a good lesson, as an artist, that I don't necessarily have to only make music, in my band, that I want to listen to. More often than not, something that I like, very few other people like, and something that those people like is something that I kind of like, or don't like at all. And that's cool, it gives me a new appreciation for the songs. But, you know, now I love 'In The End' and I think it's such a great song. I actually see how good of a song it is, it was just hard for me to see it at the time.

 

Chester Bennington (azcentral 27 October 2015):
We had been releasing a lot of singles that were kind of energetic and yet sometimes more midtempo. And as great as those songs are, if you keep adding songs like “In the End” and “Numb” and “Shadow of the Day” and “Iridescent,” that will change the dynamic of a set. As much as we love those songs -- and as much as our fans love those songs -- if you just keep adding three more midtempo ballads to the set, pretty soon an hour and 20 minutes is midtempo ballads. And I think our fans want to come to a rock show where you’re kind of kicking ass and you leave tired with no voice. When we realize that our fans want to sit down more than stand up, we might start adding more midtempo ballads to the set (laughs). But for us, it really comes down to making a record where we could add a bunch of great songs that are gonna keep the pace of the show up and be fun to play and get the mosh pits going and get us rocking. We started doing, that, really, with “Living Things.” And we kind of continued that into this record. But as far as the records that we make, personally, there’s nothing we’ve released that I’m not 100 percent behind.


A Place For My Head
Mike Shinoda (ShoutWeb October 2000):
[The beginning of "A Place For My Head" has this guitar plucking thing. It sounds like a Spanish guitar. I get the feeling that Zorro is going to come racing through the door.]
It's weird because Brad, our guitarist, went to Ibanez and those guys were really helpful. They totally let him play around on a whole bunch of different guitars. I believe it's called a piezo. It's the term for the setting that they have. It's basically an electric guitar that to us sounded like an acoustic guitar. If you flip it off of that setting it will sound electric again. You can hit the distortion pedal and it will sound just like the heaviest Ibanez. When he first picked that thing up that was the first song he thought of playing that on and it totally worked. He loved it and they let us use one for the album. It was phenomenal. We were really happy to get that sound.
He plays a clean channel one live. When he has the chance I think he will get one of those Ibanez guitars. At this point, we're not there yet.

 

Mike Shinoda (Shoutweb Fan Q&A 2001):
We have been re-writing the older songs, like that one, for a few years before we even got signed. And some of the songs, like “Papercut”, just came together relatively quickly.

 

Joe Hahn (MSN Live Chat 2001):
I enjoy performing "A Place for My Head."

 

Mike Shinoda (Yahoo! Launch 12 October 2003):
Lyrically, you'll notice kind of a progression or hopefully a growth, because some of the songs on Hybrid Theory are, like, seven years old. "Like A Place From My Head," that was written seven years ago. You'll notice in the lyrics from Hybrid Theory, we're attacking these universal themes of depression, of anger, or of frustration. I mean, we approached those things from the eyes of someone who's 20 years old. Now it's five years later, and we kind of feel that we can attack those thoughts with a little bit more confidence, and also talk about some things that go beyond those things. So this record has those emotions that we expressed on Hybrid Theory, but it kind of has a little bit more. On "Somewhere I Belong," you'll hear a little bit of hopefulness in the chorus, which you probably didn't hear so much in your face on Hybrid Theory.

 

Chester Bennington (LPU Chat 2 August 2011):
[What was the first demo you were sent from the band?]
I think it had the original version of Place for my Head. That was the song that I got.


Forgotten
Mike Shinoda (linkinpark.com 7 October 2002):
a bit of trivia: some songs never lose their working title. "papercut" was a working title, as was "points of authority". but usually songs get renamed. "in the end" was originally called "untitled", which we liked until d'angelo came out with a song of that name.
but sometimes, some of us never get past the working title. originally, forgotten was called "rhinestone," and no matter how much i ask him not to, brad still calls that song by its old name. haha

Cure For The Itch
Mike Shinoda (Rock Rage October 2000):
That’s just a point in the album where we felt it was appropriate. That particular song is something that our DJ, Mr. Hahn, and I came up with. It came from a beat that he did with the drums that he did and the strings that I arranged. From there we just kind of went off in an electronic direction that I thought was cool. And I think it turned out really well. We’re totally happy with that. The band was totally stoked about it.

 

Mike Shinoda (ShoutWeb October 2000):
[is that you at the beginning of "Cure For The Itch" doing the emcee part?]
No. It's not me! That's someone else.
Go ahead. I'll give you a good name. I will tell you it's Remy. Some day you'll figure out what that means.

 

Mike Shinoda (linkinpark.com chat 11 January 2002):
cure for the itch was my attempt at doing a song without words. i was trying to do something that would fit into a movie


Pushing Me Away
Mike Shinoda (Yahoo! chat room by hob.com 30 November 2000):
In general, when we write a song we write it from the inspiration of whatever emotion we're trying to capture and put it in a way that somebody else can take it and relate their own story to it. I definitely wanted to give somebody a starting point that was descriptive but not overwhelming.

Mike Shinoda (MSN Music June 2012):
The '80s references were even more apparent on the first two records. If you listen to "Crawling" and "Pushing Me Away," if you don't hear Depeche Mode in there, I don't know what you're listening for.

 

REANIMATION

Pts.Of.Athrty

Mike Shinoda (MTV.com 3 June 2002):
It’s kind of an industrial type of song. It’s beat heavy, but it’s pretty much all samples, or it’s samples of live instruments, and it’s heavy. It’s like robotic-sounding.
Brad Delson (linkinpark.com Chat 03 July 2002):
joe hahn is actually directing the next music video for Pts of Athority
It's extremely groundbreaking using all digital animation
and I can't wait
Brad Delson (linkinpark.com Chat 03 July 2002):
Only a sick and twisted ingenious mind could create such an unusual video
Think Anime meets Star Wars
...meets Final Fantasy
Mike Shinoda (linkinpark.com Chat 17 July 2002):
our 1st video from reanimation is for P.O.A. -- hope you've all seen
it. if not, i just want to say that i think its joe's best work
Mike Shinoda (linkinpark.com Chat 17 July 2002):
joe's robot is red. the POA video is another scary concoction from joe's demented head. i think if someone psycho-analyzed the videos, they would probably find out some crazy stuff about that guy. we don't really get to into the meaning behind his videos. because we dont want to hold his thing back.

 

Enth E ND

Motion Man ("The Underground Issue 2, 2002"):
Well these cats put me on, they have a big fan base. It gives us (Kutmasta Kurt and I) another avenue of promotion for ourselves. More people to hear us. Also, the collaboration came out mega.
Motion Man ("The Underground Issue 2, 2002"):
Naw, I wrote it, I took Mike's first four bars and gave it my own rendition. Then, I extrapolated eight bars of my own.
Motion Man ("The Underground Issue 2, 2002"):
Kurt actually did a remix; he remixed the original sounds from the original song, and put his stamp on it. Kurt's gotta ill sound, you hear it out there sometimes.
Motion Man ("The Underground Issue 2, 2002"):
Uh, I rode around in a limo as the real Spiderman with Kutmasta Kurt showing his real face with no mask and Mike Shinoda in the middle dropping both his verses on the outskirts, flossin' down Ventura Blvd. with cameras and lights.
Brad Delson (linkinpark.com Chat 03 July 2002):
I am very excited for you to hear the remix of in the end
Kut MastaKurt (MTV.com 26 July 2002):
I just decided, ‘OK, I don’t know a lot about rock, but let me turn on KROQ while driving around L.A., where you spend a lot of time in your car. I kept hearing the song ‘In the End,’ and I was like, ‘OK, that’s the song I want to do. Hands down, that’s the one I want to do.’

 

Frgt/10

Brad Delson (linkinpark.com Chat 03 July 2002):
I think my favorite is Forgotten that was Alchemist features Chali2na. I love Chalis verse, I love the way he and Mike go back and forth and I think the beat is really hard
Mike Shinoda (linkinpark.com Chat 17 July 2002):
thanks. i'll check out the band...i actually referenced some of our early demo lyrics on the reanimation cd. the early lyrics for "rhinestone", which became "forgotten"
Chali 2na (MTV.com 26 July 2002):
I do appreciate the fact that cats like Linkin Park are able to reach out to cats like us and put us on a listening plateau to where people who don’t normally listen to rap or who only listen to the pop aspect of it will get to see other things. They’re exposing them to other things. They didn’t take the easy way out. They wasn’t calling the P. Diddys — no disrespect to them cats. … They was calling cats they respect, and I appreciate that and I respect them more for that.

 

P5hng Me A*wy

Stephen Richards ("The Underground Issue 2, 2002"):
Not half surprised as I was flattered. As people know, we know Mike Shinoda really well and he's always been really supportive of Taproot and of my vocal style. Being asked was more of an honor than a surprise.
Stephen Richards ("The Underground Issue 2, 2002"):
"Pushing Me Away" was very good and I like the way it turned out. The only other potential song that I thought I would've been doing is "PLC.4 MIE HÆD", because that's the song I sing live with those guys when we are in the same town.
Stephen Richards ("The Underground Issue 2, 2002"):
Yes, I did write my own lyrics for my portion of the song. And the inspiration just came from looking at the lyrics that were already there, presented by Chester and Mike, and I just tried to kinda spawn my own ideas off of that but obviously it all boils down to relationships.
Stephen Richards ("The Underground Issue 2, 2002"):
It only took about an hour and a half of recording time at Mike Shinoda's apartment, but 25-30 minutes to come up with the vocal concept for me. So I had a little bit of practice at my house before I got there.
Stephen Richards ("The Underground Issue 2, 2002"):
Not necessarily. I don't think they had any idea. I know Mike told me that the track wasn't even going to make the record unless someone came up with something different and innovative, so luckily he called on me. And I guess that they liked what I do enough. So I don't think he had any expectations of what it was going to sound like. I just did what I did and fortunately he liked what it sounded like.
Stephen Richards ("The Underground Issue 2, 2002"):
Yes I've talked to Mike a couple times via phone and was lucky to hang out with those guys at the press junket for the Reanimation record and I got to see all the boys and say hello.
Stephen Richards ("The Underground Issue 2, 2002"):
Definitely. Especially with what I did to "Pushing Me Away" with the 3-part harmony and real cool vocals. There's a lot of that on our record and it's the same type of vibe on our album.
Brad Delson (linkinpark.com Chat 03 July 2002):
I really liked working on Pushing Me Away because it was one of the last songs to take shape, but it really came out dope...I'd say almost better than the original
Mr. Hahn ("The Underground Double Issue 3 & 4, 2002"):
Scott Patton was the mastermind behind 'Pushing Me Away'. He is an extremely talented special effects wizard that I used to work with when I worked on movies (before "Hybrid Theory").
Plc.4 Mie Hæd
Mike Shinoda (linkinpark.com Chat 17 July 2002):
LETS JUST INTRODUCE ZION--HE PERFORMED ON THE REMIX FOR PLC.4 MIE
HÆD. HE'S IN A GROUP CALLED ZION-I FROM THE SAN FRANCISCO AREA
HIS PARTNER AMP DID THE BEAT, AND WE ALL WORKED ON THE MUSIC TOGETHER
Zion (linkinpark.com Chat 17 July 2002):
I recorded vocals in Mike's studio at his house
It was cool because it was my first time recording onto Pro-tools which expanded my knowledge
I really learned something from it
Zion (linkinpark.com Chat 17 July 2002):
Um, working with Linkin Park for the first time was a challenge in a good way
It made us stretch ourselves to a level of professionalism and to have that rugged integrity so fans would know it was Zion I mixing LP
putting our vibe on it too
it was dope
Zion (linkinpark.com Chat 17 July 2002):
Yeah Mike, I met some cats I really respect
black thought, alchemist
dude from taproo
artists that i have been respecting for years
it was fresh
Mike Shinoda (linkinpark.com Chat 17 July 2002):
zion i, like most of the artists on the cd, have a very different style than our band. so the challenge was coming together in a way that represented both things and didn't compromise either
rght
we did the whole song without guitars. it was a real challenge
but it still sounds really heavy
Zion (linkinpark.com Chat 17 July 2002):
ya that's real true
I think the connection between the two is we both dibble and dabble with elecrtic sounds a lot
we could mix the guitar and the rhymes and that electronic sound was the bridge
amp took the keyboard samplers and tweaked them and sampled them so it kinda sounded like guitars
it was phat
yeah definitely that
Zion (linkinpark.com Chat 17 July 2002):
When LP said they wanted something darker, it was cool because we used Amp's creativity in a different way
FOR SURE FOR SURE want to work with LP again
cause they are really talented and steel sharpens steel
when other people are doing good things, it makes your thing become better
Zion (linkinpark.com Chat 17 July 2002):
interesting moments...
yeah, when we got to Mike's house and had 8 bars to rhyme
and he made me do it over like 30 times!
usually something that short would take 5 or 10 minutes to do
but it took 40 minutes
and it showed his level of perfection
and made look at my own art with a little more critical eye
yeah
sometimes as an artist you are trying to catch the feeling, so for me at least i am not as focused on articulation, but in that instance but now i see in the finished project i see what a difference that made
Mike Shinoda (linkinpark.com Chat 17 July 2002):
usually this guy does things pretty fast i think. for all of you who don't know, 8 bars is 8 phrases (1/2 of his verse i think).
i wanted every word to be clear
Zion (linkinpark.com Chat 17 July 2002):
We actually like the CD so it's such an honor
One of our friends gave us the CD and I wasn't even that into rock at that moment, and amp listened to it and we were like- its dope
we started seeing the video and loving them
it made us feel like things were happening when people you respect respect you
and want to work with you

X-Ecutioner Style

Roc Raida (MTV.com 25 February 2002):
Right now, we’re working on a song for their next album that’s possibly gonna be an intro or something. We just started, but we’re working on it. Hopefully we’ll tour more with them and do other stuff, because they’re like our boys now.
Mike Shinoda (MTV.com 26 July 2002):
[A particularly prized score for Linkin Park was the Roots’ MC Black Thought, who provides rhymes to “X-ecutioner Style,” the only song on the album that doesn’t appear in its original form somewhere else.]
I don’t think he knows how nervous I was when I called him up. A friend of mine told me that he wanted to link us up ’cause he knows one of my favorite groups is the Roots. We’re all big fans, and that was something that was kind of a goal of ours as far as the album, to get groups that we really admire to participate.
Rob Bourdon (MTV.com 26 July 2002):
[To Linkin Park drummer Rob Bourdon, admiration, as it pertains to the truly organic Roots, is an understatement.]
I grew up playing to funk and R&B, and then I got into rock. But I had friends who listened to hip-hop and I never really got into it that much because I was always trying to expand my horizons to become a better drummer. One of my friends told me to check out their CD because they do this sh– live. And I just opened my eyes up to that, so they totally opened the door for me to listen to more hip-hop.

 

Mike Shinoda (BallerStatus 6 December 2004):
Reanimation was a way for us to put something out there just for the fans, in a way that let everyone know where we were coming from. Our tastes are a little all over the place, but that's just who we are. By the way, if anyone reading this hasn't heard Black Thought's verse from Reanimation, go get it just for that.

 

H! Vltg3

Mike Shinoda (MTV.com 3 June 2002):
[The song features guest spots from Evidence of Dilated Peoples and New York underground bard Pharaohe Monch, someone whose work Linkin Park think their fans should get to know better.]
He’s just a real mellow [guy], soft-spoken, [but] there’s a lot of hunger there. There’s a lot of intensity even though he’s been doing it for a really long time and he’s really successful in those genres of music [underground hip-hop]. But with a larger, mainstream audience, they don’t know him and that’s where we wanted to make that little connection — just bridge that gap. Hopefully, we could say to [our fans], ‘Well, we like this guy. We’ve been listening for a long time. Hopefully you’ll dig it, too.’
Brad Delson (linkinpark.com Chat 03 July 2002):
we are big fans of evidence and dialated so we were very honored for him to lace that track
so to speak

 

Wth>You

Joe Hahn (MTV.com 24 January 2002):

I just gutted the whole song and made a new song out of it. Same vocals, but all the instruments are a lot different.

 

Ppr:Kut

Rasco (linkinpark.com Chat 21 July 2002):
Well working with Mike was definitely something that I thought was real cool
I got a chance to meet him before the project started
as far as disliked, there is no one in the group i disliked at all
it was a good experience and we really appreciated being able to be on the project
Rasco (linkinpark.com Chat 21 July 2002):
No didn't work with Chester just Mike
Rasco (linkinpark.com Chat 21 July 2002):
it was a great experience for us because it was able to open us up to a new market
challenge us to do something other than what would be normal for us hip hop wise
we'd look forward to doing it again for sure
without a doubt i would love to be able to tour with them
Rasco (linkinpark.com Chat 21 July 2002):
[hey rasco: are there similarities between the way you approached your THe Birth album and the track you worked on with LP for reanimation?]
Fairly the same, it's a little bit different because you are working with other people, who when you come to the table basically the idea of the song was already set
I didn't really sit down and create the concept all ourselves
the concepts was set, but we were still able to create and work with the song
it was a little different than I would approach my own project
Rasco (linkinpark.com Chat 21 July 2002):
[hey rasco i havnt heard papercut yet but i just want to know was it hard for you to remake papercut and to make it as good and from what i have heard better than the orginal?]
That would be something they would like the fans to decide which is better
We wanted to come in and add a different element to the song
Its not better or worse, it's who they like in their hip hop influence
We weren't trying to outdo it, but add to it rather
Rasco (linkinpark.com Chat 21 July 2002):
[Hi Rasco!! I heard Reanimation on Krock last night and I just wanted to say that I think it's awsome. Papercut is one of the best on the album. You guys did an amazing job =]. I was wondering how you guys came up with the abbreviations for the song titles??? =]]
Mike did the abreviations
Rasco (linkinpark.com Chat 21 July 2002):
oh PPR:KUT we came in Asia and myself to add a verse to the song
Myself, Mike and Planet Asia to add a bit of flavour to the song
We added a verse to the song
It took about an hour to come up with the verse, and about another hour to record it
We recorded it at Mike's house
Rasco (linkinpark.com Chat 21 July 2002):
Working at Mike's house was really kick back
He allowed us to come in and kick back and create the music
Recording it was real easy and free with me and Asia
Rasco (linkinpark.com Chat 21 July 2002):
We work with Plannet Asia a lot, and Mike had approached us at a show that we did in Portland
He wanted to know if we'd be down to get in on the project
we both decided that it was something we'd like to do so we came into the project together
Rasco (linkinpark.com Chat 21 July 2002):
I'm not sure if they will be playing the songs on stage, but if we were asked to do that that would be real cool
Rasco (linkinpark.com Chat 21 July 2002):
I think maybe they were looking for maybe a more straight forward approach to the song, so I think that's why they got me and Asia on that track
We tried to be ourselves and bring that element
Bring new ingredients to that song to make it different

the combination of the 3 of us

 

Rnw@y

Troublemaker (linkinpark.com Chat 25 July 2002):
Hi, this is troublemaker and Emoss, we are the Backyard Bangers
And we are really happy with how Runaway (our featured track) worked out
We had our friend Phoenix Orion do a rhyme at the bridge of the song
Troublemaker (linkinpark.com Chat 25 July 2002):
I met Joe at some hip hop nights around town, and met him through a friend
We had friends that were friends
At the same time I was friends with Ztrip and he went out on the road with LP
So they asked us to do a song
Both Emoss and my choice of songs to do was Runaway
Joe and Mike said Runaway was availible so we just started working on it
Eric Moss (linkinpark.com Chat 25 July 2002):
we added more an electronic feel to it
added some things it didnt have before
added new flavors
they had a bridge that was aggressive
we added this hip hop rock break in there with scratches
we put in a whole new take on the song and added some drums and hip hop elements
chester redid his verses on the song too
Eric Moss (linkinpark.com Chat 25 July 2002):
yes we had fun
Troublemaker (linkinpark.com Chat 25 July 2002):
Every time you are in the studio with characters like Mike, Phoenix Orion and Micky P you have fun
Eric Moss (linkinpark.com Chat 25 July 2002):
mickey who did my december remix ..we're friends with as well.
it was a colaboration with backyard bangers
we hooked up with mike at mickey's place and phoenix would come in
it was a lot of hours but a lot of fun
Troublemaker (linkinpark.com Chat 25 July 2002):
[Will u colborate with Chris to remix the Johnny Quest Theme Song? Also Would there have been another LP song u would have liked to remix if you had the choice Aswell?]
Crawling
We really liked the electronic beginning on Crawling. The keyboards on Crawling...but the keys in the beginning of Crawling were cool and we knew we could add some phat drums to them
I mean Runaway
Troublemaker (linkinpark.com Chat 25 July 2002):
Tate was really instrumental in the recording process of the remix
He used to get us good records to sample he has an awesome record collection
Tate is another friend of ours and LP FYI
Eric Moss (linkinpark.com Chat 25 July 2002):
it was great to take all of their different parts and make a brand new track with our interpretation
to rearrange things and it was great to work with mike cause he's a very nice guy
Eric Moss (linkinpark.com Chat 25 July 2002):
[in your opinion, do u think the original version of runaway or the remixed version of rn@wy is better?]
ours is pretty damn good
of course we are going to say that
of course we are going to like ours cause we did it
the original is a good song too..thats why we picked it
Eric Moss (linkinpark.com Chat 25 July 2002):
[What new element did you bring to the Runaway remix?! .+:*``*:+.+:*``*:+.+:*``*:+.Luv Sophia* ]
new rock break in the middle of the song
new drums
some scratching
a brand new emcee
new sick rhymes
and other electronic trickery
Eric Moss (linkinpark.com Chat 25 July 2002):
we never made it to mike's house
we always meet in the middle with mike
Eric Moss (linkinpark.com Chat 25 July 2002):
[yeah I know you are regular people just i mean regulars in chat . And if you could have changed anything about the way the remix was done what would it be?Like would you have tried to make it better then I already know its gonna be?]
as far as changing the remix...

it's great the way it is

 

My Dsmbr

Mike Shinoda (linkinpark.com chat 11 January 2002):
[is My December on the re-mixed CD?]
yes. a guy named mickey p and i are working on it this week
i want it to sound like bjork
good question. i hope it comes out as good as the rest of them have

 

1Stp Klosr

Brad Delson (MTV.com 20 June 2002):
[The Humble Brothers] are from Canada, and they’re these amazing guys. We heard a remix they did of a Deftones song and we were like, ‘This is the sickest thing we’ve ever heard.’ They’re just one of those groups people haven’t found out about yet.
Mike Shinoda (MTV.com 20 June 2002):
And as if the original version of “One Step Closer” wasn’t disturbed enough, bolstered with a new verse by Korn’s Davis, “1STP KLOSR” has an even darker, more morose vibe to it.

 

Krwlng

Mike Shinoda ("The Underground Issue 2, 2002"):

Of all the tracks I worked on, I think Crawling was the most difficult... so "Krwlng", I guess.

 

Mike Shinoda (linkinpark.com chat 11 January 2002):
do you guys want to know my secret about my remix for "crawling"?
big news for those that like his band...
aaron lewis from staind sang on my remix for crawling
that guy is a very talented individual

 

Mike Shinoda (MTV.com 20 June 2002):
I usually like to make really dramatic songs [that are] dynamic from part to part — a lot of jumping from really quiet to really loud. And this song is pretty much a five-minute build to a crescendo and then it ends. It’s really smooth. There’s a lot of dark soundscapes created by the samples and the strings together.
Mike Shinoda (MTV.com 20 June 2002):

It was ridiculously easy because he liked the vibe. His voice is just amazing. Aaron came in and heard it and sat down and recorded his vocals in probably a half-hour. He comes to our bus, records it and leaves. I felt like it should have taken longer. I’m like, ‘Aaron, come back…’

 

Mike Shinoda (linkinpark.com Chat 17 July 2002):

i liked working on KRWLNG with phoenix and aaron lewis (from staind) the song was a big challenge for me. i did all the music and wrote the string arrangements. when you hear it, listen for the gradual build and the elements that create it.

 

Chester Bennington (LPU Chat 2002):
we've created something different then what already existed
the vocals didn't change as far as my performance
but it was really cool because i agree with you that aaron has one of the best voices
it's really exciting to hear our voices together
they blend really well and he does some really cool harmonies
it's one of my favorite tracks on the remix record

 

Buy Myself

Mike Shinoda (linkinpark.com chat 11 January 2002):
manson told us he'd do a track, but he hasn't had time to yet. we don't know him very well, so we don't really feel that we're in a position to bug him.\
(at least not me)

Mike Shinoda (linkinpark.com chat 11 January 2002):
[Mike I can bug him for you about it if you wish. I am very well aquainted with the people at Umusic and namely nothing records]
oblivion: thanks you, but i don't want to pester him. if he wants to do it, please let him know we are eagerly awaiting word that he is working on it. if not, we will have other options

 

Marilyn Manson (Official Message Forums 03 March 2002):
I have not yet remixed Linkin Park but I have been asked to do so. It is possible I might make one of their songs something that people who dislike them could appreciate. I enjoy challenges and the opportunity to create.
Money doesn't make a difference as long as I enjoy doing something.

 

Brad Delson (linkinpark.com Chat 03 July 2002):

We worked with Manson on a version of By Myself that will appear as a B-side on some upcoming release


METEORA
Foreword
Meteora booklet:
This album was written in four places over the past year and a half: The bands tour bus, at Mike's house, at NRG Studios, CA, and at Soundtrack Studios, NY. This intro was recorded at Mike's house, after the rest of the album was finished.

Mike Shinoda (ShoutWeb March 2003):
"Foreword" is just an intro. If you know what Foley work is, it's my first attempt at Foley work. Basically, it's noises I made in the studio breaking things. We have this CD player and CD burner attached to my computer, which basically just ate shit during the writing process. It gave Chester and I such a hard time! Burning CDs which should have taken a minute were taking 20 minutes, 30 minutes, to an hour. I just got so frustrated with the thing, I put it to the side knowing that I was going to beat it with a baseball bat and that's what I did. I smashed it with a baseball bat on metal table.

Don't Stay
Meteora booklet:
Mike and Brad's original guitar parts for this song had a Reggae-Style vide. After numerous transformations (Probably 5 or 6 different guitar variations), Brad developed the final recorded version. Under the working title "Sick," this song was one of the first tracks finished for this album... Notably, Joe recorded the opening scratch solo on the first take.

Mike Shinoda (ShoutWeb March 2003):
That song started off as almost a Spanish or reggae style sound with the guitar. The first time I heard it, I almost thought it sounded like some kind of Latin dancing thing. And it was funny because it didn't sound that way. It just gave me that idea in my head so Brad and I worked on it. Brad ended up coming up with the final thing, which is what you hear there. The nice thing about the song is that it's written really heavy. It's got an interesting bounce to it and that Spanish guitar thing is gone now. Because it came from that place, it has a different vibe to the rhythm of it. I think it's a really fun song. It's going to be a really fun song to play live. It's really energetic.

Somewhere I Belong
Mike Shinoda (Rolling Stone April 2002):
We had written, finished, and performed 39 different choruses to that song. But our producer told us that it wasn’t quite right so we kept rewriting it. It was very stressful, as chester got sick and it scared the crap out of us. If his voice was different in any way, we would have had to scrap the song, and given that it was the single, you can understand how important it was to us. Thankfully, on take number 40, we got it right.
I don’t know. It is just a part of who I am. When I went to art school, we were taught that craftmanship was the most important part of what you do as an artist and I think I have carried it over into the way I work in the band. When we are putting together all of the musical parts, I want to make sure that every little detail is scrutinised. It just has to be right.

Mike Shinoda (Rolling Stone April 2002):
Lyrically, I am really proud of Somewhere I Belong. As it has an optimistic outcome, which is something brand new for us. When we were writing the first album, we were writing as 19 year old kids who were dealing with emotions like anger and frustration on paper for the first time. I am not saying that at the age of 25 that I am this wise, all knowing mature person, but what I am saying is that were have had more experience of the world now, and hope to communicate that kind of maturity in the songs.

 

Brad Delson (MTV 14 January 2003):
One thing that sets ’Somewhere I Belong’ apart from some of the other songs is it has an interesting sense of optimism to it. So I think the lyrics are one of the stand-out elements to that song.

Brad Delson (MTV 14 January 2003):
The video is being directed by this guy, he’s got kind of a negative reputation in the industry, but we’re giving him a shot. His name is Joe Hahn.

Joe Hahn (MTV 14 January 2003):
It’s another very visual concept. It’s basically a dream sequence that’s taking place, and the familiar objects in the room are turning into the reality, which is the dream, which is not the reality. It’s a whole play on your mind.

Brad Delson (MTV 14 January 2003):
It’s very pseudo-intellectual.

 

Brad Delson (linkinpark.com 15 January 2003):

Joe is directing the new video by himself and we are really very proud of what he’s done in the past. He’s definitely going to be special effects and CGI intensive. Joe’s background is in creating larger than life visual environments. The song is really about escape and trying to find a place where you belong- but in this case Chester basically falls into a dream, which is the place where he is most comfortable, and Joe is trying to bring to life Chesters subconscious, which is where the majority of the video takes place.
Brad Delson (linkinpark.com 15 January 2003):
Somewhere I Belong- it’s the 3rd track and first single off the record. Definitely I think it represents musically what we’ve been able to accomplish. It’s a dope song. I think that from the very beginning of the song you know its something special. It definitely showcases the ability for Mike and Chester to merge into one unstoppable force.

Meteora booklet:
Originally, this started out as a sample of Chester playing acoustic guitar. Mike took the sample, replayed it, effected it, flipped it backwards, and cut it up into four pieces, creating the main sample of the song. By the time it was finished, almost a year later, the band had rewritten most of the music around the sample. On another note, Mike and Chester wrote over 30 finished choruses for this song, each time scrapping the last one in search of something better. They ended up recording the final version one week after the rest of the album was finished, in the studio where they were mixing.

Mike Shinoda (ShoutWeb March 2003):
"Somewhere I Belong" is the single. It started out with an interesting sample. Actually, the first thing you hear in the song is a sample. Now, the sample sounds like keyboards but what it is really, is a guitar progression Chester played.
And this is just to give you an idea. It just shows the evolution of parts. The guitar part that Chester played had a cool progression to it but the sound of it was too acoustic guitar. So what we did was, we flipped it backwards. We effected it. I cut it up into four pieces and instead of arranging it 1-2-3-4, I arranged it 4-3-2-1 because it had been reversed. So it evolved into this thing with the different manipulations in the computer. It evolved into this thing that it is now. In fact, you can hear an early version of that on our "Party At The Pancake Festival" DVD. That's the DVD that came out over a year ago. There's a version of that towards the end of the DVD that's playing. You kind of get an idea of what it sounded like in the second stage of it's lifetime and now it's at it's third when we finished it. So that song is cool for that reason.
Another cool thing about it is that it's really the first time you hear some optimistic views, some optimistic lyrics from us. I think that lyrically this album is a little older, a little more mature hopefully. When we were writing a lot of songs for the first album, we're talking about writing as 18 and 19 year olds. Being 25 now, I feel like I just look at things a tiny bit differently. It doesn't really have much to do with where we're at with the success of the first album and it has everything to do with having seen some of the world and just being a little bit older. So, that's where that comes from. But you'll see overall on the album that it's still the same heavy and melodic and dynamic sound that is kind of our signature thing just with some new evolution added.

Mike Shinoda (Spin April 2003):
We tried 40 choruses. It was just agonizing – you can’t even imagine writing ten, and we were writing the tenth one, and in our minds, it was done. And people would come and say, ‘Yeah, it’s cool.’ And that’s not the response you want. You want, ‘That’s the greatest thing I’ve ever heard!’ In our heads, were thinking, ‘Damn it – we gotta go on writing.’

 

Chester Bennington (LPU Chat April 2003):
It's kind of hard to say which song was most difficult to write/record- Runaway took literally like 6 years to write and Somewhere I Belong took the entire length of recording- it was the first thing written during Ozzfest and last one we finished in the studio. Those 2 songs made me want to kill myself because I knew they'd both be good but they took SO LONG>

 

Mike Shinoda (NYRock May 2003):
We've always been a band that experiments with different sounds. Sometimes the most simple sound works for the song and sometimes it takes a lot of work to make a sound happen. For example, the intro on the "Somewhere I Belong" single – that sweeping sample – that's actually an acoustic guitar. And everybody, when they hear that, they look at us like, "How did you do that?" We make all of our samples from scratch, from nothing.
What happened on that one was we played an acoustic guitar riff and the acoustic guitar sounded like country music; it sounded like folk music, so that wasn't working for me. Joe (Hahn, DJ) and I played with it and turned it backwards, cut it up into pieces. I rearranged it and put effects on it, and that's what gave it that sound. And to me, the samples and the keyboard elements are a very important part of the mood of what we do. So I think we spent some extra time with those on this album, really, really invested some energy into making our sampled elements – original sampled elements – sound different.
Mike Shinoda (Yahoo! Launch 12 October 2003):
Lyrically, you'll notice kind of a progression or hopefully a growth, because some of the songs on Hybrid Theory are, like, seven years old. "Like A Place From My Head," that was written seven years ago. You'll notice in the lyrics from Hybrid Theory, we're attacking these universal themes of depression, of anger, or of frustration. I mean, we approached those things from the eyes of someone who's 20 years old. Now it's five years later, and we kind of feel that we can attack those thoughts with a little bit more confidence, and also talk about some things that go beyond those things. So this record has those emotions that we expressed on Hybrid Theory, but it kind of has a little bit more. On "Somewhere I Belong," you'll hear a little bit of hopefulness in the chorus, which you probably didn't hear so much in your face on Hybrid Theory.

Rob Bourdon (Facebook Chat 23 December 2013):
One of my favorite songs to play is Somewhere I belong. Second favorite is probably No More Sorrow, and I love playing Little Things Give You Away


Lying From You
Meteora booklet:
Mike and Joe's studio equipment was installed in the back of a tour bus during the summer of 2001, and they put it to good use. Mike came up with the intro sample and chorus music for the song during an overnight bus drive during Ozzfest (Trying to record guitar in a moving bus can be very sloppy). But months later, in the studio at NRG, everything got cleaned up, replayed, and put together right.

Mike Shinoda (ShoutWeb March 2003):
That song will be impossible for any cover bands to play! Chester just sings too damn hard. I think it's great. I think he did some great stuff on that song. We all are really proud of that song. It's another song with a great keyboard thing that we made, this kind of sample sound at the beginning. It's going to be a really fun song to play live. I could say the same thing for the song that comes after that.
"Lying From You" is about pushing someone away. The title means, making up lies to make another person angry so that they don't want to be around you; which is something that some people do subconsciously in relationship. That's not what my part of the song is about but I know that in a broader sense, when people start feeling negative feelings toward somebody else, just naturally they start doing things to make that person not want to be around them. It's a subliminal reaction. That works with friends. That works with relationships - either way, people do that.

Hit The Floor
Meteora booklet:
The band wanted to make a heavy song with a hip hop bounce - this is what came out. Mike and Chester tried numerous singing-style choruses, but when Chester brought the screaming hook into the studio, everyone knew it was going to work. the hardest work in creating this song was in the minor details. Tightening the lyrics and capturing the performances took days to finish.

Mike Shinoda (ShoutWeb March 2003):
"Hit The Floor" is interesting because it's got this hip-hop style beat. For all the technical musicians out there, there is one thing that you'll notice right off the bat in the song. When you're writing a big rock chorus, you come in on the one count, on the downbeat, and you're just blaring music. The interesting thing about this song is that it comes on the "and" after the one. It's a syncopated start almost. For the technical musicians out there, you'll notice that it was definitely a chance that we took, that ended up working out. It was a difficult thing to make work and I think we feel pretty proud of it.
Just as a side note, and this leads us into the next song, is what I think makes great writing. It's like being a great athlete. It's when you can do something that's very difficult in a way that seems easy or even natural. You notice a great athlete, doing something that is just impossible for the average person to do but they make it seem so easy. And in that song, that's one element of it. In "Hit The Floor", that's one thing that is really working in that song.
"Hit The Floor" is kind of about people who look down on other people. It's basically about people stepping on other people to get to the top and acting like they're invincible when everybody knows that you can't be that person forever. You can't step on other people to get to wherever you want to get to. It just ends up coming back and biting you. And even in that song there is definitely more to it than that.

Easier To Run
Meteora booklet:
Rob's playing on this song is extraordinary. He found a way to make this complex drum pattern sound easy and tasteful. Plus, he recorded it in only a few takes. On another note, the verse lyrics emerged from a free-writing exercise performed by Chester: He wrote them to no music, no beat. Mike and Don liked them a lot, and the three guys decided that this was the song to work them into.

Mike Shinoda (ShoutWeb March 2003):
In the next song, "Easier To Run", Rob is just killing the drums. It's my favorite song that he's done. You listen to the song and you enjoy the song or whatever but if you listen back and just listen to the drums, he's playing some very complex stuff. A drummer who's only got a couple of years under their belt is not going to be able to play that song. I'm really happy for Rob on that song. I think he really pulled it off.
Lyrically, it's kind of about escapism in a way. I think that's a really familiar topic for myself and for a lot of people in the world. If that weren't the case, then movie ticket sales wouldn't be so high. People go out and do things to get away from their life. That's what the song is about, it's easier to run away from your problems then to face them. We elaborate on that theme in the song. I think that one came together pretty quickly as far as lyrics go, which is nice. For us, it feels like magic when the lyrics to a song just come together in a couple of days. It's really a special kind of feeling.
It's just tough because for a lot of these songs, Chester and I in general, because we don't have the same life, we are talking about different things a little bit but when they come together in the song, it becomes one story. Sometimes I worry if I'm telling too much of my side of it because it is open to interpretation, even from the two of us a little bit, not much, but a little bit.

 

Mike Shinoda (NYRock May 2003):
We wanted to experiment and step outside of the box; so we brought in and used some live strings, piano. We used a traditional Japanese flute, which is called shakuhachi. We played with time signatures. There's a song in 6/8 – we've never done a song in 6/8 before, different tempos. Obviously, songs like "Breaking the Habit" and "Faint" are faster than any songs we've ever written and "Easier to Run" is much slower.
And, finally, I think the musicianship the guys showed on this album was really kind of an advancement to me. I think that they really are showing their skills well and not doing it in a way that's distracting; it's very tasteful. To me, that's excellent writing – like when there's a good athlete. You know a good athlete by the fact that they can do something that's extremely difficult and make it look smooth and natural. Michael Jordan makes everything look easy, but what he's doing is extremely difficult.
And on a song like "Easier to Run," first listen you may not even pay attention to the drums. But if you listen to the drums on that song or watch Rob (Bourdon, drums) play them live tonight, it's very technical. There's no way I can play that. It's very difficult stuff. And I appreciate that a lot.

Mike Shinoda (LPU Chat 22 August 2006):
i thought "easier to run" might have been a power ballad. but not that we have any intention of making one-- that's just what the song decided to be.

 

Chester Bennington (LPU Chat 2 August 2011):
[Will you ever play Easier to Run live again?]
I don’t think so. I don’t think Dave likes that song. So, it’s his fault. That’s why we don’t play it, ‘cause Dave doesn’t like it.


Faint
Meteora booklet:
Brad came into the studio bus, where Mike was working, to record a new idea. Brad recorded scratch guitar tracks for "Faint" over a click track (no drums, no music), expecting the tempo to be about 70 BPM (beats per minute). He returned to the bus a couple of days later, and Mike had put together the beat at 135 BPM - Almost twice as fast. After careful deliberation, Brad and Mike decided the faster beat was more fun.

Mike Shinoda (ShoutWeb March 2003):
"Faint" is a fun song. Brad actually brought that guitar part in originally thinking that it would be 70 beats per minute or somewhere in that vicinity I think. I'm not sure about the exact number. He played it to a click during Ozzfest and he came back. He and I had done the drum tracks to 140 beats per minute. First he argued with me and told me that it wasn't supposed to be that then I told him, "I know what you intended but I think this works." He listened to it and he totally changed his mind. I just heard something different when I first heard the part so that's how this came about. We're going to skip the lyrics on that one. "Faint" was just a working title that we wanted to keep. I don't know what the actual title would have been but it wasn't that. That word doesn't even appear in the song.

 

Mike Shinoda (Yahoo! Launch 12 October 2003):
One of the big differences people will notice between Hybrid Theory and Meteora is just simply the use of different instruments, different textures and moods. For example, in "Breaking The Habit" we have live strings and piano, in "Faint" we have live strings. You'll notice Japanese flute here and there, we'll use different samples that will basically create a new mood, create a vibe in the song. The songs still have the Linkin Park sound--they have the dynamics, the heaviness, the things that make it sound like us. But we did try to experiment with different sounds and time signatures and tempos, all these different things just to make it feel a little bit different.

 

Chester Bennington (O Globo 3 August 2012):
There are some songs that we can not stop playing. Hardly anyone will come out of a show without hearing our "In the end", "Numb", "Crawling" and "Faint", for example. And it is pleasant to see the audience happy. Of course there are those that we no longer so fond of playing, like "Runaway", but fans love. I do not understand why, because I think this is bad music today.


Figure.09
Meteora booklet:
This song originally had rapping in the verses, then was rewritten with singing verses during the process at NRG, the singing parts remained until the recording was finished. Then, while mixing the album, Brad, Mike, Chester and Don swapped the rap verses back in, deciding that the rapping made the song more interesting. the rest of the band didn't hear the final version of the song until the album was complete.

Mike Shinoda (ShoutWeb March 2003):
"Figure .09" is another song that will be a lot of fun to play live. It's a really loud song. The first sound you hear sounds like little conga drums or something. It's actually Joe tapping on his turntables with a distortion pedal. So the distortion creates this drum type sound when he hits his needle and his vinyl. So he made this little beat just tapping on his records, which is really interesting. I think it's stuff like that that shows where Joe's going. He's doing some really creative things with his turntables. He's not limiting himself to just scratching and rubbing them back and forth and playing samples. He did some interesting stuff.

Breaking The Habit
Meteora booklet:
Mike had been trying to write a song around this lyrical idea for over five years. He tried this theme a number of times, but nothing seemed to do the song justice. Meanwhile, during the process of putting together this album, Mike began working on an interlude, crossing a digitally manipulated beat with strings and piano. Unexpectedly, Brad and Joe suggested that Mike turn the two-minute interlude into a full song. Tentatively titled "Drawing," this piece was extended to three minutes and 16 seconds when Mike took it home to write lyrics, in less than two hours, the lyrics that he had been trying to put together for years fell into place. With some finishing touches, live piano and live strings, the song was finally complete - six years in the making.

Mike Shinoda (ShoutWeb March 2003):
"Breaking The Habit" is a really interesting song. It will stand out to a lot of people as a different sound for us. It's very obviously Linkin Park but there are live strings and there is live piano. The guitar doesn't ever hit 11. Basically, the way the song started was as an interlude. It was going to be an instrumental track that was ten minutes long. The guys convinced me to turn it into a full song with verses and choruses and whatnot and add some lyrics. Well, five year ago or something I tried to write this other song that never came together. I had tried it 20 different times and it never worked because it was always cheesy or it was too dark or it was too melodramatic or something and I always ended up scrapping it. When I tried it out on this song and the lyrics were finished in two hour, I couldn't believe it. I mean, this is a song I had been trying to write for five years and it just came together in two hours. It was amazing. It finally came together and I'm really happy about that. I'm proud of that song in a lot of ways. I put a lot of work into it. From the beat, to the strings, to the piano, to the vocals, I put a lot of work in and the guys were really supportive. I had a lot if great suggestions and helpful criticism and that's why the song came out really well for me. It's easy for me to say that I love the song because I wrote so much of it. I just think it's a really powerful song. Chester's performance on it is one of his best.
Lyrically, it's kind of just about getting away from the parts of you that you do not like. It goes into great deal about that type of situation. The things about our lyrics in general is that we spend so much time on them that there is no way I can tell you in conversation any better than the actual lyrics. If I sit here and think up something, that's an off-the-top-of-my-head summary of what those lyrics are about whereas those lyrics took five years to do. So those lyrics are the most accurate depiction of what that's about, not what I can tell you.

Chester Bennington (LPU Chat April 2003):
[chester your personal fovorite faint, breaking the habit?]
Breaking the Habit by far. I like Faint don't get me wrong, but Breaking the Habit is like the @#%$
I'm almost pissed off that we wrote it becasue I like it that much. If someone else had written it I could play it all the time but if I do that people will think I am a narcasistic punk.

 

Chester Bennington (LPU Chat April 2003):
I think Breaking the Habit is the best song we ever wrote so that's the song for both of those questions.

 

Mike Shinoda (NYRock May 2003):
Yeah, yeah, it's very therapeutic. I like it a lot. In fact, I wrote all the lyrics on that one. That was, I think, the only one I wrote all the lyrics on. There had been this theme in my head that I wanted to write about for five years, and I kept trying it and writing songs about it, and it never worked. It would always be too dorky or too cheesy or whatever. And somehow, when I sat down with this particular music, this thing that I had been trying to write about for five years came out in two hours – just flew out on the page. I love when songs get finished that way, because there's a magic to it.
Mike Shinoda (Yahoo! Launch 12 October 2003):
One of the big differences people will notice between Hybrid Theory and Meteora is just simply the use of different instruments, different textures and moods. For example, in "Breaking The Habit" we have live strings and piano, in "Faint" we have live strings. You'll notice Japanese flute here and there, we'll use different samples that will basically create a new mood, create a vibe in the song. The songs still have the Linkin Park sound--they have the dynamics, the heaviness, the things that make it sound like us. But we did try to experiment with different sounds and time signatures and tempos, all these different things just to make it feel a little bit different.
Linkin Park ("Breaking The Habit" Manga July 2004):
As we began to write songs for our sophomore release, pressure began to build. How could we capture, in our music, feelings behind our most recent experiences? Countless ideas for songs floated around our heads and on our computer screens, but we had yet to complete a song which would define the evolving identity of our band.
It was at that time that "Breaking The Habit" mysteriously appeared to define the sound of Linkin Park's future. In spite of our collective influences, this songs seems curiously unfamiliar. Built around an intended instrumental, Meteora's ninth track was the first to be completed in the studio. Although he had struggled for years to render this song's subject matter, after listening to the completed instrumentation, Mike penned the "Breaking The Habit" lyrics in a matter of minutes. And Chester performed them with inspired tenure.
More than a year later, Mr. Hahn, in his most ambitious visual effort to date, would bring this song's themes of power and powerlessness to life. Enlisting the collaboration of a world-renowned team of animators, Mr. Hahn invented a multidimensional backdrop to illustrate the interconnectivity of individuals struggling to break their respective habits. And for fun, he animated the six of us.
The best thing about music (or art) is that it is a two-way street. We make music for us...but we also make music for you. Thank you for being inspired and for inspiring. We hope that our music makes things just a little bit better.
Breaking The Habit manga:
Mike wrote all the lyrics to "Breaking The Habit".

Breaking The Habit manga:
Chester recorded all the vocals to "Breaking The Habit" in a single afternoon.

Breaking The Habit manga:
"Breaking The Habit" was animated by GDH and led by Kazuto Nakazawa, who created the memorable animation sequence in Kill Bill Vol. 1.

Breaking The Habit manga:
Mr. Hahn has created, directed and produced about 80% of LP's videos, including "Breaking The Habit." He has also directed videos for artists other than Linkin Park, including Xzibit, Static-X and Story Of The Year.

Breaking The Habit manga:
Mr. Hahn originally wrote the video treatment with the intention of it being live-action, but upon meeting with the Japanese animators at GDH, decided that an animated video would be more exciting.

Breaking The Habit manga:
"Breaking The Habit" was originally written as an instrumental song. The string parts were written on keyboard, but the band decided they wanted the strings to be played live. The string arranger and conductor for "Breaking The Habit" was Beck's dad, David Campbell.

Breaking The Habit manga:
LP hopes that each time the video is seen, viewers will discover something new in it.

Breaking The Habit manga:
To come up with an idea for a video, Mr. Hahn grabs onto a lyric or an emotion in the song and focuses his vision around it.

Breaking The Habit manga:
The "Breaking The Habit" animator, Kazuto Nakazawa, designed the characters for the anime series, "El Hazard."

Breaking The Habit manga:
The "Breaking The Habit" production designer, Patrick Tatopoulos, was also production designer for some of Linkin Park's other videos as well as movies such as I, Robot, Dark City, Battlefield Earth and Independence Day.

Breaking The Habit manga:
Before returning to Japan to begin the animation, Nakazawa sketched the band as they performed, capturing each band member's facial expressions and unique physicality.

Breaking The Habit manga:
The emotion that comes from the band's rooftop performance symbolizes the release of tension that's been escalating throughout the story.
Linkin Park ("Breaking The Habit" Manga July 2004):
This video was inspired by the fans who tell us that our music has helped them with their lives. Their stories are the heart of this video.
Chester Bennington (LPU Chat 2 August 2011):
[What’s your favorite Linkin Park song?]
I’d probably say Breaking the Habit and Papercut are probably my favorites.

Chester Bennington (Zane Lowe on BBC Radio 1 3 June 2014):
On like the emotional side, on the side that connect with me the most, I feel like Breaking The Habit for me was... that was one that I didn't write the lyrics for that song, Mike wrote all the lyrics for that song so... It just... I felt like he was writing about my life. I felt like one of the fans, like listening to the music and going "he knows me, and this is crazy" and it was really hard for me to even record the song. I was like crying while I was recording the song, I was like "I can't do this, I gotta get myself back together", and even... you know, once I got through the session and recording it, then we had to play it live and the same thing happened again, it was just like it hit me in such a place I had to like detach my own personal feelings towards the song so I could actually deliver it.

 

Chester Bennington (ShortList 8 June 2014):

I’ve always loved Papercut, as that song captures exactly what our band is about. But, on a personal level, I’ll say Breaking The Habit, just because it’s the only song where I’ve actually had to pull my shit together to record it – the lyrics hit me on such a deep level. And I didn’t even write the lyrics, Mike [shinoda] did, but it felt like he was singing my life, so it made it very difficult for me to perform that song in the studio.


From The Inside
Meteora booklet:
Phoenix came up with the original guitar idea for this song while recording with Mike in the back of the tour bus during the summer of 2002. The song's 6/8 time signature created an opportunity to juxtapose seemingly disparate rhythms, most apparent in the verses. When it came time to complete the song, the band ran into a challenge: Chester got sick. Unable to sing during his last week of scheduled recording, Chester was forced to finish his parts in New York, during the start of the mixing process. Down to the wire, the band was left with little margin for error. Fortunately, this song and "Somewhere I Belong" were written successfully on the third floor of Soundtrack Studios, NYC.

Mike Shinoda (ShoutWeb March 2003):
"From The Inside" started with an idea that Phoenix had on guitar. For the musicians out there, our songs are all in 4-4 time. That goes for the songs that we've released in the past anyway. I've tried a few things in 3-4, 6-8 or 7-8 before. Phoenix wanted to do a song in 6-8 really badly and he put it together in a way that was obviously going to work for us. We heard it and we knew that it was going to work. He felt like there was something missing. What's interesting is that Brad came in. We're all really open to other people helping us with our parts, like re-writing parts and whatever. It's not something that happens all the time but if somebody does have an idea, we're open to listening. Phoenix said, "Here Brad. Take this guitar part and make this work because it's almost there. It's just not quite right." Brad all of the sudden added this almost 4-4 style thing over top of the 6-8 verse which totally pulled the song together and makes it feel like a Linkin Park song. Finally, when it came to writing the lyrics, Chester had no problem throwing some stuff in the verses. I, on the other hand, had no reference point for 6-8 time signature rapping. There are probably only three or four songs I can think of where people have rapped in 3-4 or 6-8 time and I didn't like how they did it. I'd heard them and I wanted to do my own thing. Again, as simple as it sounds on the record, you try out ten to two different things to realize what is working and what's not. It takes a lot of time to get there. Needless to say, I've figured out what I like and don't like to do over 6-8 time. Now, the next challenge is going to be 7-8. I don't know, like a Tool or Mudvayne song. Lyrically, I am going to defer again to the person reading the lyrics because that song especially might be open to a little bit of interpretation.

 

Chester Bennington (MTV 12 November 2003):
It’s one of my favorite videos that we’ve ever made. We shot it in Prague, and the kids who were working on the video were just so intense and they were doing some stuff that we would have never been able to pull off anywhere else than where we were at. The energy that [Joe Hahn] captured in that video was pretty amazing. And the visuals of it and the intensity of it all, it makes it just a really fun video to watch.

 

Chester Bennington (LPU Chat 21 November 2003):
[Howdee Chester, how would you react if someone in a really cheesy satan costume chased you with a baked potato, randomly? By the way, Good luck with the show dude! OH, and my friend couldnt be here, but her question is does the milk in the FTI video have any significance?]
Yeah the milk is a visual representation of the kind of intense power the kid released when he yelled. It's not anything like "don't cry over spilled milk." When the kid screamed there's a big sonic boom, the earth shaking, and that was a simple way to show that.


Nobody's Listening
Meteora booklet:
One of the band's many goals in writing Meteora was to take their sampled sounds to the next level. However, in creating more interesting samples, a new challenge arose: To make the wide variety of sample-based elements feel like they belonged together. At first, this song's Japanese flute loop created a mood that was far different from any other song on which the band was working, and made the track feel too distant from the rest of the album. Mike and Chester decided that the singing vocals would have to somehow connect the song to the rest of the recordings. The following day, Chester's performance gave this seemingly incongruent song balance, transforming it into an essential track on the album.

Mike Shinoda (ShoutWeb March 2003):
"Nobody's Listening" is a more hip-hop style track. Beats and samples are the backbone of the song and of course, as always, we make our own stuff. When I use the word "sample", I don't mean that we're lifting it off somebody else's thing. We always create our own thing and loop that because to me it just feels more genuine. I can have more pride in a part that I wrote than a part that I lifted off of somebody else's thing. We made this interesting thing off of a Japanese flute with different Japanese flute sounds. It was actually keyboard and some other breathy sounds that we used, some piano and some drum stuff but it was most keyboard. It's like a real deal hip-hop track. The challenge in making that fit with the album was in the sonics and the vocals. At a certain point, we realized the song is like an island. It's detached from the mainland, the rest of the album. We realized that our bridge would be a little bit of guitar played a little differently. Brad does this muted guitar part in the chorus. Chester and I kind of play off each other's vocals. When we finished the vocals, we figured that it probably worked.

 

Mike Shinoda (AllHipHop 10 November 2004):
I have been a fan of Jay’s work from day one. one of my favorite songs is "Brooklyn’s Finest"–I even quoted it on our song "Nobody’s Listening" from Meteora. as far as working with someone for the first time: it can be a disaster, if the person you look forward to working with isn’t what you thought they’d be. Many times, fans will meet their favorite artist and that person is just a jerk. Fortunately, Jay is the epitome of what most people hope their favorite artist is like: down to Earth and easy to work with. Not to mention indescribably talented and completely at home in the studio

 

Mike Shinoda (ArtistDirect 2 July 2015):
[What was the biggest lesson you took from Collision Course?]
At that point, without realizing it, I was pointing all of the rap stuff I was doing at a certain type of listener. I was definitely writing from the heart. Sometimes, when you write, you imagine a certain type of audience or person listening to it. It's the same thought process that goes on when people want to write a song and play it live to see what the crowd reaction is. That was different then from what happened in Collision Course and what came after, because a hardcore hip-hop head, like the sort of people I would've hung out with in high school, weren't there. They weren't at that show. They weren't in that studio mindset. Once I brought that in and I said, "What would Mike from high school say about this verse?" all of a sudden, it went from "Nobody's Listening" on Meteora to "Bleed It Out" and "Hands Held High" on Minutes To Midnight, which was the next album. Those verses were much more complex and true to the kind of hip-hop I listened to growing up.


Session
Meteora booklet:
Mike created the majority of this instrumental song in the back of the bus in Pro Tools recording software. It felt unfinished for over a year...Until Brad, Phoenix and Joe put their finishing touches on it while in the studio at NRG, months later, the band and mixer Andy Wallace added a new dynamic to the song with quick panning accents in the turntable solo, most noticeable when listening in headphones.

Mike Shinoda (ShoutWeb March 2003):
"Session", is an instrumental track. I did all the beats. Joe did all the scratching. Brad and I manipulated Joe's scratching on the computer. We used digital effects on it that basically make it impossible to play! It starts out as just this piano and this beat and then beat starts kind of disintegrate then the piano starts disintegrating then the guitar comes in. It's just this nice evolution of digital simplicity to complete chaos and two and a half minutes later, you've been thrown off a cliff.

Mike Shinoda (MusicOMH 3 August 2005):
I probably got Sessions about 85 percent of the way and something needed to be added. The other guys knew what it was. Brad came in with some guitar, Phoenix with bass and Joe with scratching. It’s very fluid, and the digital elements are very chopped up and harsh. I think it’s cool. That electronic element has always been there in the band – it’s just that sometimes we bring it closer to the front.

Numb
Meteora booklet:
Just one week before the band entered NRG Studios to begin recording, this song was conceived. Built around the intro hook, the song came together quickly and almost effortlessly.

Mike Shinoda (ShoutWeb March 2003):
The last song is called "Numb" which starts with a nice keyboard hook. I thinks it was a nice way to end the album because it kind of sums up the record. It's very recognizable as our sound. It sounds like a Linkin Park song but it does have some mood that Meteora has if that makes any sense. Maybe I can say that better. When you hear it, you can easily recognize it as a Linkin Park song but it obviously belongs on Meteora. It obviously belongs in this new group of songs just because of the way the tone of the song is and the lyrics are. It's kind of about those times when you've got no feeling left or you just don't care. It's almost like exhaustion or something which funny enough is how we felt after touring last year.

 

Chester Bennington (O Globo 3 August 2012):
There are some songs that we can not stop playing. Hardly anyone will come out of a show without hearing our "In the end", "Numb", "Crawling" and "Faint", for example. And it is pleasant to see the audience happy. Of course there are those that we no longer so fond of playing, like "Runaway", but fans love. I do not understand why, because I think this is bad music today.

 

Mike Shinoda (MTV 8 September 2003):
I think that Joe [Hahn] built up all this creative energy and he’s really done a great job on the video for ’Numb’. It’s more of a concept video. It’s more of a story. It’s not identical to the story of the song, but it is similar in that the emotions that go on in the video are similar to those in the song.

 

Chester Bennington (azcentral 27 October 2015):
We had been releasing a lot of singles that were kind of energetic and yet sometimes more midtempo. And as great as those songs are, if you keep adding songs like “In the End” and “Numb” and “Shadow of the Day” and “Iridescent,” that will change the dynamic of a set. As much as we love those songs -- and as much as our fans love those songs -- if you just keep adding three more midtempo ballads to the set, pretty soon an hour and 20 minutes is midtempo ballads. And I think our fans want to come to a rock show where you’re kind of kicking ass and you leave tired with no voice. When we realize that our fans want to sit down more than stand up, we might start adding more midtempo ballads to the set (laughs). But for us, it really comes down to making a record where we could add a bunch of great songs that are gonna keep the pace of the show up and be fun to play and get the mosh pits going and get us rocking. We started doing, that, really, with “Living Things.” And we kind of continued that into this record. But as far as the records that we make, personally, there’s nothing we’ve released that I’m not 100 percent behind.

 

COLLISION COURSE

Dirt Off Your Shoulder/Lying From You
Mike Shinoda (BallerStatus 6 December 2004):
MTV called Jay and told him their idea for the live show. They wanted to know who he would like to do it with, and he had his manager call us. I had a vision for what it would sound like, but I didn't think words could describe it, so I made some music. I sent him a CD with "Dirt Off Your Shoulder / Lying From You" and "Numb / Encore" on it. His reply was "Oh Shit!" Needless to say, we were off on the right foot.

 

Big Pimpin'/Papercut

Mike Shinoda (Soundslam December 2004):
BPM, theme, key, vibe—all of that played into my decisions of which songs to mix. Our guitarist, Brad, helped me a bit with that part—we usually brainstorm well together. Some were more obvious to me, like Big Pimipin with Papercut. But Numb / Encore was a little more of a stretch. I think that a lot of people won’t realize how hard it was to get the songs to sound right together.

 

Numb/Encore

Mike Shinoda (AllHipHop 10 November 2004):
In every case, I adjusted the music to make the parts work together as one song. Every song is different, but here’s an example: with “Numb /Encore,” I started with the "Encore" accapella. I decided that the song of ours that best fit the tone of Jay’s lyrics was "Numb" I also just wanted to hear [Linkin Park’s] Chester singing the "What the hell are you waiting for" line! (Laughs) I then took the "Numb" instrumental and cut up some parts of it, and arranged them as a repeating pattern. I basically treated our instrumental as if it were a sample from a record, that I would cut up and replay in a different way, the way DJ Premier does. I built the rest of the track around that skeleton, adding the "Numb" keyboard hook, and new bass, piano, clean guitar, and drums. I did almost all of this work on my laptop in our bus, while we were on tour outside the U.S. seems like a lot of work for a mash-up, but I don’t do anything half-assed.

 

Mike Shinoda (Soundslam December 2004):
BPM, theme, key, vibe—all of that played into my decisions of which songs to mix. Our guitarist, Brad, helped me a bit with that part—we usually brainstorm well together. Some were more obvious to me, like Big Pimipin with Papercut. But Numb / Encore was a little more of a stretch. I think that a lot of people won’t realize how hard it was to get the songs to sound right together.

 

Mike Shinoda (BallerStatus 6 December 2004):
MTV called Jay and told him their idea for the live show. They wanted to know who he would like to do it with, and he had his manager call us. I had a vision for what it would sound like, but I didn't think words could describe it, so I made some music. I sent him a CD with "Dirt Off Your Shoulder / Lying From You" and "Numb / Encore" on it. His reply was "Oh Shit!" Needless to say, we were off on the right foot.

 

Points Of Authority/99 Problems/One Step Closer

Mike Shinoda (Soundslam December 2004):
My favorite part of doing this project was doing Jay’s first verse on “99 Problems.” I felt crazy suggesting it to him at first, like, “hey, I was thinking you could let me rap your part here.” I had to get my confidence up to suggest that one. But I recorded it, played it for him, and he was feeling it, so we were all good.

 

MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

Wake
Minutes To Midnight booklet:
This short song was created near the end of the album writing process. The dual-meaning of the word "wake" seemed an appropriate introduction to the record.

 

Minutes To Midnight Limited Edition booklet:

This short song was created near the end of the album writing process. Since a great deal of the gear they were experimenting with was from the 70’s and 80’s, the band thought the drop of a turntable needle onto vinyl was the best way to start the album. The dualmeaning of the word “wake” seemed an appropriate introduction to the record.

 

Mike Shinoda (Kerrang! April 2007):
This is an intro track that starts the album - you can hear a needle going down on a record and I think it sets a tone for what's to come.


Given Up
Minutes To Midnight booklet:
To add an unique twist on the punk/industrial theme of the guitar, Brad added the sounds on the intro of this song: multiple tracks of claps - and keys jingling.

 

Minutes To Midnight Limited Edition booklet:

Many of the demos in the beginning of the album were quieter, more introverted songs. This song, originally entitled “21 Stitches,” was the first heavy song that the guys were sure would make the final cut. In it, the band found a new way to combine their new sound with the loud guitars that had been missing. To add a unique twist on the punk/industrial theme of the guitar, Brad added the sounds on the intro of this song: multiple tracks of claps – and keys jingling.

 

Brad Delson (Kerrang! April 2007):
We had a really bad song called 'Fire in the City' - the chorus actually had the words 'fire in the city' on it! Mike was the only person who liked it. Rather than just scrap the song, we mined it for any good parts.
I took the bassline and the drums and built weird sounds around it, which eventually became this song. Chester's screaming: 'What the [expletive] is wrong with me? Put me out of my [expletive] misery!' so without explaining exactly what the song is about, it's pretty clear he's not happy.

Phoenix (BassGuitarMagazine 2007):

I also play a Music Man StingRay 5. We have some songs, especially those from Meteora, where I need to get down to that low B. While recording the album I found a distortion pedal called the Bass Bully which this guy in LA literally makes out of his garage [the father of guitar supremo Blues Saraceno no less]. It’s the only fuzz bass pedal I’ve ever found that actually seems to increase the tone - it doesn’t wash it out, and you can hear more distinction on the lower end which is incredible. So I use that live, and on the record. You can hear it really well in songs like ‘Given Up’, and ‘No More Sorrow’.

 

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 5 March 2008):
lastly, and not least…check out the widget at the bottom of this page. if you want one on your page, go to linkinpark.com and get one. on the widget, we’re premiering the BRAND NEW VIDEO for our latest single from “minutes to midnight”…GIVEN UP. the story behind it was that we had gotten all these video treatments by well-known, expensive directors, and they all felt a little off-the-mark. the song feels real punk rock to us, so we decided to go with a more do-it-yourself kind of approach. this was put together by our friend mark fiore, who has basically never directed a video before. we gave a him a few ideas about how we thought it should look, and he took those and ran with them…and did an incredible job. enjoy!

 

Chester Bennington (LPU Chat 2 August 2011):
I love to scream. I think that it’s really a lot of fun for me. It sounds great and it’s difficult to do. It’s definitely not the only thing I want to do. I want to try to use my voice in as many ways as possible. I also want to be able to sing for as long as I can, and hopefully when I’m 65 I can still sing Given Up or something, but I don’t know if I’ll be screaming my entire career but I do really enjoy it.


Leave Out All The Rest
Minutes To Midnight booklet:
The final version of this track is virtually the same as the first demo of the song. Very little changed between the first incarnation of the music, and the final version that appears on the album.

 

Minutes To Midnight Limited Edition booklet:

The final version of this track is virtually the same as the first demo of the song. Very little changed between the first incarnation of the music, and the final version that appears on the album. The lyrics, however, were one place where the most work took place. The chorus of this song, working-titled “Fear,” went through over 30 lyric variations before arriving at this version.

 

Chester Bennington (Kerrang! April 2007):
We Knew this was going to be a single from the very beginning, so we worked really hard on making sure it had some great lyrics. I'm singing 'Pretending someone else can save me from myself' during it because it's supposed to feel like an apology letter, as though I'm moving on but I want people to remember the good things and not the bad things. A lot of the song is about humility.

 

Phoenix (BassGuitarMagazine 2007):
[Any other effects?]
Nothing really crazy. We worked with a bunch of different things such as some synth pedals, but in the end, for anything like that we ended up using either samples or keyboards to create it rather than the bass. That seemed to work better. Whenever we play live I think it’s a little different to the average rock band. The process is more backwards – we work more like a studio production team in the sense that any sound that we need gets written into what we’re doing. At the end of the process we sit with our album and figure out how to play it live, rather than playing it first then working out how to record it. We just started playing ‘Leave Out All The Rest’ live and on that song we recorded a low sampled bass sound rather than an actual bass guitar. We had to experiment with how to get down that low live, and I think I tried playing with a low A on the bass – a detuned low B string - which sounded horrendous. So now I play a second guitar part while Joe, our DJ, is triggering the bass notes on a keypad.
Mike Shinoda (MTV News 21 March 2008):
Joe wasn’t even going to write a treatment for this song. We’d [received] a number of treatments, and we were kind of bummed out, because we weren’t connecting to any of them. And then, out of nowhere, we get a treatment from Joe in an e-mail, and we just loved it. It was random, out of nowhere, and it fit the song perfectly. I really like this video, because it’s different from everything else he’s done with us before. It’s this sci-fi thing, which is fun. We’ve never really done that, and when I walked onto the set, I thought it looked like ’Battlestar Galactica.’

Joe Hahn (MTV News 21 March 2008):
We’re explorers in space, just like when we go on tour. We’re leaving our home life behind, and I guess it kind of ties into ’Leave Out All the Rest,’ in that we have to leave things behind in order to do something better.

Mike Shinoda (MTV News 21 March 2008):
When we were in the studio, working on the album, this song was one of the ones that I was personally pretty attached to. I remember Rick, of all people, who never says stuff like this, because he’s more of a guy who either likes a song or thinks it can be better, and usually it can be better. I don’t know if it’s just that he sets his standards so high, but he never says things like, ’This is a single.’ But when he heard this song, he said, ’This sounds like a massive single.’ For us, when we write a record, we don’t think in terms of singles. In our minds, every song is a single.
Mike Shinoda (AbsolutePunk.net 13 July 2015):
Yeah, we’re already starting to throw ideas together. I’m always writing. It’s always an ongoing process for me, but we never know. Chester and I joke that we’ve already made the mistake of telling people what the next record is going to sound like. I remember on Minutes to Midnight, we wrote a couple really heavy songs. He went out and told people, “Oh, this album is going to be the heaviest record we’ve ever made.” Then it ended up that only two of those songs made the cut [laughs], and the rest of them did not. People were just like, “Wait, what the fuck? You told us this record was going to sound like…”
We had a fan track that we called “Qwerty” that was super heavy. It actually sounded more like Hunting Party. We put that out as like, “Hey, just for fun. We’re not going to put this on the record. You can have this one.” So people thought that was what the album was going to sound like, and then they put on the album. “Hands Held High” is on there. “Leave Out All the Rest” is on there. “In Pieces,” and all these not heavy songs. A lot of them are heavy in emotion. “Leave Out All the Rest” is literally about dying, so emotionally that’s very heavy [laughs], but it was not the sound that we had said. I hesitate to ever tell people what the records are going to sound like because the only way to really understand it at the end of the day is to actually hear the album.


Bleed It Out
Mike Shinoda (Rolling Stone November 2006):

The guitar sounds like AC/DC, the beat sounds like Motown, and there's a Stones-like groove to it. But it's got rapping and Clash-style vocals. It's so different it may take people a beat to go 'I can't believe it's the same band. But hopefully their next thought will be 'F*ckin' Cool'.

 

Minutes To Midnight booklet:
One of the band's goals on this record was to enjoy it. This track is one of the places that it is most evident.

 

Minutes To Midnight Limited Edition booklet:

One of the band’s goals on this record was to enjoy it. This track is one of the places that it is most evident. With its 80’s-inspired guitar and bass, roadhouse blues piano and clapping, Motown-style drums, irreverent death-party rap verses, and punk chorus, this song is a party (albeit a strange one) from beginning to end.

 

Mike Shinoda (Kerrang! April 2007):
I wrote the lyrics to this about a hundreed times. It's always frustrating as a lyricist to come in with a new version that you spent hours on and have the band tell you that it's not yet there. In one case they listened to my lyrics for 30 seconds and told me to start over again. That was pretty hard. It felt like I was bringing in lyrics, getting punched in the face and then going back to the drawing board. When it finally came together I said to the band, 'I don't think anyone but us could have made a song like this'. It's [expletive] bizarre death-party-rap-hoedown!

 

Chester Bennington (MTV.com 4 May 2007):
It’s a song that rides the line of what you might expect from us. It’s got rapping on it and a real big chorus, but it’s also got these great Motown drums and a real party vibe to it. So it’s something different too. It’s fun.

 

Chester Bennington ("Get More Into Music With Linkin Park" 19 August 2012):
You know, the creative process is just such an interesting thing and it changes from day to day. So growing in the studio... uh, it could be one day, it could be, you know, Mike and Brad like baging spoons on that pillar and mic... and mic'ing it to get like a weird sound and create... creating something percussive out of it. I mean, I've played everything from, you know, clapping, uh, stomping my feet, uh, we had a party in the studio once and recorded that, that's the beginning of "Bleed It Out". Anything can happen on a day in the studio. Uh. And at the same time we could have a room full of drums and plan a, you know, a bongo session and it just never happens cause it just feels stupid to sit around and play bongos like that, you know? So, uh, you know? Anything can happen, uh, in the studio.

 

Mike Shinoda (ArtistDirect 2 July 2015):
[What was the biggest lesson you took from Collision Course?]
At that point, without realizing it, I was pointing all of the rap stuff I was doing at a certain type of listener. I was definitely writing from the heart. Sometimes, when you write, you imagine a certain type of audience or person listening to it. It's the same thought process that goes on when people want to write a song and play it live to see what the crowd reaction is. That was different then from what happened in Collision Course and what came after, because a hardcore hip-hop head, like the sort of people I would've hung out with in high school, weren't there. They weren't at that show. They weren't in that studio mindset. Once I brought that in and I said, "What would Mike from high school say about this verse?" all of a sudden, it went from "Nobody's Listening" on Meteora to "Bleed It Out" and "Hands Held High" on Minutes To Midnight, which was the next album. Those verses were much more complex and true to the kind of hip-hop I listened to growing up.


Shadow Of The Day
Minutes To Midnight booklet:
The keyboard loop in "Shadow Of The Day" went through many different changes during the song's creation. Dozens of options were created on piano, acoustic guitar, marimba, xylophone, and even electric banjo before finally writing the reversed/edited keyboard version that appears here.

 

Minutes To Midnight Limited Edition booklet:

The keyboard loop in “Shadow Of The Day” went through many different changes during the song’s creation. For months, the song’s place on the album remained undecided; the band agreed that it wouldn’t make the album unless the right introductory sound was discovered. Dozens of options were created on piano, acoustic guitar, marimba, xylophone, and even electric banjo before finally writing the reversed/edited keyboard version that appears here.

 

Brad Delson (Kerrang! April 2007):
This was probably the most difficult arrangment to nail. It sounded very derivative at first but then we kept kept replacing different elements on it. We put an acoustic guitar on it, then an electric banjo and then a marimba. It's definetley one of the best songs we've written.

 

Joe Hahn (Blick 4 January 2008):
[The lyric of the single “Shadow of the Day” is really gloomy, the riot scene in the middle of the US too…]
Yes, it's about being in a small dark location and find desperately an entrance.
And i noticed that a lot of bad things happen. The video is about: How would it be if these things happen in the US?

 

Chester Bennington (azcentral 27 October 2015):
We had been releasing a lot of singles that were kind of energetic and yet sometimes more midtempo. And as great as those songs are, if you keep adding songs like “In the End” and “Numb” and “Shadow of the Day” and “Iridescent,” that will change the dynamic of a set. As much as we love those songs -- and as much as our fans love those songs -- if you just keep adding three more midtempo ballads to the set, pretty soon an hour and 20 minutes is midtempo ballads. And I think our fans want to come to a rock show where you’re kind of kicking ass and you leave tired with no voice. When we realize that our fans want to sit down more than stand up, we might start adding more midtempo ballads to the set (laughs). But for us, it really comes down to making a record where we could add a bunch of great songs that are gonna keep the pace of the show up and be fun to play and get the mosh pits going and get us rocking. We started doing, that, really, with “Living Things.” And we kind of continued that into this record. But as far as the records that we make, personally, there’s nothing we’ve released that I’m not 100 percent behind.


What I've Done
Minutes To Midnight booklet:
One of the last songs finished for the album, the lyrics for this song were intended to work on many levels, including freedom, art, and death metaphors.

 

Minutes To Midnight Limited Edition booklet:

At the end of over one year in the studio, the band felt that the album was finished. After initial listening, however, they were devastated to hear from friends that the album felt like it was missing a piece—one more song. The band was horrified. Many of the songs on the record had taken months to write, so throwing a new one together that could stand up to the rest was unlikely. To complicate matters, any further writing meant they might miss deadlines that had been set up for album release and touring. In spite of risks, the band decided to take this challenge of character. A little over a week later, the record was officially ready for release with the addition of “What I’ve Done.”

 

Chester Bennington (MTV.com 6 March 2007):
Joe [Hahn] came up to Mike and I and asked us to take the whole idea of Minutes to Midnight and apply that to how the band has changed. So, in a way, it’s us saying goodbye to how we used to be. The lyrics in the first verse are ’In this farewell, there is no blood, there is no alibi,’ and right away, you’ll notice that the band sounds different: The drums are much more raw, the guitars are more raw and the vocals aren’t tripled. It’s just us out there … and that’s how Rick wanted it. Basically he told us, ’If it sounds like it could’ve been on the first two records, then we’re not going to work on it.’

 

Mike Shinoda (Kerrang! April 2007):
On the other albums, Brad and I started every song together [separately]. But this was the only song that we wrote together and was the last one we finished. We wanted a song that encapsulated the feel of the whole record and I think this is that song. You're going to get something different out of every time you listen to it.

Mike Shinoda (FMM Chat 5 April 2007):
we filmed the video for what i've done in el mirage because the desert scene related to the lyrics and because it fit in with the themes of the video (the stock footage)
most of the things on the minutes to midnight album work in layers of meaning. there's no single correct theme for anything, i think. but there are themes that i know are there...for example the video
like the album title, is about death and rebirth. you could apply that concept to a part of your life, to a relationship, even to our band...but the video works on a level that's aware of the world and our power to build or destroy it.

 

Brad Delson (The Aquarian 25 April 2007):
There are definitely elements to the record that you can identify as Linkin Park, probably the best of which would be our first single, ‘What I’ve Done.’ It’s really in a sense a bridge from where we were to kind of where this record wound up. But each one of the songs that made the album was recorded in a totally different environment, has a totally unique sound, and beyond just the style of the songs we really focused through and through on the content of this record—the lyrics, the melodies. We didn’t work on the style of many of the songs in terms of the arrangements or polishing the context until we knew that the basic ideas in each case were really, really strong.
Brad Delson (The Aquarian 25 April 2007):
I think you’re touching on a great point. Okay, with Hybrid Theory we spent a month on lyrics for the whole album. With Meteora we spent twice as long doing lyrics, and with this record, I think we spent nine months on the lyrics. So there really was a love and a commitment of energy to the lyrics, that they should work on multiple levels. That the best songs clearly, I think, you can connect with and you can connect your own experience to it and that’s because they work on multiple levels, and a song like ‘What I’ve Done’ for sure works on many different levels. Like for me, there are four different stories or four different themes that it connects with for me. So the video was Joe’s [Hahn, records/sampling] kind of one layer that Joe connected to the meaning of the song, and he can represent that with the performance married with the montage of imagery.


Rob Bourdon (SoundSpike 19 July 2007):
I think the single definitely has a new, unique sound for us. It definitely touches on some of the old elements of what we do as a band, but it also is a breath of fresh air at the same time.


Hands Held High
Minutes To Midnight booklet:
Early in the writing process, Rick suggested the band experiment by contrasting together unexpected elements. Because the instrumental idea known as "Song Q" sounded primed for melodic singing, Rick suggested the opposite be done. The song's pipe organ and marching snare proved the perfect musical bed for two of the most inspired verses Mike had ever delivered.

 

Minutes To Midnight Limited Edition booklet:

Early in the writing process, Rick suggested the band experiment by contrasting together unexpected elements. For example, if a musical idea sounded like it needed rapping, he recommended Mike or Chester try singing over it. Likewise, because the instrumental idea known as “Song Q” sounded primed for melodic singing, Rick suggested the opposite be done. The song’s pipe organ and marching snare proved the perfect musical bed for two of the most inspired verses Mike had ever delivered. Ultimately titled “Hands Held High,” the song was completed by layering all six of the band member's voices together to create the sound of the men’s choir heard in the refrain.

 

Mike Shinoda (Kerrang! April 2007):
Rick [Rubin] said to us that, if something sounded like it needed rapping, then we should try singing and vice versa. That’s why this song has rapping on it.

Brad Delson (Kerrang! April 2007):
A lot of the greatest accidents occurred when we combined elements that shouldn’t have worked together.

Mike Shinoda (Rolling Stone 7 November 2008):
We had put that song in the set and took it out because the chorus has 10 voices singing on it, and live it just never sounded right. But during the Milton Keynes show, there was a fan in front of the crowd who had a sign that said "Play 'Hands Held High.' " Halfway through, I thought, we can't play the song because we aren't prepared — but I can give him the first half. So I just threw the verse in a cappella. In fact, we added that verse to the set, so that kid's sign essentially changed the set for the rest of the year. It was really cool. As for the meaning of the song: We have a policy that we don't want to give away too much when it comes to the meaning of a song. We want to respect everybody's impression of what the lyrics are about. I don't think there's a ton of mystery over what it's about.

Rob Bourdon (Rolling Stone 7 November 2008):
I think a lot of the lyrics on Minutes to Midnight are really thought provoking, and when you listen to a song like "Hands Held High," you can't help but start thinking. It's good to encourage people to think for themselves and look at what's going on around them.

 

Mike Shinoda (ArtistDirect 2 July 2015):
[What was the biggest lesson you took from Collision Course?]
At that point, without realizing it, I was pointing all of the rap stuff I was doing at a certain type of listener. I was definitely writing from the heart. Sometimes, when you write, you imagine a certain type of audience or person listening to it. It's the same thought process that goes on when people want to write a song and play it live to see what the crowd reaction is. That was different then from what happened in Collision Course and what came after, because a hardcore hip-hop head, like the sort of people I would've hung out with in high school, weren't there. They weren't at that show. They weren't in that studio mindset. Once I brought that in and I said, "What would Mike from high school say about this verse?" all of a sudden, it went from "Nobody's Listening" on Meteora to "Bleed It Out" and "Hands Held High" on Minutes To Midnight, which was the next album. Those verses were much more complex and true to the kind of hip-hop I listened to growing up.

 

Mike Shinoda (Hip Hop N More 14 July 2015):
Thank you for that. When I originally did The Rising Tied, it was not only a labor of love, it was made during a time when I thought Linkin Park “had” to sound like something. Fort Minor started with a bunch of songs that I thought could never show up on a Linkin Park album. But soon after I did the FM album, I came back to Linkin Park and we realized that we all wanted to broaden our horizons and make albums that didn’t have to sit in the “Hybrid Theory” and “Meteora” box. So for a long time, all the ideas that would have been Fort Minor songs got turned into Linkin Park songs like “Waiting For The End,” “Hands Held High,” and “Until It Breaks.”


No More Sorrow
Minutes To Midnight booklet:
While the band was recording at the Laurel studio, Rick suggested that Brad try adding ebow to "The Little Things Give You Away." Although Brad ultimately decided not to add ebow to that song, his experimentation produced the introductory sound around which "No More Sorrow" was built.

 

Minutes To Midnight Limited Edition booklet:

While the band was recording at the Laurel studio, Rick suggested that Brad try adding ebow to “The Little Things Give You Away.” The ebow is a hand-held device that vibrates guitar strings by generating an electric pulse. Although Brad ultimately decided not to add ebow to “The Little Things,” his experimentation produced the introductory sound around which “No More Sorrow” was built. Originally titled “Ebow Idea,” “No More Sorrow” was loosely constructed that same night, though the band went back and cut the song live on their last day at Laurel.

 

Rob Bourdon (Kerrang! April 2007):
This is probably the heaviest song on the album. It was initially called ‘EBow Idea’. Rick told Brad that he should use an EBow [guitar effect] on a different song. When he went in to work on that, he got frustrated and came up with the opening for this.

Chester Bennington (Kerrang! April 2007):
I think this is the record you should listen to on headphones because you’ll hear different things, this is a song that shows there is depth to this record.

 

Phoenix (BassGuitarMagazine 2007):

I also play a Music Man StingRay 5. We have some songs, especially those from Meteora, where I need to get down to that low B. While recording the album I found a distortion pedal called the Bass Bully which this guy in LA literally makes out of his garage [the father of guitar supremo Blues Saraceno no less]. It’s the only fuzz bass pedal I’ve ever found that actually seems to increase the tone - it doesn’t wash it out, and you can hear more distinction on the lower end which is incredible. So I use that live, and on the record. You can hear it really well in songs like ‘Given Up’, and ‘No More Sorrow’.

 

Rob Bourdon (Facebook Chat 23 December 2013):
One of my favorite songs to play is Somewhere I belong. Second favorite is probably No More Sorrow, and I love playing Little Things Give You Away.


Valentine's Day
Minutes To Midnight booklet:
Although it was finished at the Laurel Studio, "Valentine's Day" retains most of the original music and vocals that were recorded during the writing phase. In fact, although the band experimented with re-recording most of their early demos, the earliest recordings were often chosen to make the album.

 

Minutes To Midnight Limited Edition booklet:

Searching for a collective space to write and do pre-production, the band set up shop in a Hollywood rehearsal space known as the Korn Studio. There, the band hired engineer Ethan Mates to help them record rough song ideas. Although it was finished at the Laurel Studio, “Valentine's Day” retains most of the original music and vocals that were created at the Korn Studio. In fact, although the band experimented with re-recording most of their early demos, the earliest recordings were often chosen to make the album.

 

Chester Bennington (Kerrang! April 2007):
It’s definitely one of the poppier songs on the album. We have to be very careful sometimes that we don’t lose the integrity of what we’re doing – we’re a very dark band and we like it like that. We talk about uncomfortable things and try to make you comfortable with that. We tried to do that here in a more poppy song and I really like that aspect of the album.


In Between
Minutes To Midnight booklet:
Rick encouraged the band to lay rough vocals on their demos as early as possible, believing that sometimes a sparse song can become great with the right vocal melody. "In Between" was a perfect example. Even with just Mike's vocal and a bass line, this song remained on the band's "favorites" list, as many songs with a lot more production were voted off of the album.

 

Minutes To Midnight Limited Edition booklet:

Rick encouraged the band to lay rough vocals on their demos as early as possible, believing that sometimes a sparse song can become great with the right vocal melody. “In Between” was a perfect example. The band connected with it immediately from the first demo. Even with just Mike’s vocal and a bass line, this song remained on the band’s “favorites” list, as many songs with a lot more production were voted off of the album. During the process, the band tried many different versions of this song, adding sampled drums, live drums, and other instruments, but finally returned to the simplest form, the form closest to the “seed.” At one point, Chester sang the song, but ended up voting for Mike’s vocal over his own.

 

Chester Bennington (Kerrang! April 2007):
I knew that Mike should really sing this song. I tried it once, I did a good job, but it just didn’t have the power of Mike’s performance because he really believed what he was singing. Whatever it is that the [expletive] is apologising for on this track, he’s [expletive] serious! It comes from the most sincere and heartfelt place.


In Pieces
Minutes To Midnight booklet:
This song began as a keyboard and beat loop, along with the staccato guitar in the second verse. In that early form, Chester put down a rough vocal, with words that came relatively effortlessly. The vocals that appeared in those early stages remained virtually unchanged throughout the growth of the song.

 

Minutes To Midnight Limited Edition booklet:

This song began as a keyboard and beat loop, along with the staccato guitar in the second verse. In that early form, Chester put down a rough vocal, with words that came relatively effortlessly. The vocals that appeared in those early stages remained virtually unchanged throughout the growth of the song. As the song grew, it became obvious to the band that a special point of interest was needed in the bridge. On past albums, Brad had never been interested in doing guitar solos. With their encouragement, he dove head first into the bridge, creating a part that instantly energized the song.

 

Chester Bennington (Kerrang! April 2007):
I got divorced recently and that was very difficult. I also got remarried so there was a big contrast in my life. For a while I couldn’t be completely happy with the new life I was starting and I couldn’t end the last one. This is a song about all of that. The music has a kind of reggae vibe to it, almost. It’s really cool watching how the song goes from that, through pop and emerges as a full-on rock song at the end.

Chester Bennington (San Bernardino, CA 28 July 2007):
That's for every fuckin'... ex... asshole... lover... in the world. Fuck you.

Chester Bennington (Selma, TX 3 August 2007):
How many of you have ex's out there? That you fucking hate? This song is for them.


The Little Things Give You Away
Minutes To Midnight booklet:
This song began from a demo by Rob Bourdon, based around the drum pattern heard in the bridge. The vocals were finished after the band visited New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.

 

Minutes To Midnight Limited Edition booklet:

Many songs on previous LP albums began from demos by Mike and Brad. In the making of Minutes To Midnight, the band experimented with their writing process in an attempt to break comfortable patterns. This album saw all members of the band generating demos, or “seeds.” The seed for “Little Things” was from Rob Bourdon, based around the drum pattern heard in the bridge. The working title was “Drum Song.” Later, the vocals were finished after the band visited New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.

 

Chester Bennington (MTV.com 6 March 2007):
It’s an epic song, but it’s also kind of delicate in a lot of ways. There’s a great guitar riff that comes in acoustically, and the words really say a lot. And I think that they’ll touch people in a way Linkin Park haven’t touched people before. And there’s a breakdown that’s my favorite moment on the record. It’s beautiful and timeless-sounding, with this great synth sound … and Brad [Delson] breaks into this beautiful solo and it just builds and builds and builds until it breaks down into this a cappella section. It’s a huge explosion of sound, over six minutes long, and it’s truly, completely amazing. And I can’t wait for people to hear it.

 

Brad Delson (Kerrang! April 2007):
This is our favourite song on the record. It’s the biggest statement that we’ve ever made. Nothing could go after it as everything would get eclipsed by it. The thing that really makes it is the guitar solo.

Mike Shinoda (Kerrang! April 2007):
Brad has always avoided solos because he doesn’t like to show off. But when he played that solo, though, it was one of the most emotional moments we’ve recorded. It says what the lyrics are saying without any words.

 

Chester Bennington (MTV.com 4 May 2007):
We were writing these harmonies before we went down to New Orleans on the first anniversary of the [Katrina] disaster. And when we were down there, we were talking to these people who lived in the Ninth Ward. One of the lines, about ’water gray, coming through the windows,’ was taken from what one older gentleman told me. The feeling I got down there was not a good one.
For my whole life, I was spoon-fed what a great country this is, and I just didn’t get that feeling from that trip. I didn’t understand how we could spend $120 billion a year on killing people in other countries, but we only allocated $1 billion to rebuilding lives here. It really bothered me. … I felt sick about it. So I wrote the lyrics. Mike and I had a discussion, and he said, ’Why don’t you go write about Katrina?’ So I did … and I put it to the melody we had been working on, and it just fit perfectly.

 

Phoenix (BassGuitarMagazine 2007):
[What gear are you using on tour?]
Pretty much what I’ve been using for the past five years. A couple of different Ampeg rigs – SVT heads with the 8 x 10 cabinets, and I also have a PSA1 SansAmp preamp for some sounds. I use mostly Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay basses although for two songs I play a Fender Precision Bass, which is actually a replica of either a ’58 or a ’62. I also used this for quite a bit of the album in the studio. That bass is great, but it’s a completely different sound and feel, which suits some songs. The last song on the album, ‘The Little Things That Give You Away’, the feel and the tone of that song is so different from ‘One Step Closer’. Playing with that older, more vintage Fender sound just rounds it out a lot better.

Brad Delson (MusicRadar 19 July 2012):
Rick was really instrumental in A/B-ing stuff. I think it was The Little Things Give You Away, like, he listened to something Rob had in quotes 'recorded' over four days, and he did a blind A/B, and he said, 'I like this one better,' and it was the demo. Rob was like, 'Ahhh, what do you mean? I just spent four days creating that!' But Rick's ear said that the magic was in the original thing.
That gave us the confidence to just write in the studio and make music, and preserve those moments of inspiration on the album. Ninety percent of the time, I'd say what you're hearing on the album is the initial spark of inspiration presented to the listener.

Rob Bourdon (Facebook Chat 23 December 2013):
One of my favorite songs to play is Somewhere I belong. Second favorite is probably No More Sorrow, and I love playing Little Things Give You Away


A THOUSAND SUNS
The Requiem
Mike Shinoda (Examiner 22 September 2010):
That first track, “The Requiem,” is actually made up of sounds that you’re about to hear on the album. There’s a Juno pad that appears a little bit in that that also appears in “Journada Del Muerto,” and the pad is the main pad underneath “Blackout.”

Burning In The Skies
Mike Shinoda (NME 06 September 2010):
There’s also one of Robert Oppenheimer who was 'the father of the atomic bomb' during the second world war, on the track 'Burning In The Skies'[...]
[...]I just felt in all three cases, those speeches when you hear them now, resonate in a way very differently from when they were first delivered. But they apply to things that are going on today.

 

Chester Bennington (LP Underground Newsletter Anniversary Edition):
I think that what's interesting about this record, is that unlike other albums, I actually just like the whole record. I really enjoy the album as a whole. On previous albums, there were tracks I leaned toward. If I had to choose a track or two, I'd choose "Burning In The Skies" and "Iridescent."

Chester Bennington (LP Underground Newsletter Anniversary Edition):
We felt like there was a connection between the words that these guys were using in these speeches that connected the songs in a way we couldn't have done on our own. It helped solidify the emotional sense of the album.

 

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 24 February 2011):
Burning In The Skies is our latest single (outside the US). Here’s the new video, directed by our own Joe Hahn. Enjoy.


When They Come For Me
NoBraiN (LPAssociation 03 September 2010):
[...]After the conversation on Skype Mike asked me If I could come up with ideas for particular parts of two songs [When They Come For Me & Jornada Del Muerto]. Of course I have replied “HELL YEAAAH!” (that was not exactly what I said but I definitely said it in my head! ;-])
So Mike created a session on indabamusic and uploaded the parts he wanted me to work on. At that point I was stressed out because I have never worked on a track in that kind of environment. Moreover the time given was very limited. And if that was not enough Mike told me that the things I create do not have to appear on the album because the band has their own view on how the album should sound.
I am going to be honest with you, at the beginning it was very difficult to deal with the stress. Every time I started doing something I could not forget what and for whom I was doing it (this is something I have never said before). What is more at that point I had my bathroom totally rebuild so all the noise made it even more difficult. But then when I was actually making various sounds the pressure went away and I was enjoying it a lot and in the end they have included my additions!
When I was working on When They Come For Me & Jornada Del Muerto Mike told me that ONE of my ideas will be included. And in the end it was When They Come For Me.
So in the end not only my remix will be published but my additions will appear on “A Thousand Suns”.
Even now, when I am reliving all of it again, it seems so absolutely surreal.

 

Mike Shinoda (Billboard 25 June 2015):

There's never been a lull in fan questions about new Fort Minor music. With Linkin Park, we do a meet-and-greet with 50 to 100 fans before every show, so I get a chance to talk to people in person, and in every single meet-and-greet there are a few people who ask about Fort Minor. And I always chalk that up to the fact those are the most hard-core fans, those are the ones who paid to be in the LPU [Linkin Park Underground fan group], they come to multiple shows a lot of times. It wasn't so much about people wanted to hear it; if that was the case, I would've done it earlier. But the truth of the matter is, when I did the first Fort Minor album the band was coming off Hybrid Theory and Meteora, which was really a time when we were known for one sound. Then we did Collision Course with Jay Z and I kind of missed the hip-hop songs I used to make when I was a teenager. So I made Fort Minor at that time thinking it would never fit in with Linkin Park. Then lo and behold a couple of years later, we broadened out our stylistic approach in the studio and my Fort Minor ideas could be incorporated into Linkin Park. On Minutes to Midnight, there were songs that had some elements of Fort Minor, notably "Waiting for the End" and "When They Come for Me." There's even one I consider a really modern Fort Minor-type song called "Until It Breaks," off Living Things. It's always kind of been there, but until this song it was always just something where I thought the Fort Minor ideas I had would be best served mashed up with the input of the rest of the guys in the band. And this is a song that came out of my head and it was basically done. It was 85 percent there, and I knew if I put it through the Linkin Park writing machine, it would change considerably and I didn't want that to happen to it. I felt like it was a good song on its own, and I was prepared to get behind it.


Robot Boy
Chester Bennington (LPU Chat 2 August 2011):
[Will you play Robot Boy live?]
Maybe. I would like to play all of A Thousand Suns from beginning to end live someday, that’d be cool.

 

Chester Bennington (LP Underground Newsletter Anniversary Edition):
"Blackout" and "Robot Boy" were a lot of fun to record. There were so many elements to the songs that it made them really interesting to do.

Mike Shinoda (LPU Chat 26 June 2013):
Some songs weren't made to be played live, we might play them somehow but we have other songs in mind, those songs are made of samples and keys if the band was made of 6 Shinodas we could play them.


Waiting For The End
Chester Bennington (MTV.com 17 September 2010):
I think that 'Waiting for the End' and 'Iridescent' are probably tied at #1 [for my] favorite song on the record. I just think they're really beautiful. They're different. I like the way 'Iridescent' builds and climaxes, I like the summertime vibe of 'Waiting,' and I like the lyrical content of it all, and the dynamic, too.

 

Mike Shinoda (Billboard 25 June 2015):

There's never been a lull in fan questions about new Fort Minor music. With Linkin Park, we do a meet-and-greet with 50 to 100 fans before every show, so I get a chance to talk to people in person, and in every single meet-and-greet there are a few people who ask about Fort Minor. And I always chalk that up to the fact those are the most hard-core fans, those are the ones who paid to be in the LPU [Linkin Park Underground fan group], they come to multiple shows a lot of times. It wasn't so much about people wanted to hear it; if that was the case, I would've done it earlier. But the truth of the matter is, when I did the first Fort Minor album the band was coming off Hybrid Theory and Meteora, which was really a time when we were known for one sound. Then we did Collision Course with Jay Z and I kind of missed the hip-hop songs I used to make when I was a teenager. So I made Fort Minor at that time thinking it would never fit in with Linkin Park. Then lo and behold a couple of years later, we broadened out our stylistic approach in the studio and my Fort Minor ideas could be incorporated into Linkin Park. On Minutes to Midnight, there were songs that had some elements of Fort Minor, notably "Waiting for the End" and "When They Come for Me." There's even one I consider a really modern Fort Minor-type song called "Until It Breaks," off Living Things. It's always kind of been there, but until this song it was always just something where I thought the Fort Minor ideas I had would be best served mashed up with the input of the rest of the guys in the band. And this is a song that came out of my head and it was basically done. It was 85 percent there, and I knew if I put it through the Linkin Park writing machine, it would change considerably and I didn't want that to happen to it. I felt like it was a good song on its own, and I was prepared to get behind it.

 

Mike Shinoda (Hip Hop N More 14 July 2015):
Thank you for that. When I originally did The Rising Tied, it was not only a labor of love, it was made during a time when I thought Linkin Park “had” to sound like something. Fort Minor started with a bunch of songs that I thought could never show up on a Linkin Park album. But soon after I did the FM album, I came back to Linkin Park and we realized that we all wanted to broaden our horizons and make albums that didn’t have to sit in the “Hybrid Theory” and “Meteora” box. So for a long time, all the ideas that would have been Fort Minor songs got turned into Linkin Park songs like “Waiting For The End,” “Hands Held High,” and “Until It Breaks.”


Blackout
Phoenix (Artist Direct 01 September 2010):
"Blackout" has a vocal style that's really aggressive and heavy with music that's really delicate at points.

Mike Shinoda (NME 06 September 2010):
We were having a ton of trouble with the vocal and lyrics on the song 'Blackout', so we asked Rick for his advice.
He suggested this technique he used with Johnny Cash and Neil Young, which basically means you get up on the mic and let the words flow. Going in there and actually doing it was terrifying at first but then the words just started coming out of nowhere, it was really surreal. It added a certain soul to the record and without that, I think it would have been really rigid and digital.

Chester Bennington (KROQ's Kevin and Bean Breakfast Show 7 September 2010):
There are definitely moments on every record where at the end I go "why... did I... do that?", you know?
Crawling was that one for me on Hybrid Theory.
One Step Closer would hurt but it was easier to sing, and on this one Blackout was that song and I was just sitting going "I don't know what I'm gonna to do to get through this one track every single night", you know?
And now I'm gonna have to do all 3 of those freaking songs in the set every single day.

Mike Shinoda (Examiner 22 September 2010):
We have a song called “Blackout” that we got a scat vocal for, but every time we tried to write words, it sounded terrible. So Rick suggested we try automatic writing. He said, “Do you know what that is?” I said, “No.” He said, “I’ve tried it with Tom Petty and Johnny Cash and Neil Young.”
I’m like, “That’s a good start. How do I do it?” He said basically, I want you to walk up to the mic and start pretending you know the words. Any words that come to mind, let them fall out and that will hopefully let you know what the part needs to be. You’re going to start finding words that fit. There’s a few songs on the record that we never wrote the words down for. Like I’m still finding myself having to figure them out because we just got up to the mic and started putting stuff down.

 

Chester Bennington (LPU Chat 2 August 2011):
I would say that Blackout was probably the hardest song to write off A Thousand Suns, in my opinion.

Chester Bennington (LPU Chat 2 August 2011):
One of the difficult things was trying to…I did the scat…it’s kind of an original melody without words, just kind of spewing sounds. I had this whacky scat that was really difficult to put words to. I think that was really hard. We also wrote the song in three movements, so trying to make that work, make the transitions make sense, and also make the song aggressive without being obvious and using obvious tricks was difficult.

 

Chester Bennington (LP Underground Newsletter Anniversary Edition):
"Blackout" and "Robot Boy" were a lot of fun to record. There were so many elements to the songs that it made them really interesting to do.

 

Phoenix (LPU Chat @ VyRT 23 May 2015):

[How long do you rehearse a new song before playing it live?]
Depends on the song. We try to all come to rehearsal knowing the new song, and then figuring out...
The arrangement. But different songs are more challenging to figure out how to play live...
for example, Blackout was a bit of a monster!


Wretches And Kings
Mike Shinoda (NME 06 September 2010):
I reference them in the song 'Wretches And Kings', there is a homage to [lead rapper] Chuck D on there. It's probably the most hip-hop song on the record and one of the most aggressive, but it feels like nothing I've ever heard before.
Public Enemy were very three-dimensional with their records because although they seemed political, there was a whole lot of other stuff going on in there too. It made me think how three-dimensional I wanted our record to be without imitating them of course, and show where we were at creatively.
(On that song) we used a sample of Mario Savio, who was a workers' rights activist that spoke out for people who were oppressed by their employers in the '60s.
[...]I just felt in all three cases, those speeches when you hear them now, resonate in a way very differently from when they were first delivered. But they apply to things that are going on today.

Chester Bennington (LP Underground Newsletter Anniversary Edition):
We felt like there was a connection between the words that these guys were using in these speeches that connected the songs in a way we couldn't have done on our own. It helped solidify the emotional sense of the album.

 

Joe Hahn (ShortList 19 March 2015):

Wretches and Kings is pretty badass. We don’t play it too often live but that makes it even more special. The lyrics are great, too. In fact, a lot of lyrics from that album, A Thousand Suns, were insanely good.


Iridescent
Mike Shinoda (NME 06 September 2010):
[...]a speech by Martin Luther King Jr on 'Iridescent', where he talks about the connection between his feelings on Vietnam and the African-American civil rights movement.
I just felt in all three cases, those speeches when you hear them now, resonate in a way very differently from when they were first delivered. But they apply to things that are going on today.

Chester Bennington (MTV.com 17 September 2010):
I think that 'Waiting for the End' and 'Iridescent' are probably tied at #1 [for my] favorite song on the record. I just think they're really beautiful. They're different. I like the way 'Iridescent' builds and climaxes, I like the summertime vibe of 'Waiting,' and I like the lyrical content of it all, and the dynamic, too.

 

Chester Bennington (LPU Chat 2 August 2011):
Some of the stuff we do in Joe’s videos is hard. I know that Mike really doesn’t like snakes and he had to hold one for 5 hours. I've had to sing underwater and have my face mashed in warm milk, be held upside down, dropped into a burning bed, that stuff is never fun. Just kidding, it’s actually really fun. Sometimes they’re difficult to make. When I’m sitting in my underwear for 6 hours in the rain until 4 o’clock in the morning, that sucked. Ha ha.

 

Chester Bennington (LP Underground Newsletter Anniversary Edition):
I think that what's interesting about this record, is that unlike other albums, I actually just like the whole record. I really enjoy the album as a whole. On previous albums, there were tracks I leaned toward. If I had to choose a track or two, I'd choose "Burning In The Skies" and "Iridescent."

Chester Bennington (LP Underground Newsletter Anniversary Edition):
We felt like there was a connection between the words that these guys were using in these speeches that connected the songs in a way we couldn't have done on our own. It helped solidify the emotional sense of the album.

Mike Shinoda (MTV.com 15 April 2011):
The 'Transformers' collaboration has been really fun for us. I mean, we grew up playing with the toys. When we first got approached on the first one, we said yes based on the idea of taking that thing that we loved so much and bringing it to life in a modern way. As it's gone on, that's still a big part of it for us.
We put out the record in the late part of last year and even though it's never been a single up until this point, [when we played it live] you could really hear the singing pick up momentum during that song. It was just something that seemed a natural fit.
We loved that part of it when we were in the studio, but Michael actually loved pairing it with the movie because there's something that he feels it speaks to about the story line.

 

Joe Hahn (NoiseCreep 09 June 2011):

The video explores how human existence might be affected by the elements of Transformers robots and the threat of the Decepticons. What would it be like to be citizens in a decaying universe? I tried a lot of new things here, and we had a lot of fun shooting it.

 

Chester Bennington (azcentral 27 October 2015):
We had been releasing a lot of singles that were kind of energetic and yet sometimes more midtempo. And as great as those songs are, if you keep adding songs like “In the End” and “Numb” and “Shadow of the Day” and “Iridescent,” that will change the dynamic of a set. As much as we love those songs -- and as much as our fans love those songs -- if you just keep adding three more midtempo ballads to the set, pretty soon an hour and 20 minutes is midtempo ballads. And I think our fans want to come to a rock show where you’re kind of kicking ass and you leave tired with no voice. When we realize that our fans want to sit down more than stand up, we might start adding more midtempo ballads to the set (laughs). But for us, it really comes down to making a record where we could add a bunch of great songs that are gonna keep the pace of the show up and be fun to play and get the mosh pits going and get us rocking. We started doing, that, really, with “Living Things.” And we kind of continued that into this record. But as far as the records that we make, personally, there’s nothing we’ve released that I’m not 100 percent behind.


The Catalyst
Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 09 July 2010):
Who wants to be on the new Linkin Park album? Download stems and hear pieces of the new song now.
EDIT: Make sure you enter a valid email address when you download the stems: we’ll be letting you know how to officially submit your entries soon. Also, help us out and spread the word about the contest–share the widget (using the button under “download stems” here http://www.myspace.com/linkinpark)wherever you live online.
EDIT 2: A bunch of people are asking about key and tempo. It’s in D minor, and the BPM is 135.

 

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 17 July 2010):
Our single, THE CATALYST, arrives August 2nd. I thought I’d show you the art for the single before anyone else gets to see it. Click here…

 

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 30 July 2010):
We’ve been calling it a premix contest: the “Linkin Park Featuring You” contest on MySpace has now come to a close, and we have a winner. No joking around this time…our winner is:
NoBraiN!!!
His real name is Czeslaw (his nickname is Chex) and he’s an English teacher from Swidnica, Poland. I had an amazing conversation on Skype with him, where I told him the good news. Video of that is coming soon.
As I’ve said before, the quality of the MySpace remixes were amazing–even better than we had expected. Thank you all for your music and your votes. I’ll be giving away a full list of the top 20 finalists here on mikeshinoda.com shortly.
In a couple of days, you’ll be able to hear the real thing: our new single, “The Catalyst,” comes out on MONDAY.
But until then, go HERE to listen to NoBraiN’s winning track, on the Linkin Park music player.

 

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 31 July 2010):
The 20 finalists are:
NoBraiN
DJ EnDorphin
Cale Pellick
Ill Audio
Digitalomat
The Organization
Indy Sagoo
The Red Elephant
Transitbot
katsu
David Bonk
Sean A.
Transient Way
Graham F.
Corky G.
Keaton Hashimoto
Rather Red
FreQontrol
Japanese Robots
Alex McMillan

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 02 August 2010):
Here’s a fun little quickie video some of our peeps made. Someone on our team (thanks Nate) put it up on the official YouTube channel so you guys had a version with lyrics out there. In case it isn’t obvious, this isn’t the official video for the song, ha! That’s being overseen by Joe Hahn, and will be coming soon…

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 21 August 2010):
Phoenix and I just landed in London today, and got an email with some great bits of Linkin Park news for you guys…check this out:
www.facebook.com/linkinPark
– Went from four million in April 2010 to ELEVEN million today
The Catalyst (US)
– First #1 debut in history of Billboard Rock Songs chart
– #1 at Modern Rock radio
– #1 Most Added at Alternative, Active Rock, and Mainstream Rock Radio (upon release)
Linkin Park – The Catalyst / Medal Of Honor video:
– #1 most viewed video on all of Youtube, worldwide, upon release
…Thanks to everyone for supporting the new song and album. A Thousand Suns is coming soon…

 

Phoenix (Artist Direct 01 September 2010):
We were in the process of narrowing down tracks in the studio, and "The Catalyst" in particular—even as a working track—was something we felt would be very important to the record. You can hear the lyric "A thousand suns" in the song a couple of times. Obviously, we loved the idea of that and the imagery behind it. A Thousand Suns ended up becoming the album title. In "The Catalyst," people will draw different themes from it lyrically that continue in the record as a whole. That's one of the things we did a bit differently with this process. The intention was to create a 45-minute immersive 3-D world with the entire album. Things you begin to pick up on or questions that start to be raised when people listen to "The Catalyst" come back. That conversation continues with the entire record. The songs interplay off of one other. The album intentionally hearkens back to what an album was meant to be in the '70s or the '80s. It's not a concept an album in the sense of Tommy, but there are concepts throughout the record that do carry a through line.

Phoenix (Artist Direct 01 September 2010):
For us, it was definitely a different first single! We didn't want to sit on those things we know how to do. When it came time to pick a first single, we wanted to choose something that properly represented the journey the record is. "The Catalyst" points people in the direction of where the album is going.


The Messenger
Phoenix (Artist Direct 01 September 2010):
It's a really stripped down acoustic track. Chester's vocal performance is one of my favorites that he's ever done. His performance is pretty powerful and moving. For the entire album, you get this barrage of sounds and information. It's almost analogous to the technology and the world we live in. You're getting pounded on with what you're hearing and you're not sure of what's going on. The end is just a breath of movement and a step away from that. It's really stripped back and more personal.

Chester Bennington (Artist Direct 05 October 2010):
That song actually came to me almost entirely all at once. The second I heard the chord progression, the melody came and then the words came. It literally dawned on me like a flood, which is very rare. Usually, songs come in pieces, but this song came right away! Thank God, there's technology in my phone that allows me to record ideas whenever they arrive. Initially, I started the song off with a line that's not in there anymore. I began with, "You are a child with so many choices. The hardest always make us cry." Right away, I knew I was going to write a letter to my kids, basically. It's telling them you're getting ready to go out into the world, you're going to get kicked around, it's going to be tough and you're going to find yourself in some painful situations, but here's what's important—you're always going to be loved by your family, and that will always get you through. That's going to be the one lifeline that you have which will pull you through all of this chaos around you. Eventually, what ended up coming out of that is the song you hear on the record. It's such a vulnerable, open and very honest song in that way. We really felt like we wanted to replicate that original recording of the guitar and vocal in the phone as much as possible. We recorded the vocal, and we didn't put any special sauce on it or anything. We didn't double the vocals, and we didn't try to go for the perfect performance. I just sang it with my heart. Brad [Delson] played guitar. Mike [shinoda] sat in the other room, and we all played it together. It was presented in the simplest way, and that's what we've got.

LIVING THINGS
Lost In The Echo
Carly Francavilla (Twitter 30 June 2012):
Nerves are getting the best of me right now....tomorrow I'll be on set for a Linkin Park music video! #unbelievable #goodnight

Gino The Ghost (Twitter 30 June 2012):
The Linkin Park song we're filming tomorrow is fucking DOPE AS FUCK by the way y'all.

Carly Francavilla (Twitter 01 July 2012):
Let's get it started! Almost ready.... #LinkinPark #MusicVideo

 

Carly Francavilla (Twitter 01 July 2012):
Oh! & I am happy to announce that the single we are filming today is called "Lost in the Echo" off the album #LivingThings #LinkinPark

Carly Francavilla (Twitter 01 July 2012):
Showing love to all my new followers, especially you Linkin Park fans....all I can say, this video is going to be epic!

Gino The Ghost (Twitter 01 July 2012):
On my way to Detroit to begin filming for the Linkin Park music video. Lets get it!

 

Melanie Boria (Twitter 02 July 2012):
Had so much fun shooting Linkin Park's video! Wish I could say more but I'll wait till it comes out! #LinkinPark

 

Mike Shinoda (TheHuffingtonPost 25 July 2012):
"Lost in the Echo" started with mostly electronic sounds. I think that was one of those moments that defined what this album was going to be about. The past two years, whenever I brought anything in that sounded very much like Linkin Park -- the thing that people think Linkin Park is supposed to be -- the guys in the band kind of really turned away from it. For an album, I bring in anywhere between twenty-five to seventy-five demos to arrive at what we end up choosing for the record. Especially on the last two albums, a lot of those rough ideas can be really similar to what end up on the album or they can be just the egg that it hatches from. The thing about "Lost in the Echo" was it sounded a lot like what the "song" sounds like, I think. When the guys heard it, I kind of said to them, "What do you think about that?" and their responses, for the first time in a few years, were pretty good. They were like, "Yeah, we hear the merit. Let's develop that idea. Let's see what we want to do." I said to them, "You know, this is like a real moment for us, now, on this album." On the last two albums, if I brought in something like this, not everyone would've given it the green light; they would've said, "Oh, this sounds too predictable." But clearly, we're at a moment where we're bridging a gap between what we've been doing and the future of the band, so that was one of those songs that kind of set the bar.

 

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 29 August 2012):
Today, LOST IN THE ECHO premieres on lostintheecho.com. This is not a traditional video. It is an interactive piece designed to draw you into the world of the song. The best ECHO experience is the one at that site.
Please encourage everyone to go there, not to video sites like YouTube and Vimeo. Video-site versions you find today will be a.) not approved by the band, and b.) not interactive (so to some degree, those versions will be missing the point).
Help us spread the word by letting everyone know that the only place to experience LOST IN THE ECHO is at lostintheecho.com
-m
*The video is Flash-based, because it was our best way to make this idea work. It is Facebook connected, and don’t worry: it won’t steal or share anything you don’t want it to. For those without those things: a non-Flash, non-interactive version will be up in a couple days on Linkin Park’s official Youtube page.
CLICK HERE TO GET LOST

 

Jason Nickel (Wired 29 August 2012):
We’re trying to make it about the story, rather than just pulling in the novelty or the gimmick of these Facebook photos. We’re trying to tie your personal life into the actual story, so that it’s logical and it seems like it was actually created for you rather than kind of shoehorned in there just because we could do it.
We talked about doing a few different interactive ideas, but in the end, we’ve always liked the idea of just having the user click a button and they are off viewing the experience with minimal interaction.

Mike Shinoda (Wired 29 August 2012):
This album ended up being very much about ‘you’ and ‘me,’ so when it came time to think about this video … the idea of doing something that was also very personal and connected to somebody’s memories — you know, the things in people that they’re not letting go, that maybe they’re hung up on or have issues with — to do a video that touched on some of that felt like it fit with the song really well.

Jason Zada (Wired 29 August 2012):
It’s basically like special effects that are being done on the fly.

Jason Nickel (Wired 29 August 2012):
There’s no real API for this kind of thing — we just deal with the raw data from Facebook. And even though Facebook actually has algorithms built into the backend on their side to show you who your most popular friends are and all that kind of stuff, [the social network] doesn’t open that up for developers. It’s all up to us to kind of just take the raw data and parse through it to figure out, ‘OK, does this person have a photo and are they tagged in here and how many people are tagged in there?’ It’s all stuff that we have to kind of just come up with from scratch.
There’s a lot of food pics on Facebook, so it is tough to deal with that for sure.
We ran into a lot of pitfalls with what data people had. There’s just so many different ways, different logic flows you could go down depending on how many friends they had, if they have a significant other listed, if that person has a photo, how many photos [the viewer is] tagged in, if there’s anything that’s popular on [their] photo list.

Jason Zada (Wired 29 August 2012):
That photo that you see in there, hopefully, meant something to you.

Mike Shinoda (Wired 29 August 2012):
Sometimes the things [Nickel] was trying to describe about what he wanted to do with a certain treatment or concept were so hard to understand. He was like talking in ones and zeros, and the other folks on the phone are just saying, like, ‘OK, Jason, can you slow down or like backtrack, because … we have no idea what you’re talking about at this point.'
Some of the people at the label really fought us over this video, and it was tough, because they just simply wanted to put something static up on the website and on YouTube and Vimeo and whatever. Like, they wanted to put [a static version] up a month before this thing was even ready. And I was saying, ‘That’s crazy. This thing is so much more interesting.’ Even if they look 99 percent similar, the Facebook-connected version is so much more interesting than the static version because of what it does with you as a viewer.

Jason Zada (Wired 29 August 2012):
It’s sort of sad that we went to Detroit to shoot the apocalypse, but at the same time I think that there’s a lot of really, really beautiful old architecture that’s been just left alone there.

 

Mike Shinoda (NoiseCreep 30 August 2012):
For me, it kind of comes from the conversation that started about the format of the music video. Music videos haven’t really gone any place last few years. You have little stories. You have some performance. And that’s about it. Nothing has really started a new phase. Sure, you had the OK Go kind of thing a few years ago. The K-pop thing that’s been going on. You know, funny, interesting viral stuff we all like to watch. But we wanted something really different, we wanted to seriously mess with the format and how the visuals are delivered.
The treatment came first – the story. Jason and Jason did all the heavy lifting. We shot down the first few storylines, and they just wrote more. The one we landed on struck a serious chord as far as the story of the song – about uncovering emotional baggage – coming to terms with it and letting it go – the video had to connect with that and we think it does in a powerful way.
It’s amazing. It got us thinking, how do we incorporate the technology that Jason is manipulating to allow that audience in. Almost 45 million – it’s hard to fathom. Groups don’t usually get as many fans as individual artists because if there’s a band member someone doesn’t like, you lose them. With us, there are six opportunities not to like us [laughs]. But we are fortunate to have the largest amount of fans for a group on Facebook. I think we have 16th largest fan base overall. Because of that, the format of the platform lines up with the way we communicate. We have a fan base that gets this stuff. We can gear stuff towards them. Plus, we’re active on things like Twitter. Admittedly, we were late to the party, but in the beginning it wasn’t as media-rich a format. We were not the type to say, ‘This is what I’m having for lunch.’ But once things like Instagram started happening, we’re very much into that and so we share lots of things we enjoy and find truly interesting.
I always just think about the stereotype of your old uncle, the one that says ‘I’m not gonna put my money in my ATM because what happens when it runs out?’ We have to be the opposite, not intimidated by technology but rather on the forefront of it. We have to know what fits well for us as a band. And it has to be honest and authentic. If we don’t take the time to use these apps and services we’ll never know what is a good fit for us. We’re not fortunetellers in any sense of the word. There’s lots of trial and error of what will work out best for us. It’s just a function of looking for things that are fun and interesting.
Thanks. We like to approach everything, from videos to things on stage to our recording process as something we can learn from and have fun with. The video is an example of us trying something different – and next time it won’t be this. It will evolve. For this video you have to have Facebook and Flash – next time I’d love to do something that even includes people without those things.

 

Mike Shinoda (Mashable 31 August 2012):
I think we’re at a turning point for the 'music video. The whole idea of doing a static 3:30 movie or performance to sit underneath a song feels kind of boring.
[When Shinoda, the band's rapper and multi-instrument musician, connected his Facebook account, the powerful interactive video transformed into an unexpected humorous story.]
I never put personal pictures up on it so ... half the pictures were of dogs, landscapes, and random silly things. It was hilarious to watch this video pull those pictures and see the characters in the video break down in tears over a picture of a ham sandwich.

 

Jason Zada (Mashable 31 August 2012):
This kind of experience is still in its early days. As social media grows, and as people become more comfortable sharing their personal information, or events in their daily life, I see these experiences becoming more common, and easier to fall into.

 

Aaron Ray (Hypebot.com 31 August 2012):
The inspiration was to push the boundaries of music, video and fan engagement. The fact that virtually nothing has changed in making videos in 25 years just seems that apathy has taken over. Linkin Park decided to do something risky and never done before.

 

Aaron Ray (Hypebot.com 31 August 2012):
The algorithms themselves were incredibly complicated when layered over the video and Facebook data. There was a constant push and pull between design, functionality and ease of use.

 

Aaron Ray (Hypebot.com 31 August 2012):
There are just so many types of people experiencing things in such diverse ways, it will always be a game of catch up. The fan reaction has been good so far. It seemed to throw off some people at the beginning because they had never really seen something like this before, but now it seems that more and more fans are trying it and enjoying it.

 

Gino The Ghost (RoadToRevolution:BR 05 September 2012):
As an actor, this music video was hands down the coolest body of work I’ve ever been a part of. It was such an awesome opportunity.

 

Gino The Ghost (RoadToRevolution:BR 05 September 2012):
I actually auditioned through my talent agency and got the job through callbacks.

 

Gino The Ghost (RoadToRevolution:BR 05 September 2012):
I’ve actually known Carly for a long time. We grew up in the same area and are pretty close friends. She’s a very talented actress and model, and I promise you that she’s going places!

 

Gino The Ghost (RoadToRevolution:BR 05 September 2012):
The director Jason Zada and producer Luke McCullough were actually the ones directing me and the rest of the cast throughout the filming. They were both outstanding people to work with.

 

Gino The Ghost (RoadToRevolution:BR 05 September 2012):
The great thing about this music video is that it’s kind of up in the air regarding the underlying theme. You’ll have to ask the band about their interpretation!

 

Gino The Ghost (RoadToRevolution:BR 05 September 2012):
My favorite part of the music video is when the older woman and older man start screaming at each other, hell, when EVERYBODY starts yelling at each other. It brings out all the pain and emotion that the song conveys too. It’s a powerful moment.

 

Mike Shinoda (LPTV - Linkin Park Gets A New Guitarist 18 September 2012):
The idea of the song and the video at its core really has to do with finding issues in the baggage that is weighing you down and letting go of it.

 

Mike Shinoda (Reddit AMA 12 August 2015):
I'm constantly writing--on my phone, laptop, in my studio. From hundreds of demos, a handful of songs stand out, and we flesh those out. They can start from anything--Lost In The Echo began with an iphone recording of a children's cat keyboard toy, which I put in iMaschine (an iPhone sampler app), then took to the studio. I might even sing something today, into my phone in the car, that becomes something.


In My Remains
Chester Bennington (MTV First June 2012):
This song took a long time to finish too. It started off as this really simple song, and it came together quickly, but its progression froze for a while. It turned out to be this rocking, four-to-the-floor track with a big payoff.

 

Mike Shinoda (TheHuffingtonPost 25 July 2012):
On LIVING THINGS, just to give you an example, during the mixing process -- for the people who are less familiar with mixing and recording an album, you should be done writing by the time you get to mixing. For us, that's not how it works. Mixing is where you take the tracks and you kind of organize them and present them for your final album. For us, on every album, we've gotten to that point and said, "We still want to tweak things and make them a little better." On this one, we actually changed the words of one bridge entirely and we added guitar on a song where they didn't even exist before. We were mixing the song and we realized, "This song isn't as bold or as big as it's supposed to sound." We thought all the sounds were there, but they weren't. Luckily, our mixing studio was like twenty minutes away from our recording studio, so I just drove down the street, tracked the guitars, brought them back, and Brad was sitting there with our mixer. By the time he had even finished with our notes, I had brought back the guitars that belonged.
I believe that was either "In My Remains" or "I'll Be Gone".


Burn It Down
Chester Bennington (ABCDane.net 12 June 2012):
It’s interesting, since ‘BURN IT DOWN’ was released, we’ve been getting a lot of e-mails from people saying something like, ‘I can finally work out to your music again.’ It’s something we never even considered while making this album. You don’t really think, ‘This song is perfect for doing push-ups to!’ or ‘I can’t wait to jog while playing this song.’ But it made us happy to hear these things, because it meant that this album has a lot of energy. ‘LOST IN THE ECHO’ and ‘IN MY REMAINS’ are both... reminiscent of our earlier days. Didn’t the album make you want to do push-ups? I don’t know why, but it makes me want to go out and exercise!

 

Mike Shinoda (TheHuffingtonPost 25 July 2012):
Well, definitely not. I think for us, the lyrics of the songs are whatever you want to take out of them. I think that came from a few years ago, I was doing an interview with our drummer Rob and we were talking about a song from Meteora, our second album, and the writer we were speaking to asked about the lyrical content and I told him what the song was about. After the interview, Rob said to me, "You know, man, I never even knew what that song was about. I thought it was about something completely different." For him, it kind of took away from the song a little bit, because he had believed that his version of it was what it was about, and knowing that it was about something else was really jarring for him. It got us into the conversation, "What does it mean for somebody to bring their own story to a song?" Ever since then, I think we've been a little more careful about telling people what it means. You know, to be honest, we get the songs to a certain point, and once we put out our record, it's up to the fans to decide how the song gets finished. In other words, we lead you to a certain point in the road and we say, "Okay, the rest of it is your call. You bring your own interpretation to the song." In the case of most of these songs, I think Chester (Bennington) is coming from a certain place, I'm coming from my own experience, and on top of that, there are oftentimes metaphor and maybe a third read. In the case of "Burn it Down," we're talking about my personal story and his personal story, and there's also a layer of pop culture that plays a role in the lyrics of the song. For example, people build up a certain celebrity or musician or actor or whatever and they're popular one minute and the next thing, you know either they've done something wrong or they've done nothing wrong and there's just a bad rumor that goes around about them and then everybody's attacking that person. That's just the way things are. We've actually lived through that as a band. All that stuff plays a role.


Lies Greed Misery
Chester Bennington (ABCDane.net 12 June 2012):
This song was one of the rare kinds that just came out of nowhere. Mike told me to scream anything, just let out my anger and I did just that. Before we realized it, we had a song on our hands. In the beginning it seemed too pop, like a tune you could dance to. We had to take out the party vibe and add a darker ‘I’m enjoying your destruction’ element to it. I think this song represents the kind of emotions that arise from standing up to a bully, or when a tyrant is taken down and the people are celebrating around his grave. Like I said, it’s a really dark song, but it also has a weird ‘pizza party’ kind of feel to it. Maybe the combination of crazy style and symphony has something to do with that. You’re at a party outdoors, drinking margaritas, hanging with tanned people, maybe swimming… then you play this song. I mean, it is a party song after all.
But that’s not all, you start screaming out loud. I hope you choke on your lies, swallow up your greed, suffer all alone in your misery. And well... it’s a terrible thing to say to someone. This song is incredibly complicated, mentally unstable maybe, but brilliant at the same time.

Mike Shinoda (Twitter 26 June 2012):
Chester sang his parts of LIES GREED MISERY while very sick; he had a fever and chills (maybe that added to the performance).

Mike Shinoda (Telehit The Hunting Party Special June 2014):
Speaking of the last album, Living Things and those things that we kind of like realized they're like... I think that we moved in a little bit of a more aggressive direction there, specially on the songs that I just named, "Lies and Greed" and "Victimized". And I kind of just realized that that was almost like a stepping stone from where this album came from. Like now I think that we got in touch with this specific version of like a really aggressive visceral album that, to be honest, summing all those albums, all of that whole thing, we know that they're like... they will be hard to play on the radio.[...]

I'll Be Gone
Mike Shinoda (NME 23 April 2012):

He worked on one song. We tried a second one, but he got busy with something else, so I actually ended up doing the strings on my own. He did the strings on 'I'll Be Gone'. I've not met him in person though, I think he may have met our drummer Rob, those two were emailing back and forth. I really love what he did with the song and what he did with Arcade Fire is just sensational.

 

Mike Shinoda (Q Magazine May 2012):
I love Owen’s work on Arcade Fire and our experience with him has just been exceptional. He only worked on one of the songs, I’ll Be Gone, which I’m really excited for fans to hear. He was seriously awesome. We’d send him files and notes to work on and he’d send stuff back basically the next day, it was incredible.

 

Mike Shinoda (Rolling Stone 20 June 2012):

The visuals for 'I'll Be Gone' stuck out to me because that song is a relationship-based song, but it's also got a second read of a space theme. A lot of the songs have metaphors, and one of the metaphors in that song is space. [The visual artists] picked up on that language and turned it into this weird, intergalactic space travel thing.

 

Mike Shinoda (Twitter 26 June 2012):
I'll be gone was a hard song to write. Lots of revisions over the course of a full year.

 

Mike Shinoda (TheHuffingtonPost 25 July 2012):
On LIVING THINGS, just to give you an example, during the mixing process -- for the people who are less familiar with mixing and recording an album, you should be done writing by the time you get to mixing. For us, that's not how it works. Mixing is where you take the tracks and you kind of organize them and present them for your final album. For us, on every album, we've gotten to that point and said, "We still want to tweak things and make them a little better." On this one, we actually changed the words of one bridge entirely and we added guitar on a song where they didn't even exist before. We were mixing the song and we realized, "This song isn't as bold or as big as it's supposed to sound." We thought all the sounds were there, but they weren't. Luckily, our mixing studio was like twenty minutes away from our recording studio, so I just drove down the street, tracked the guitars, brought them back, and Brad was sitting there with our mixer. By the time he had even finished with our notes, I had brought back the guitars that belonged.
I believe that was either "In My Remains" or "I'll Be Gone".


Castle Of Glass
Mike Shinoda (MTV.com 25 May 2012):
Our writing process is a weird, amorphous thing. For some bands, just to put it in perspective, they jam, and then they write a song and then they record a song and then they mix it and finish it ... we don't do that. We do everything at once, every step of the way. From the moment we're putting things down on the laptop, I'm already kind of mixing it a little bit [and] sometimes those things end up being songs, like 'CASTLE OF GLASS,' [where] my vocal performance in the first part of that song, pretty much almost everything you hear in the beginning of the song was the very first demo. Like, that went from nothing there, to those things, and then the song got built.

Chester Bennington (MTV.com 26 June 2012):
You can look at a song like 'CASTLE OF GLASS,' which for me, has one of the most interesting opposing points of view. When Mike was talking about the lyrics, at one point he had said, 'You know, it's kind of like finding yourself as this broken part of this big machine, and feeling like you're not part of that, or trying to find your place in the bigger scheme of things.' And that can mean a solider coming home from war, and trying to fit back into society, or a person getting out of prison, or whatever.
And here I am, envisioning this big, beautiful glass castle on a hill, and, like, unicorns. I'm thinking like 'Yeah, if you zoom in, I'm this little broken part of this castle that no one knows about, and I may seem like flawed and not important, but when you back up and look at the big picture, you're part of this really beautiful thing that keeps you together. And it was a really interesting twist; I think a lot of our lyrics can be taken from multiple perspectives, depending on what you want the song to be about ... they can be felt on so many different levels.

Mike Shinoda (Twitter 26 June 2012):
The beginning verse thru 1st chorus on CASTLE OF GLASS are the demo recordings--the first time I ever sang those words.
I was basically freestyling the words and playing acoustic guitar.

 

Mike Shinoda (MTV.com 2 August 2012):
This album tends to be a little more of a personal record, compared to the last record, which I guess I would say was a little more political. And this song is an example of that; the lyrics can have multiple meanings, be it a soldier’s story [or] an individual at home, dealing with a personal relationship. [And the video] is really mostly narrative; and it’s kind of the story of the families and the soldiers that this game is based on.


Victimized
Chester Bennington (Rolling Stone May 2012):
In the past, we've consciously steered away from what we'd done before, but here, the energy is clearly similar to Hybrid Theory.

Chester Bennington (ABCDane.net 12 June 2012):
In a way, Victimized is also an insane song. It starts with what sounds like folk... then rapidly dips into Hip-Hop, Punk Rock, Death Metal and back to Folk music. It’s just crazy, in a way there’s no real meaning to it. One of the things I like about our new album is that we included a song like this. It’s because of these things that I love our band so much. We have so many different faces... you can’t really pin us to one location, and that’s exactly what we’ve been aiming for.

Mike Shinoda (Musique Mag 15 June 2012):
I remember talking about that with Brad, like the punk rock songs that we used to listen to in high school. Like, what we're talking about? We're talking about like everything from D.R.I. to like... Pennywise and stuff like that. Like, there's a lot of songs in those genres that are super short and we had this short idea and we were just like "ok". Our first instinct was, you know, "how we fill out this song to make it longer?" and then we thought "wait a minute, why would... we don't have to do that, we don't have to make it longer, let's just make it what it is".

Phoenix (Musique Mag 15 June 2012):
The working title to that song was "Battle Axe", which for me was always like... that's what that song is; it's just this big 'crack' and then you're out.

Brad Delson (MusicRadar 19 July 2012):
Whether Mike's doing a guitar part or I am, we always want to do what's best for the song. A lot of times it's finding that interplay between an actual guitar and a sound that we've handcrafted, whether it's a sampled sound or an electronic sound. If you listen to Victimized, there's that [Electro-Harmonix] HOG octave-oscillating sound.
There's also guitar-sample sounds that were made on machines that weren't physically played, but you don't know what's what. Even when I was at the mix with [mixer] Manny [Marroquin], you're not sure some of the time – 'Oh, maybe that's a distorted bass' or 'Maybe that's a guitar sample.'

Brad Delson (iHeartGuitar Blog.com 25 October 2012):
I love it. It’s got like a thrash, punk, super-heavy edge. There’s enough of a distinction between that and something that’s more metal-influenced that makes that song so awesome for me. Ugh! I love that song! We’re going to play that song live too. That’s one of the ones I was just listening to to try and figure out how to play it. Sometimes we’ll try things that seem like it would be the worst idea, and that’s the thing that you hear and go ‘what is that?’ There’s a lot of experimentation, and that’s one of the reasons why we spend a year working on an album. If there’s a part we know we need for a song we’ll try for weeks until we find a part that works for the album.

Mike Shinoda (Telehit The Hunting Party Special June 2014):
Speaking of the last album, Living Things and those things that we kind of like realized they're like... I think that we moved in a little bit of a more aggressive direction there, specially on the songs that I just named, "Lies and Greed" and "Victimized". And I kind of just realized that that was almost like a stepping stone from where this album came from. Like now I think that we got in touch with this specific version of like a really aggressive visceral album that, to be honest, summing all those albums, all of that whole thing, we know that they're like... they will be hard to play on the radio.[...]

 

Mike Shinoda (Reddit AMA 12 August 2015):
[Hey, Mike. Big fan. Since the release of Linkin Park's The Hunting Party, I've been wondering, was it intentional that the riffs to Victimized and A Line In The Sand sound similar? If so, why did you do it?]
Not intentional...but Victimized was a bit of a precursor to THP album in a way, so it makes sense. Sometimes we can't see the forest for the trees...


Roads Untraveled
Chester Bennington (Rolling Stone May 2012):
We looked not just to Bob Dylan, but the music that inspired Dylan. Having a driving beat with this country-folk melody is weird - but it's totally Linkin Park.

Brad Delson (MusicRadar 19 July 2012):
One of the dominant musical inspirations early on in the process was a folk influence. We had The Anthology Of American Folk Music, and we listened to a lot of that.

 

Mike Shinoda (TheHuffingtonPost 25 July 2012):
For me, it's always coming from something that I have firsthand experience with, whether that be my own story or one of my close friends. We have a song called "Road Less Traveled" where I kind of wrote the song for one of my best friends. In every case, I feel like my best stuff comes when I'm thinking about something I feel strongly about. One day, I may not be inspired to talk about something, and then the next day, I may, and that's when I really try and dig into the lyrics of whatever might be optimal. Usually, for me, it's like the music will bring out that emotion or that inspiration and I just try and follow it.


Skin To Bone
Chester Bennington (Rolling Stone May 2012):
We looked not just to Bob Dylan, but the music that inspired Dylan. Having a driving beat with this country-folk melody is weird - but it's totally Linkin Park.

 

Chester Bennington (LPTV: Making of Living Things 18 June 2012):

All of a sudden we were writing hippie folk songs. Like ''Skin To Bone'' which is like this crazy-electro beats that are pounding your face. But when that was written, it was like a simple folk song. Where it began and where it ended up, they are miles and miles and miles apart.

 

Brad Delson (MusicRadar 19 July 2012):
Skin To Bone has it and Castle Of Glass has it. I listened to a lot of those old folk songs for song structure, and I found that the A sections have the meat, and B is like a bridge or a departure and then you come back to the A; whereas in pop radio or hip-hop or rock for the most part these days, it's like the verse is always serving the chorus – the second thing is the hook. The songs you identified are structurally and inherently more of a folk form.
We just loved that. A lot of it's major tonalities, built around the major root, but when you can do a major progression and still have it be sad or longing, I love how that sounds.
I should also mention with the folk songs, one of our goals as Linkin Park was, 'What can we do to make it relevant?' Rick really challenged us: 'Well, if it has a folk DNA and you just present it as a folk song, that's not adding anything to the conversation.' So with Skin To Bone, for example, none of those sounds are folk sounds, and what makes it interesting to me is the juxtaposition of the arrangement versus the identity of what that song is. I think that's what makes it unique.

Mike Shinoda (LPU Chat 26 June 2013):
Some songs weren't made to be played live, we might play them somehow but we have other songs in mind, those songs are made of samples and keys if the band was made of 6 Shinodas we could play them.


Until It Breaks
Mike Shinoda (MTV.com 25 May 2012):
Some songs we'll come up with demos, and they won't ever turn into anything ... we'll hear them, and we'll know they're not ever going to be a great song on their own. But there may be a section of it, a little glimmer of cool something in it, and the song 'Until It Breaks' is built from just those. There were like four demos that we had made that weren't going anywhere individually, but when you put them all together, they make something really interesting. It's supposed to feel really jarring and weird, and for me it was a really fun song to make.

Phoenix (Musique Mag 15 June 2012):
The last vocalist on that is actually Brad, our guitar player, and it's funny because I think if you know that, it gives a little bit of a glimpse in the process of how we write. We didn't get in that point of making a song and saying like "I know what we should do here, we should have Brad going in to sing this part", instead it was actually something that Brad had been working on at home, he brought it in as melody idea, like 4 months before, and we kinda lift with it and, working on the song, it gone through all these changes and shifts but at the end of it was Brad's vocal that we felt that "that's the best", it suited the best and so that's what kind of stayed on the record. You know that... just to say that our process isn't us sitting down me on the bass, Brad on guitar, and we're gonna like write a record. There's a lot more free moving than that and there's a lot more kind of like flying variables going around to the extent that even Brad singing can actually make the record.

Brad Delson (MusicRadar 19 July 2012):
That's kind of a coincidence that I'm on there vocally, in the sense that it wasn't intentional. That's one of the songs on the record that isn't so traditional in terms of the structure. It kind of has different suites, you might say. I think the inspiration was… is it Abbey Road where it has different movements?
OK, cool, so that was our inspiration. We actually had a bunch of ideas that, for whatever reason, didn't want to be full songs. But we loved the music that was there. So we built that around some of the songs that we had worked on earlier in the process that we wanted to put on the record, and we wanted to find a way to craft that all together.
The first part where Chester is singing, the first refrain, that was an early demo that I just did in a day – it just was what it was, but it was a cool part for that section. Similarly, the end section was something I'd done up and everyone liked it, and I'd sung on it but it didn't feel like it belonged in the same breath as some of the real songs on the album, like Lost In The Echo or Burn It Down or In My Remains. Mike had the idea to just glue it onto the end of that piece. I had sung the vocals originally, and I think I re-sang them, but the spirit was definitely 'keep the vibe of the demo.'
I don't consider myself a singer by any stretch, but I am comfortable, as all the guys are, singing harmonies and backing group vocals, and we'll do vocals on demos. It's just unusual to have something that's front and center.

 

Mike Shinoda (TheHuffingtonPost 25 July 2012):
Yeah. I think he's a great match for us right now. When we started with Rick, I was terrified because of maybe my top ten favorite albums, he's produced half of them. I'm just a huge fan of the stuff that he's done and once we got past that point of being nervous about working with Rick, we got a little bit of momentum and a rhythm. He's such a great match for us, because of the things that we want to do, the ways that we want to mix styles, it helps us to have somebody who not only understands all those styles because they listen to them, but also because they have a hands-on working experience and a really deep catalog and understanding of what makes these different types of songs special. When we were working on the song "Until it Breaks," which is kind of our attempt to do a Beatles White Album kind of all-in-one song, it's just a bunch of craziness, jumping from one sound to the next to the next to the next, all in the span of less than five minutes. Some of the ideas we were throwing out ranged from Beatles to electronica to folk, all of that stuff that we were thinking about. I was thinking that there aren't really any other producers where we could have this conversation and they would really know their s**t the way Rick does -- and not just that, but to connect with us on a personal level; to have that conversation and not miss a beat.

 

Mike Shinoda (Billboard 25 June 2015):

There's never been a lull in fan questions about new Fort Minor music. With Linkin Park, we do a meet-and-greet with 50 to 100 fans before every show, so I get a chance to talk to people in person, and in every single meet-and-greet there are a few people who ask about Fort Minor. And I always chalk that up to the fact those are the most hard-core fans, those are the ones who paid to be in the LPU [Linkin Park Underground fan group], they come to multiple shows a lot of times. It wasn't so much about people wanted to hear it; if that was the case, I would've done it earlier. But the truth of the matter is, when I did the first Fort Minor album the band was coming off Hybrid Theory and Meteora, which was really a time when we were known for one sound. Then we did Collision Course with Jay Z and I kind of missed the hip-hop songs I used to make when I was a teenager. So I made Fort Minor at that time thinking it would never fit in with Linkin Park. Then lo and behold a couple of years later, we broadened out our stylistic approach in the studio and my Fort Minor ideas could be incorporated into Linkin Park. On Minutes to Midnight, there were songs that had some elements of Fort Minor, notably "Waiting for the End" and "When They Come for Me." There's even one I consider a really modern Fort Minor-type song called "Until It Breaks," off Living Things. It's always kind of been there, but until this song it was always just something where I thought the Fort Minor ideas I had would be best served mashed up with the input of the rest of the guys in the band. And this is a song that came out of my head and it was basically done. It was 85 percent there, and I knew if I put it through the Linkin Park writing machine, it would change considerably and I didn't want that to happen to it. I felt like it was a good song on its own, and I was prepared to get behind it.

 

Mike Shinoda (Hip Hop N More 14 July 2015):
Thank you for that. When I originally did The Rising Tied, it was not only a labor of love, it was made during a time when I thought Linkin Park “had” to sound like something. Fort Minor started with a bunch of songs that I thought could never show up on a Linkin Park album. But soon after I did the FM album, I came back to Linkin Park and we realized that we all wanted to broaden our horizons and make albums that didn’t have to sit in the “Hybrid Theory” and “Meteora” box. So for a long time, all the ideas that would have been Fort Minor songs got turned into Linkin Park songs like “Waiting For The End,” “Hands Held High,” and “Until It Breaks.”


Powerless
Mike Shinoda (MTV First June 2012):
Took the longest to write. It was a really old demo, TINFOIL is the intro of it, and it turned into this epic 6 minute long thing, but it was kind of boring. It was too long, so months later we chopped it down to size. It probably took 9 months or even a year before the song was actually done. The last day of recording, we were still working on that song. Rob came in and recorded a new idea, and it made it way better.

RECHARGED
A Light That Never Comes
Mike Shinoda (Twitter 10 August 2013):
Steve and I met up like a year ago, maybe more. It happened pretty organically, just shooting ideas back and forth. #LPRecharge
Mike Shinoda (Twitter 10 August 2013):
It is a Linkin Park & Steve Aoki collaboration. #LPRecharge
Mike Shinoda (Twitter 10 August 2013):
We are only planning to perform it when we are with Steve. it's a collaboration. #LPRecharge
Steve Aoki (Radio.com 13 August 2013):
In like a week or two, I’m going to perform with this band, one of my favorite bands ever, growing up. We’ve been writing like four or five songs together
They’re literally one of the biggest bands in the world, at least for me. They’re like, literally one of the top 10 biggest bands in the world. I swear to God. Working with them is incredible.
At least like, as far as influence in their culture, they’re to me like the Rage Against the Machine of their sound. Rage Against the Machine is my favorite band, so…
Steve Aoki (Facebook 20 August 2013):
So excited to announce my single with Linkin Park - "A Light that Never Comes"!! Amazing collaborating with these guys - can't wait for you all to hear the song!
Help unlock the song, play the #LPRecharge game: http://bitly.com/LPRECHARGE

Mike Shinoda (Billboard 20 August 2013):

The beginnings of this song was probably six months to a year ago.
Steve Aoki (Billboard 20 August 2013):
It was about building this bridge between our two worlds and doing it in an organic way. We’ve stayed true to both our elements. Our fans in the EDM space and the Linkin Park space can gravitate towards it naturally.
Mike Shinoda (Billboard 20 August 2013):
There was a balance aspect. In my process writing a song, I tend to add a lot of elements and sounds, remove them, then add more, until I get the vibe I like. On this, I don’t want to trample on some of the work Steve did. We found that out on our first two records. There are actually a lot of keyboard and sample-based sounds on “Hybrid Theory” and “Meteora,” but in the mix they got drowned out by the guitars. Since then, I think we’ve paid more attention to balance as we go through the whole process, from the writing to the engineering.
Steve Aoki (Billboard 20 August 2013):
I always add a lot. Mike’s the one to say, let’s take some layers out to make this work. For me, it was a major learning process. It’s hard for me to gauge certain things when I just work with other dance producers. Working with the band allowed this different color palette to come out that I would’ve never heard before. I took this one much differently than I would on any other record.
Steve Aoki (KROQ August(?) 2013):
Twitter was like our way of communicating at first and then we started sending e-mails. I've known Mike for a long time, you know. He asked me to do a remix for Linkin Park and it just didn't work out timing wise and then that time I was just writing new music and I was in that perfect zone to start writting as well. And I got a cabin in Mammoth Mountain and I just focused on my new album coming out.
Steve Aoki (KROQ August(?) 2013):
What I usually do is, my process is like, I write a lot of different loops, lot of different ideas, a bass line, somethin' like that throughtout the year and then I kind of piece meal it all together when I have time. When I have, I isolate myself. Actually bus tours work really well, but this one was great 'cause I got focused on other projects like, you know, doing a song with Linkin Park.
Steve Aoki (KROQ August(?) 2013):
"A Light That Never Comes" is gonna be on Recharged, which is their new album coming out. And yeah, it's like, it was very interesting to work with a band and, you know, it's very different than working with a dance producer, you know, like sending files back and forth like that.
Steve Aoki (KROQ August(?) 2013):
It’s strange because when I’m in the studio and I’m writing a song, I don’t write it to fit the radio. ‘Cuz for me, I’m really writing it for the club, so on this one, it’s exciting to hear a song with a completely different structure than the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus. There’s like a drop with no vocals and that kind of thing is going. It’s exciting to listen to it on KROQ and be like ‘Oh, this is actually playing on the radio.’
Mike Shinoda (Mike Shinoda and Steve Aoki Discuss "A LIGHT THAT NEVER COMES" 30 August 2013):
We started working on the song like... probably about... no less than a half a year ago. And it was just, it wasn't like we were constantly working on it. It's like the ideas would flow whenever it was, you know, something new came up. It was really organic and really just natural.

Mike Shinoda (Recharge Press Release 12 September 2013):
I think this song and release show where we’re at right now. Making the song with Steve, premiering it through the Recharge Facebook game, and debuting it via Microsoft’s Xbox Music—I think it’s all indicative of our band’s commitment to experimentation and pushing boundaries.

Mike Shinoda (KROQ 16 September 2013):
The coolest part about the song is it was really organic in how it came together. Steve (Aoki) and I first talked on Twitter, and then we were emailing, and then we started throwing music back and forth. It eventually resulted in besides the song being finished, we got onstage with him at a show that we did, the Summer Sonic Festival in Japan, which is one of their biggest shows. It’s a really diverse bill, and Chester and I went onstage with him and played the song.

Mike Shinoda (Do Androids Dance? 26 September 2013):
I was absolutely aware of Steve and had heard of him for a long time. I knew that he was very active making remixes and stuff like that. As well, I’d see him on all of those “Most Powerful DJs in the World”-type of lists. When I became more interested, I heard his collaborations with artists like Lil Jon and Iggy Azalea, and was impressed. Just like Linkin Park, he can reach into different genres and styles of music with his sounds. As far as the collaboration, we reached out to each other during an unrelated conversation on Twitter, so it all happened organically. We exchanged DMs back and forth, which led to emails, and then the song.

 

Joe Hahn (Rolling Stone 01 October 2013):
Mike [shinoda] has been on this EDM kick for the last year and he's been hanging out with different EDM guys, like he did a day with Avicii, and he's been sending stuff back and forth with Aoki. This is the one that really stuck. He fleshed it out, brought it to the guys and we were into it. And it coincided with the game and also the album we're putting out, which is remixes of Living Things.

 

Mike Shinoda (EDMSauce 22 October 2013):
The track really surprised us. Brad and I had structured the song, but then with Steve there we had to structure the song differently.

Mike Shinoda (thump.vice 23 October 2013):
Right so, when the track was shaping up, Steve sent me an email saying, “I did a ton of interviews at the Grammys yesterday, and I can’t tell you how badly I wanted to tell them I was working with Linkin Park!” And he didn’t say a word about it—that’s professionalism. A lot of artists would have tweeted about it or whatever but Steve knows better than that. Sometimes it takes a while for a song to be ready and you don’t want to hype somebody on something they can’t have for a while.
It’s so rad to be getting the kind of love we get from electronic artists like Steve. We’re putting out an album full of remixes and a lot of the artists on there have been fans of Linkin Park for a while. I feel like a lot of people who were rock fans or who would have been rock fans have moved in the direction of electronic music. It’s a different kind of scene for them and a different kind of outlet, and to me there seems to be an obvious connection.

 

Mike Shinoda (Hypetrak November 2013):
The song came about in a pretty organic way. I originally reached out to him on Twitter to do a remix, I think. Instead of that, we started trading ideas on a new song. I think one of the things that clicked was that we simply get along well, and this demo turned into something that seems to showcase our individual styles pretty well--even though it's a departure for both artists. As far as aesthetics we share, I would definitely say that musically, we both have a focus on attention to sonic details. Separate from the music, I'd say that both artists also represent a culture that has a deep connection with each other and with the music--it's more than "songs" and "shows", there's something deeper that it's really all about.

Mike Shinoda (WhiteRaverRafting 21 November 2013):
[When collaborating with Steve Aoki did you find it difficult to bring the differences in your sounds together? What were important elements of your own band’s sound that you felt needed to be represented in the collaboration?]
I think you can hear it all in the first minute of the song. I laid it out so that you get a taste of a unique sound, followed by something very “Linkin Park,” which evolves into an “Aoki” moment at the drop. Both Steve and I contributed sounds to all those parts though; it was a very collaborative effort.

Rob Bourdon (Facebook Chat 23 December 2013):
We had a great time collaborating with Steve Aoki and we were stoked that our schedules aligned so that we could work together in the studio, and also meet up in Tokyo and perform together. Not only is Steve a great musician but he is also a great guy which makes the process that much more fun. I hope to collaborate with him in the future.

 

Steve Aoki (thump.vice 07 April 2014):
[...]Obviously I’ve evolved as a producer and a songwriter, but working with bands like Linkin Park is a dream for me too. I’ve been listening to their albums since Hybrid Theory.[...]
Mike Shinoda (AltWire 04 May 2015):
We started “A Light That Never Comes” and “Darker Than Blood” at the same time, but ALTNC came together faster. We actually finished “Darker Than Blood” during our Hunting Party sessions, where we were pretty much writing nothing but heavy rock the whole time, which might be why it finally came together. It was a change of pace at the time.
I wanted “A Light That Never Comes” to be more of a Linkin Park song, and “Darker Than Blood” to be more of an Aoki song. We did more of the heavy lifting on the former, Steve did more of the work on the music track of the latter.


Castle Of Glass (M. Shinoda Remix)
Mike Shinoda (WhiteRaverRafting 21 November 2013):
My CASTLE OF GLASS remix was a journey; the verse section was the first thing I made, which originally lived in a Justice/Daft Punk kind of world. But I didn’t want the song to be two-dimensional or a rip-off, so I dirtied up the sounds and added a little of a prog-rock kind of feel. Then I added the ambient intro. After that, I had the idea to take it somewhere really unexpected, which is where the last movement came in. I think that last section is where the real musicality and magic happens, introducing the dreamy synths, new chord changes, vocoder vocals, guitar, and piano.

Victimized (M. Shinoda Remix)
Joe Hahn (Rolling Stone 01 October 2013):
Mike did one of my favorite ones, a hardcore version of "Victimized." Then Money Mark did something pretty crazy with "Until It Breaks." Rick Rubin actually did one ["A Light That Never Comes"].

Mike Shinoda (WhiteRaverRafting 21 November 2013):
VICTIMIZED was a pretty simple approach—it’s based on the jungle and gabber techno I listened to when I was in college. A good friend of mine was a DJ who introduced me to those artists, and I wanted to do a modern take on that style with the VICTIMIZED remix.


Roads Untraveled (Rad Omen Remix feat. Bun B)
Mike Shinoda (Twitter 1 October 2012):
New remix just came out for anyone who bought LT thru http://linkinpark.com. ROADS UNTRAVELED @djtroublemaker remix feat @BunBTrillOG

 

Mike Shinoda (WhiteRaverRafting 21 November 2013):
If you listen to EDM in particular, I think you realize that a lot of subgenres are represented on this album. If you see a review of RECHARGED that calls it a “dubstep album,” you instantly know it’s being reviewed by someone who doesn’t really know what they’re talking about. But even stepping outside of EDM, the album has a lot of different flavors—some songs represent multiple genres at once. For example, on the Rad Omen remix, there are elements of house, trap, and folk, all in the same song.


Until It Breaks (Datsik Remix)
Mike Shinoda (Twitter 30 August 2012):
S/O to @datsik for coming to the show tonight in Denver. LP+DATSIK remix, anyone? #HondaCivicTour #firepowertour

Datsik (Twitter 30 August 2012):
@mikeshinoda pleasure to meet u man, we had to jet.. But thanks for everything and safe travels bro stay in touch!

Datsik (Twitter 30 August 2012):
@Exia_Atreides until it breaks.. Gonna drop it tonight!

 

Mike Shinoda (Do Androids Dance? 26 September 2013):
When we released our last album, Living Things, we offered one or two free remixes a month for the fans who bought the album directly from LinkinPark.com. We reached out to a lot of people and had some great remixes come from that. Through that process, I got to to know [dubstep and heavy bass producer] Datsik quite a bit, and he offered me his perspective on where things were headed. He’s an up-and-comer and a [generally] hungry dude, and he was schooling us on styles!

Mike Shinoda (thump.vice 23 October 2013):
There’s a lot of variety on there, from Datsik and KillSonik to Money Mark, and a couple of rap features from Pusha T and Bun B. I really enjoyed working with all the different artists, and with some of them I didn’t touch anything—I just let them do their thing. Other artists wanted to collaborate, so I added some stuff and played around with it, and then I did two remixes myself.
It was mostly long distance, because everyone is on the road. There was a lot of sharing files and stuff—occasionally I’d meet up with people. Like I remember Datsik was in Cleveland when we were touring and we hit Cleveland the same night. We got to hang out there before he left and went over to his show. It’s fun chopping it up with the guys who are younger, who are now just now experiencing the attention of these fans and a different phase in their career and in music in general.


A Light That Never Comes (Rick Rubin Reboot)
Mike Shinoda (Instagram 30 June 2013):
Worked with Rick Rubin at his place this week. This was where they worked on the Kanye / Yeezus record; it also was the birthplace of dozens of legendary songs we all love. The room doesn't feel like any particular kind of music to me. Just has a nice vibe and feels like a fine place to create new things.
Mike Shinoda (Twitter 04 July 2013):
Actually, Rick wasn't "producing" the track; we were writing together. 1st time we've done it, surprisingly. An experiment.

Mike Shinoda (KROQ 16 September 2013):

Anybody who bought Living Things on our website directly from us at LinkinPark.com, they got a remix a month for like six months, which is really pretty cool. But in order to get those remixes [to send out] for the six months, we got tons and tons of remixes. We ended up with a bunch of different [remixes] that people have still not heard, and we’re actually going to be putting them together on a remix album, Recharged [set for release on October 29]. The album will have remixes from Datsik, Killsonik, and there’s a remix of the Aoki song by Rick Rubin himself.
Rick [Rubin] doesn’t usually make a track, he produces stuff for other people, so this is a really special thing. I’m really excited about it.

Mike Shinoda (Do Androids Dance? 26 September 2013):
Rick’s remix is “breakbeaty,” almost disco-ish. It definitely sounds more old school, but not in an 808 or 909 sort of way. It’s influenced by stuff that he has listened to recently. He broke out no drum machines when he put it together, though.

 

Joe Hahn (Rolling Stone 01 October 2013):
Mike did one of my favorite ones, a hardcore version of "Victimized." Then Money Mark did something pretty crazy with "Until It Breaks." Rick Rubin actually did one ["A Light That Never Comes"].

 

Burn It Down (Paul Van Dyk Remix)

Paul Van Dyk (Twiiter 13 August 2012):
[@paulvandyk Tell us what was your favorite part about working on the remix for @linkinpark? #PvDLinkinPark]
.@NephthysPhoenix @linkinpark taking this fantastic track to the dance floor! #PvDLinkinPark


THE HUNTING PARTY
Keys To The Kingdom
Mike Shinoda (Rolling Stone 10 April 2014):
["Keys to the Kingdom" opens with an affected, robotic-sounding voice yelling and then manages to make some disjointed-sounding riffs work.]
I wanted you to listen to the song and be disrupted at regular intervals. I wanted that to be jarring or distracting, just kind of fuck you up.

Mike Shinoda (Twitter 19 June 2014):
Of all the songs, Keys to The Kingdom was my favorite to open the album because of the constant sonic surprises
The chorus vocal was a stream-of-consciousness vocal (and lyric) by Chester. He didn't write it down, just sang whatever came to mind.
That's me saying "Try and do the other thing"--I was talking to Rob when we were recording drums
The "I'm not allowed to say certain things" was a clip we put here because we originally had another clip...
But we weren't allowed to use it because of legal reasons!

Mike Shinoda (Chideo - Mike Shinoda tells us more about the track that was cut from 'Keys to the Kingdom' 18 August 2014):
The history behind that is that we originally had a clip of a little kid saying "a cold doesn't bother me anyway", which is a line from Frozen. Which we just thought was a funny way to like transition, you know, from one heavy song to the next. It almost give this juxtaposition against something that's like kind of silly and soft and whatever. And then we actually mocked up the whole album with that in there just... you know, we've all seen the movie, you guys all know that some of us like we kind of have an inside joke about that. And then at one point we... they had to like clear it. Meaning like attorneys had to like say it's ok for us to use a line from Frozen and unfortunately on the Disney end that was decided that they weren't okay with that or they wanted to own a part of the song/album for us to use that part, so we decided that wasn't really worth it. You know, we still love the movie, it's all good. But we decided to use the other clip, which is a kid saying "I'm not allowed to say certain things." So that's reference to the clip that we couldn't use.

All For Nothing
Chester Bennington (3news 29 April 2014):
I think when we got Page in, Mike had written this chorus and sang it, and his voice had this tone, and it was unlike anything I'd heard from him before. And I was like, "Dude this is crazy, this sounds like a Helmet song! It's cool!" And we were like, "Dude, why don't we see if we can get like Page in here?" You know? And if that's why the song says it's feeling like it should be, then why don't we just go straight to the source.
And it turned out f**king awesome!

Chester Bennington (Gekirock 21 May 2014):
‘All For Nothing’ also has an interesting story. We liked it from the very beginning, the melody was cool but Mike was having trouble singing it. It was rare for him to struggle like that. I asked him, “doesn’t your voice sound like Helmet?” and he responded, “I thought so too, but is that a good thing?” Of course I told him it was great, I love Helmet. We hadn’t done it intentionally but it sounded very similar and that was cool, so we discussed whether to have Page (guitarist from Helmet) come in and work with us. Next thing I know, Page was in the studio!
In the same way, the songs were developed individually. There are so many more episodes I want to tell you about, but they’re too cool I can’t tell you (laughing). Well, I want to.

Mike Shinoda (Revolver 13 June 2014):
That’s Page singing—there’s a double of me in there, but that’s him way up front. We hung out with him over the course of a day or two, and went back and forth over the song. It was just as much about meeting the guy and picking his brain and hearing cool stories about things that he’s done. But the other thing was, I really wanted him to know that this was a song we wouldn’t have made if I’d never listened to Helmet—you know, ‘It’s because of you that we wrote this. If you don’t want to sing on it, that’s OK, but we wanted to play it for you first. And if you want to be on the song, then you can be on the song.’ He liked it so much that he wound up singing on it, and he added some cool layers and chords on guitar.

Phoenix (Rolling Stone India 17 June 2014):
This is the first studio record we’ve done that has guests on it. We’ve obviously done tons of collaborations on different projects like [2002 remixes album] Reanimation. But for this, as we were writing different things, Page made a great example. We’d gotten “All For Nothing” as a track to a point where we thought, ‘Wow, you can hear the influence of Helmet on this.’ So we were wrestling with the sound, if it sounded too much like that. A third one of us went, ‘What if we were to reach out to Page and get his insight on it?’ We got him in and played him the track and he said, ‘What if I played some guitars on it? What if I sing?’ We were doing all these differ­ent things and suddenly it was awesome. It’s different than where it was at. It was so much fun. We got that opportunity on a couple of different tracks, tried to experiment in differ­ent ways. We got different guys to jump in — see their approaches to songwriting in the stu­dio. It was to have these guys and jam those songs out and see if it works and those songs that you find on the record, those are tracks we felt really came together well with those different guys.

Chester Bennington (Loudwire 17 June 2014):
This song we wrote, the chorus sounds so cool but it feels like Helmet. We don’t want to write a song that sounds like Helmet, but this is cool, why don’t we go straight to the source? Why don’t we call Page, and see if he would be interested in coming in and working on the song. If he likes it, we can continue working on it and we don’t have to feel like it doesn’t make sense. The song was telling us, go get Page. If you listen, as an artist and musicians, you need to listen to what the songs are saying.

Mike Shinoda (Amazon Music 17 June 2014):
I love many different types of music and I can write in many different styles. If I hear a [song or sound], I can emulate or copy it, or write something that’s relative. Most of the time that’s really useful and a lot of fun. But on this album we realized it’s better to go to the source of the sound. Rather than saying, “Let’s play something that sounds like Helmet,” we instead reached out to Page, who is Helmet, to see if he wanted to play on our song.

Mike Shinoda (Twitter 19 June 2014):
All For Nothing features Page Hamilton from the band Helmet. Helmet was one of the bands whose aggressive / melodic sound was...
...one of my inspirations while writing #TheHuntingParty
If you listen, you can hear my vocal mixed with Page's in the chorus
The music behind the interlude before "Guilty All The Same" is an original piece. That's me singing "ohhh"

Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington (Revolver 29 July 2014):
SHINODA: That was one of the ones that was pretty much done. I laid down a chorus vocal myself, and I listened to it the next day when I came into the studio, I was like, “Fuck, this really sounds like Helmet!”
BENNINGTON: That’s the first thing I said when I heard the new chorus. We’d been kicking a couple of choruses around, but they never really lived up to the song’s potential. Then he played me the new chorus melody, and I was like, “That’s really fucking cool, dude—and the coolest part is that it doesn’t even sound like you! It sounds like fucking Helmet!”
SHINODA: And when’s the last time I sang and it sounded like Helmet? [Laughs]
BENNINGTON: And that’s when we were like, “Well, maybe we should go straight to the source!” You kind of have to let the song tell you what the song wants, and I think this song was telling us to call Page.

 

Chester Bennington (The Hunting Party Tour Press Conference 9 January 2015):
[...] I think with the track that Paige came in on, we had worked on that track for awhile and the song came together really well in terms of the verses and the rest of the song. We were struggling with the chorus and finally Mike came in with this chorus and he was singing it and the demo version of his vocal, I was like, “Dude.” I go, “This chorus is bad ass. But is that you? It’s trippy how much you sound like Paige from Helmet on it,” And he’s like, “Yeah. I was kind of thinking the same thing.” And he’s like, “Is that a bad thing?” And I said, “Well, no it’s not a bad thing. It’s kind of great thing, but at the same time, it does sound like Helmet.” And so, I think at that point, Mike somehow knew somebody who knew Paige or even bumped into Paige at some point recently; you have to talk to Mike. Somehow there was a connection there and Mike reached out to Paige, and basically the thought was if this sounds like Helmet, we should probably wait to go straight to the source if the inspiration clearly came from that, whether consciously or unconsciously. And so, Paige came down and decided that he thought it would be cool to work with us and threw down a great vocal and added some great guitar and some great input on the track and the song kind of asked for it.


Guilty All The Same
Mike Shinoda (Radio.com 5 March 2014):
The reason we went with this single first is that we think it’s a good look into the DNA of the record that we’re putting out this summer.
A few months ago I was making some demos and writing this stuff and it sounded like something that you could play on the radio. I listen to a lot of indie music… and I was listening to the demos and thought, I don’t want to make any of that music. What is it that’s not out there right now that I’m all about, that I’m fired up about that is a void? It ended up being this new material.
It’s louder; it’s more visceral than probably anything we’ve done recently. And we’re all really proud of it.

Mike Shinoda (Radio.com 5 March 2014):
[nearly three minutes into the relentlessly hard rocking song, legendary MC Rakim can be heard spitting a few rhymes.]
That’s like one of my idols. If you get into the nitty-gritty of his rhyme pattern and the topic in this song, it’s bananas what he is doing. He’s on the some Steve Vai s*** vocally.

Brad Delson (MusicRadar 17 March 2014):
We wanted to get music out sooner than later. The timing just felt right with this song. We finished two songs relatively early in the process, and Guilty All The Same seems to inform the spirit of the record. For us, it’s the perfect lead offering to set the tone for the album as a whole.

Brad Delson (MusicRadar 17 March 2014):
Even at this stage, it’s interesting talking to people like yourself and hearing people’s reactions to the first song. I can tell you that certain people, when they first heard it, said, ‘Are you guys f-ing crazy?’ For real. Certain people got it, and everyone ultimately came around and is on the path. To be fair, a lot of people were like, ‘The song is six minutes long. What do you mean it’s gonna be your first single?’ But for us, it’s the best thing that we’ve made that represents where we are creatively. That’s what we’re putting our weight behind.
And then to top if off, to have a one-of-a-kind verse from arguably one of the greatest rappers of all time, that doesn’t hurt. And it’s so topical, too. Sometimes with a guest, you’ll hear a verse on a song, but it’s got nothing to do with the song the verse is on. Rakim and Mike and Chester, who obviously worked on the lyrics, had a creative mind meld in terms of elucidating the themes of the song. Rakim takes it in his own unique a direction, and it’s just beautiful. I’m so grateful to him.

Mike Shinoda (HipHop DX 18 March 2014):
Well I guess the thing to mention first is that for a band like ours [Linkin Park] each record is a different experience and different direction; on each record we try to grow and learn. Be better as songwriters, recording artists, and performing artists. Anything we think we can learn, we wanna learn. With that said, the climate for a Rock band now is weak. For Hip Hop fans, and I don’t think they notice it but they could relate, the Rock genre, the Rock radio/Rock channels are getting smaller, and a lot of the rock on Alternative especially outlets are turning towards Pop. So where you used to get Green Day and System of a Down you are now getting Lorde, or Avicii. I was making new music for this album, I was making the same songs that I was really excited about and they seemed to fit in that genre. Not the Pop genre, but they felt like great Alternative songs. I felt like I was happy with what I was doing, but then I looked at it one day and I said, “You know what? The music I’m making is like a derivative of all this new tempo Poppy Alternative stuff.” I didn’t like it to be honest, so long story short we started working on a real heavy Rock record, and at a certain point Rakim’s name came up, and I realized we were in a similar situation. He’s an artist whose respected but not mentioned really in Pop culture even though he is the Godfather of a lot of things in Hip Hop. He’s kind of a bar by which lyricists are measured, but the times have changed. He’s not gonna make a Pop music song for people to dance to and shit. He refuses to do it, and that’s how we felt on this record. We didn’t wanna play by the rules and make a Pop record, we don’t have it in us. I think it was what we connected on immediately and why he came all the way from New York to record with us.

Mike Shinoda (HipHop DX 18 March 2014):
It was so funny how that happened. We were in the studio listening to the track and originally I was gonna Rap in the bridge and I said as I was listening to it I thought it was predictable for me to rap a verse right here. Like that's not as exciting as it could be. What could we do that would be shocking? And I joked [that] you know we’ve already done stuff with Jay Z, what if we got Rakim? Like I thought it would be impossible, but the engineer was like I can get to him if you want me to. I said, 'You're fucking kidding me.' He said, 'You know my buddy back in New York was his engineer and lived near him, and I’ll just give him a shout and see if he can reach out and ask the question.' I said, 'Well it doesn’t hurt so do it.' Next thing I know a week later I was on the phone with the guy.
I don’t know about comparing Rakim to Jay Z; it's like apples and oranges. I’ll tell you this is what I observed: not the whole process, but [Rakim] likes to spend time writing. Just to make that one verse between the time he started it and the time he recorded it was about a week. I don’t know how much he wrote like by the day. Like maybe 3-5 hours a day he could have wrote five minutes, but I know when I listened to it there was a complexity to the subject matter and the rhyme pattern and the way everything is assembled almost from an emotional standpoint and mathematical standpoint that no one else can do. I mean you gotta have the life experience, the natural born talent and the craftsmanship, the experience of building that a young person simply can’t have. I look at it like, man that’s something to aspire to be able to do, and he’s just a one of a kind phenomenon.

Mike Shinoda (Noisey 9 April 2014):
There were no shortcuts. When he wrote to the song, he told me it was going to take some time; it took like a week and a half. At a certain point he said, “I’ve got 16 bars, but I want more. Can we do 24?” And he drove out—he doesn’t fly—from the East Coast to L.A., set up a couple shows on the way, canceled them, and then basically came out and recorded the song. He was still writing on it the weekend before he came in, and was even still editing it on paper. It’s not on his phone, it’s not on his laptop, he was sitting there at the dinner table of the studio still working it out.
Any time we’re in the studio with anybody, I try to see what I can learn from them. What I learned from his style was to appreciate the difference between writing in a free-form way—like guys like Jay Z and Kanye who freestyle and free-associate into the mic—and Rakim’s the opposite. He spends a lot of time perfecting the verse. His verse is almost the rap equivalent of a shredding guitar solo, like you listen to it and you can’t even tell the notes because it’s so crazy. When you read the words you can follow along and see how the rhyme pattern and got built out. The rhyme pattern is constantly established and taken apart and re-established. That was the awakening—that form of writing is totally timeless. Even though it’s a little complex and a little much for people in modern pop to digest, when you hear it done well it still resonates. There are people who do complex shit and it doesn’t really hit you, because they’re just doing it for the sake of being complex. But Rakim’s verse is about hitting an emotional connection.

Mike Shinoda (XXL 9 April 2014):
If somebody tells me their top ten rappers of all time and they don’t mention [Rakim] in the first two or three, then I pretty much disregard them entirely. You basically don’t know what the fuck you are talking about. I’m not being extreme. I’m being real.
What ended up taking [the collaboration] a step further [towards] making it, and I knew it was going to work, is when we got on the phone and I was telling him about the place where we are at in rock music. 'Cause rock music right now has gone real pop. I listen to rock radio right now and it sounds like I'm listening to Nick Jr. or the Disney channel. It sounds like commercial jingles.
So that’s where its gone and we couldn’t see ourselves going there. We couldn’t do it. It felt like, that’s not the moment for us right now. We want to make a heavy record, an aggressive record that’s true to where we come from.

Rakim (XXL 9 April 2014):
I got a lot of respect for Linkin Park. I’ve been a fan since they came out. I remember a long time ago sitting down and flipping through the channels, and this animated video came on and I was sitting there with the kids. I immediately started watching it. It was a Linkin Park video. Me and the kids were sitting there rocking to it and the animation was crazy. Naw mean? We figured out the name of the group and we started listening for ‘em.
Like I said, I’ve been a fan throughout their music. “Pushing Me Away” to “Don’t Stay” to “Be Myself.” I like all they music. I get a vibe off of it and I know exactly what they speaking on and the feeling they bringing across and I respect them for that.
And when they called to see if I was interested in doing a joint. It was perfect. It’s a band that picks up the integrity and I felt I was going through the same things they was going through when he told me how he was listening to certain music and he didn’t want to do that route. I deal with the same thing in hip-hop. Majority rules, and if everybody is going this way, artists are almost handcuffed to do the same thing. I felt it was a good statement to make and a good chance to try and rebuild what we trying to do. As far as them trying to rebuild the rock sound and me trying to make that statement and let people will know what’s going on. Again, I felt it was a perfect opportunity.
It was dope. Like I said, everybody’s attitude was down to Earth. The vibe was cool and I’m kind of like a picky person when it comes to my studio sessions. I usually work by myself and I got my own studio in the house. Now, I am really used to working by myself, but I feel no way about going in there and trying something that I never did before. I write in front of them. It was one of them things where the vibe was right and the song was definitely right. It was a matter of me putting that Rakim thing on.

Mike Shinoda (XXL 9 April 2014):
People like Rakim are fine artists. There are people who make pop music. They are more illustrative, but they are losing sight of the art in their art. When I see him come in, he’s got it written out on paper with a pencil. It’s not on his phone, it’s not on his laptop. Whatever. It’s on paper with a pencil. He got down at the dinner table in the studio and he’s like, “Give me a minute, I am still working this out. I want to make sure it's right.” And that’s called craftsmen. You know, attention to detail and making sure the piece is everything you can make it.
When he performed it, it really showed me the veteran status and attitude. Like, the authority too. This dude goes in there and he does the thing. He’s working it out in his head and working it out as he spits the verse. When he got to the last part, he’d always stop short of the last few bars. And he get everything worked out and then there was this moment where he just went for it. He went all the way through the verse and gave us—if you know the verse—the last four bars is just punchline. It’s such a big climax.

Rakim (XXL 9 April 2014):
There was a lot of rock songs coming up. Like, it took me a while to realize a lot of the break beats we was using was rock 'n' roll records until I got the record myself. I always been a big listener of rock 'n' roll. Being a rapper, I kind of always let the music always take me there where it needs to be. I try to go into the music and try to complement that. What I do like about rock is how it gets dramatic, how it gets live. How it excerises certain things. It kind of helps me take the pen there. It’s one of them things I always wanted to do, but didn’t have the right avenue to do it. And this right here is the perfect opportunity. I got to take advantage of it.

Chester Bennington (3news 29 April 2014):
You know, it was actually very interesting how it happened. We were working on a bunch of songs, for a long time, and we had all been writing demos for about six months, before we started working on songs specifically for the record. We always write. So, Mike [shinoda] had been working on quite possibly - most definitely - the most together batch of songs. Mike typically is the creative general of the band anyway. So we were writing stuff that was really in line with a lot of the stuff that's going on right now. We're listening to a lot of alternative, indie rock right now, and we like a lot of it. And we like writing poppy music too, you know. We like to add a little darkness to it, but we've been known to write poppy songs. And we were heading in a direction that was more like that. And at some point Mike was listening to it, and some other bands, and realised he was kind of writing songs that harkened to the stuff he was listening to, and came to the realisation like, "This is not what I want to do." There is so much of this right now, all we are going to be doing is just adding more noise to the noise. And that sucks. And so we threw out all of those songs, and I think he played it to me first, and he said, "I am going to play this for the guys, but this is kind of where I want to go: Let me know if it's too crazy." So that was when he played me the beginnings of what turned into 'Guilty All The Same'. And I was like "Ah, f**k yeah let's do that, all day, every day, on every single song!"

Chester Bennington (Gekirock 21 May 2014):
When it comes to the song writing, it’s similar to Hybrid Theory in the sense that it’s Mike and Brad that are at the center of the process. I’m in the studio as much as I can, and ask them to let me know whenever they need me. When we recorded ‘Guilty All the Same,’ it started off with Mike telling me to try it out, like a skit. In the end, we decided to let all out and go crazy. I guess this is what we’re like when we’re inspired. Sometimes we try different methods – like making it melodious – but other times we end up deciding we have to fucking scream on this one. Everyone loves my screaming, right? With my vocals and a bit of screaming…. It’s perfect (laughing). There’s a funny story, when we were recording, there was this song we wanted to make cooler. The guitar part was great, so we added double stroke drumming and shredding riffs. We don’t usually do this. Da Da Da Da … Rob was going insane with the drumming so, I was like, Rob are you…
[Rob: You thought I was rubbing one out (laughing)?]
(laughing) anyway, it was crazy. It’s cool but seriously intense. Even Brad. There’s still that guitar-obsessed 15 year-old in him. He knows it. I was screaming with a similar feeling.

Chester Bennington (Gekirock 21 May 2014):
Each song has a story to it. For example, ‘Guilty all the Same’ represents what we’ve been making, and the expectations of our fans. [...]We had the idea, and then Rakim really came (laughing). Everyone was really happy, because Rakim’s rap was everything we’d been looking for, it spoke what we wanted to say. It might be a rude way to put this, but that song wouldn’t have been much without Rakim. It’s a fucking epic song.

Chester Bennington (Loudwire 17 June 2014):
I want to rap on this part but I don’t know if it’s me. I don’t think it should be me rapping, let’s get Rakim in here. Then making that happen.

Mike Shinoda (Twitter 19 June 2014):
Guilty All The Same was the first song on #TheHuntingParty Rob recorded drums for. He worked up to this performance for about a month.
.@ask_brittany The artwork was a collaboration between @JamesJeanArt, us, and Ghost @gtmvfx #TheHuntingParty
Rakim is one of my favorite rappers of all time. His verse here is a perfect example of why. #TheHuntingParty
To me, Rakim's verse is the perfect mix of technicality, content, and emotional expression. #TheHuntingParty
HOW REAL COULD REAL BE
The album began with a series of demos that were more electro/indie/alt. Then I realized I didn't want that.
GATS was one of the early demos that helped define the direction of the album. #TheHuntingParty

Mike Shinoda (Rock Sound issue 189 August 2014):
For me, going down that path was much more interesting and exciting, but trying to move this entire project from the path we were on to the path that I wanted to go down with this song wasn't so easy. In fact, it was a total nightmare.

 

Chester Bennington (The Hunting Party Tour Press Conference 9 January 2015):
Well when we were writing the first demos for this record, I remember sitting in Mike’s studio and all the songs were pretty pop-heavy. We had just done the Steve Aoki stuff and we were, like, all kind of like, leaning towards making more pop-heavy stuff because it’s fun and we’re really good at that. At some point, with Mike I remember we were like five songs deep and we were making headway on a lot of tracks and they were really good and Mike kind of looked at me and he was like, “Dude, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to make these songs. I kind of hate these songs.” I was like, “All right.” You know, my approach creatively with anything anymore is, like, I’m not married to anything. I don’t really care. If we can try to make something better, let’s do it. If all of a sudden you say you hate something and we’ve been working on it for a year, then you hate it. Let’s, like, do something new, you know? So, I was like, “All right. Well, cool. What are we going to do?” And he was like, “I want to do something like this,” and he plays what turned into Guilty All The Same. And the 14-year-old punk rock, hip hop kid in me went bonkers and I was like, “I want to do this all day, every day.” And so, that’s what we did and the direction of the album changed at that point and went from being a really pop-heavy record to being arguably just a straight hard rock heavy metal record.

 

Chester Bennington (The Hunting Party Tour Press Conference 9 January 2015):
Well, I mean, it was pretty organic and it was kind of trippy how it all happened actually. This is from my perspective; this is how I remember it. So, you could ask Mike and I’m pretty sure his perspective’s going to be different, but this is how it went down in my world. I was in the studio with Mike and we were talking about Guilty All The Same and the section where Rakim is rapping. And I was saying to Mike, “You need to rap; like, have you got any ideas?” And he’s like, “Yeah I’ve been doing it.” He’s like, “I know rap is supposed to be here.” He’s like, “I just don’t know if it’s supposed to be me.” He’s like, “I’m just not kind of feeling like it’s me. The voice I keep hearing is like Rakim.” And our tech, one of our engineers, Ethan, goes, “Yeah, dude, I know somebody in Rakim’s camp. Do you want me to reach out and see if he would be interested in, maybe listening to this track and, like, doing something?” And we were just kind of like – it was pretty random. I mean, that’s about as random as – I’m pretty sure being struck by lightning is probably more likely than that happening. And so, and this is news to us. It wasn’t like this was something that we knew about him and we’d been working with him for years.
So then like a month later, there’s Rakim in our studio. It was crazy.[...]


The Summoning
Mike Shinoda (Twitter 19 June 2014):
"The Summoning" was a sonic experiment that we added late in the process, to give the listener's ear a palette cleanser before “WAR"

War
Brad Delson (Guitar World 3 June 2014):
It just happened in like, month two of playing every day. I was doing things I hadn’t done before and I just found it to be really cool. I’ve joked about how many solos are on this record. There is one on almost every song. I typically have not been associated with that. Our first two records, I felt like the music did not warrant solos. We were blending rock with other genres, and the best way to fuse those was not to add certain defining rock elements into the mix. Everything is always in service of the song. On these songs, it just felt natural to put these solos in everything. Mike would be like, “What do you want to do now?” and I would want to do a solo. There is a solo on “War” where someone asked me if I wrote the parts. I don’t think I’m talented enough to write them. They are just an exuberant expression of the song.

Mike Shinoda (Twitter 19 June 2014):
WAR was a demo that Chester brought in. Very little changed between the demo version and the final. #TheHuntingParty
If you listen carefully, Chester actually says "1, 2...1-2-THANK YOU"
There was an alternate version where he said 1-2-1-2-F*CKYOU
Rob recorded the drums to "war" in one take

Wastelands
Mike Shinoda (Twitter 19 June 2014):
My verses in "Wastelands" were written before the music ever existed. Just words on my computer. #TheHuntingParty
Actually...just the 1st verse. The 2nd verse, on the other hand, got re-written during the final month of recording. #TheHuntingParty
The last chorus in "Wastelands" completely changes chord structure (it's not the same as the rest of the song).
I think that was the first time we ever did that on a song.

Until It's Gone
Mike Shinoda (Twitter 19 June 2014):
The structure of "Until It's Gone" is based on building to a DROP; got the idea when working on "A Light That Never Comes" w/ @steveaoki
Although it can be about regret (the usual meaning of "don't know what you've got until it's gone"), UIG has an alternate meaning
As a parent, your child won't grow into their potential until they leave the nest. You don't know what you've got until it's (your're) gone
There were more trap elements in the album at one point, but we thought they ended up being silly, except this UIG interlude

Rebellion
Chester Bennington (3news 29 April 2014):
And Daron came in, dude is a f**king badass!
He's great. And he's a very chill guy. And you know, we let him come into the Linkin Park world, which is very f**king chill [laughter]. I mean it's like, "Hey, what do you wanna do? I don't know, what do you want to do…" Dude, it's like, too welcoming because it's like that 'what do you want for dinner' question, and everyone is like, "I'm cool, whatever" and nobody's actually saying anything!
You know, we invited him in with no expectations. We didn't have expectations for any of this. And if it works, and we like each other and it's fun, then our expectations become important. But let's just have fun first, you know? And we brought him in and played some of our stuff and said, "If there's anything here that you like and that you might want to mess around with, or maybe you hear something different and whatever, then we can stop and work on that. And if there's something you've written that you would like to hear us work on, then we're down with that". So we played him a whole bunch of songs and the stuff that we played him he was like, "Dude, I'll do whatever you guys want on these songs [but] I don't know if I can add anything to this stuff!" So that was cool. "Awesome, great, thank-you! So… do you have something?" And he busted out 'Rebellion', and had the riff and had a chorus. And it was like, "So yeah - let's just do that!" And we did it. And we recorded the track in a couple of days, we had worked out the parts, and Daron played the guitars and the bass, and left really the arrangements and the lyrics and stuff up to me and Mike. We wrote this f**king killer song. And it's one of my favourite songs on the record.

Chester Bennington (Gekirock 21 May 2014):
With ‘Rebellion,’ we wanted to create a new kind of sound. Not in the sense that we get a new producer or anything, but with a musician we respect. We thought along the lines of Daron (from System of a Down), Rakim or Page Hamilton. [...] As for Daron, we let him listen to the song and he liked it. He didn’t want to add guitar or anything though, because everything was already there. The song was perfect, and all that we’d hoped to create.

Mike Shinoda (Revolver 13 June 2014):
Daron came in, and we tried having him play over a couple of existing things. It wasn’t vibing at first, but Daron’s such a great songwriter, that having him play over an existing track wasn’t my first choice, anyway. I said, ‘Maybe if you come in with some stuff, we can work it out together.’ And he came in with these great riffs that made the song–that’s what we built it around. As he was doing it, I was laying out the drums on the keyboard, like I like to do, and his mind was just blown. He was like, ‘Oh my god, they sound real! Dude, that would have taken us days to get that done—and you did it in 15 minutes!’ So he was showing us a bit of his world, I was showing him some of our world–it was really collaborative.

Chester Bennington (Loudwire 17 June 2014):
We called Daron, he was down to come down and hang out. There was no pressure, it was like, “Hey, we want to hire you to come in and write a song with us.” It was, “Hey we want to be inspired and curious if you wanted to work on something with us. We don’t know what that means, if that means come in and listen to our music we’ve been working on and collaborate on that or write something completely new together.” He came in with the song ‘Rebellion.’
The second he started playing that riff, I was like dude — that’s a badass track. We have to work on that, and within two days we had the whole track written, arranged and it was a matter of coming up with the right lyrics. It was great to be able to do that with all these guys.

Mike Shinoda (Twitter 19 June 2014):
REBELLLIIOOOON!
Trivia: our first show EVER was opening for @systemofadown
We've run into those guys many times over the years. Daron joined me in the studio and brought the guitar riffs that became Rebellion
One thing I love in "Rebellion" is the cheekiness/sarcasm in the lyrics. We usually have a hard time pulling this off, but it worked here.

 

Mike Shinoda (ShortList.com November 2014):
I don’t have a favourite, but I’m going to say if I had a favourite one today it would be Rebellion, our new single. We wrote it with Daron [Malakian] from System Of A Down. Simultaneously, it is one of the most aggressive songs we’ve ever done but also one of the most melodic as by the time you get to the end of the verse there’s an actual song in all that heaviness. There’s a cheekiness to the lyrics, too, that you don’t often get with a Linkin Park song. I think it’s hard for us to write lyrics which are a little sarcastic or cheeky. I wrote most of the lyrics on this, and when I figured out how that chorus was going to work lyrically was when I knew I'd struck something which I had never struck before. To say that after 15 years I'm still doing things I've never done before, that's pretty awesome.

 

Chester Bennington (The Hunting Party Tour Press Conference 9 January 2015):
[...] It was the same kind of thing with Daron. We kind of hit a point where we were looking for some inspiration and we were talking people and bands that inspired us and guys who were great and would be fun to work with and I think Daron’s name came up and we just reached out randomly and thought it would be fun to see what it would be like to hang out with him for a day or two in the studio and see what came out of it. And he came in with Rebellion. So, it was all very organic and very kind of spontaneous.

 

Mark The Graves

Mike Shinoda (Twitter 19 June 2014):
Mark The Graves was one of the earliest demos on the album. At one point, I wanted it to be the 1st song on the album. #TheHuntingParty
We recorded all the drums on the album to tape instead of computer. I think you can really hear it on this song.
We also set up a really unique kit for this song. In particular: we balanced a couple tambourines upright on Rob's snare, with duct tape.
Chester & I usually do all the lyrics on the albums, but Brad helped too on #TheHuntingParty

Drawbar
Chester Bennington (3news 29 April 2014):
And you know, we went and had a jam session with Tom Morello [Rage Against The Machine, Audioslave] and we had a lot of fun doing that. So things might come out of that, so it's fun to get in and play with those guys.

Mike Shinoda (Revolver 13 June 2014):
With Page and Daron and Tom, we sat and talked to each of them about their process and our process. Everybody writes songs differently, and I think fans would be surprised at how different it can be. With Morello, we just got together and jammed. We’re so far from a jam band, and that’s all he does, as far as writing. Rage Against the Machine wrote their songs by jamming them out; we write our songs on the computer, and then learn them after we’ve written what to play. But we got together with him and jammed, and that little interlude, that instrumental, was the best thing we made together. It didn’t end up being a song—we tried putting some vocals on it, but it just didn’t feel like that.

Chester Bennington (Loudwire 17 June 2014):
We got to the point where we were kind of like, needing some inspiration and we wanted to work with someone else so we did a jam session with Tom Morello for a day, got some great music out of that.

Mike Shinoda (Twitter 19 June 2014):
Tom @tmorello came through to hang/write. The conversation and experience was the best part. We included this jam as a reminder of the day
Tom's writing style is alien to us, ha. Very "jam" oriented, while ours is more "writing into the computer."

Final Masquerade
Chester Bennington (Loudwire 17 June 2014):
Even though I can’t remember his name, kicking myself for it, we worked with a producer that typically works as a songwriter on the song ‘Final Masquerade.’ This guy typically writes songs for the biggest pop artists in the world — Rihanna, Katy Perry. To work with a guy like that is stepping out of our comfort zone and we ended up writing a great song. It was a lot of fun, we had a lot of opportunities to step out of that, out of our world and invite people in for the first time.

Mike Shinoda (Twitter 19 June 2014):
Final Masquerade was one of the last songs finished for the album. The original vocal was me singing all the way thru. CB sounds better!
Rob saved this song, too. The original beat I wrote was more complicated but had no soul. Rob improvised this drum groove & it felt perfect.

 

Mark Pellington (LPAssociation 29 July 2014):
[is the video more performance-driven, or does it follow a story with different characters?]
Like "Best of You," it’s a collage. It’s an emotional performance collage where within that collage, the band is performing in one half of the video, and in the other half there’s imagery that has stories but it’s not a linear narrative. It’s a lot of associative subconscious little situations, stories and characters that are all rubbing against each other. There’s no great overarching concept, and there’s some pretty deep buried subconscious meaning behind them all, but that’s for me to know. The band was very trusting when I met with them. I wrote the treatment pretty free-form, and said “this is what I see, and this is where I am in my life and this is what I feel." I met with Joe and Mike and they were fans [of me], and I was a fan of them, and they were very trusting and we just did it. There was very little fanfare about it. It was really a degree of them knowing my work, and we had a couple of discussions about tone and palette, and once we did it…that was it!

 

Mike Shinoda (MTV.com 30 July 2014):
On our last few videos [turntablist] Joe Hahn has directed them, but Joe wanted to take a break and the idea of working with [acclaimed director] Mark [Pellington] was Joe’s suggestion.
Mark’s spectacular and the body of work he’s created speaks for itself. When we sat down with him he said he’d just gone through some personal stuff and the song really connected with him.
There was nothing concrete in the treatment and you could have picked any one or a handful of the ideas and made a video. When we were shooting on that day he said he was going to follow his gut and find the best stuff.
I really ended up connecting with some of the imagery.

 

Mark Pellington (LPU Chat 31 July 2014):
There were symbols of angels , demons, adam and eve. The angel was also a mother and a devil

Mark Pellington (LPU Chat 31 July 2014):
[hey mark, what part did you find most difficult to be produced?]
Garatoalp1: nothing was difficult because I trusted my instincts. I didn’t think too uch so I had fun. Physically it was a challenging shoot though.
I was exhausted after the first day of shooting

Mark Pellington (LPU Chat 31 July 2014):
pricishizzlevlblackbird – the baby represents our innocence and is directly appropriate from the Jonathan glazier film “under the skin”
although I’m sure it’s not the first time anybody has shot a crying child – such raw power and vulnerability
I love that it was spitting and had to get picked up to heal
it was not storyboard or planned, it was organically emerged

Mark Pellington (LPU Chat 31 July 2014):
Honestly as I’ve been reading that word, in no way in my 10 page treatment did that word come across I think some of the locations, the rubble, the graffiti, may lead one to think it was apocalyptic
if an abandoned mall in Hawthrone, CA is the US version of the apocalypse…

Mark Pellington (LPU Chat 31 July 2014):
RE: The young boy – all of the characters represent certain feelings or themes and the boy wanted comfort from his mother and peace with his after, despite difficult relationship with both
The men in the white suits jumping off the cliff represent surrender, letting go, a very subtle underpinning of 9/11 came out of me in that location. We had adam and eve sitting on the sets, so there was a lot of emotion about sin and surrender
all great archetypes to play with abstractly and allow people to find their own meaning in

Mark Pellington (LPU Chat 31 July 2014):
matheuspinheiro: Absolutely, everyone should see what they want to see and feel what they want to feel
There is a lot of room in the video for self exploration

Mark Pellington (LPU Chat 31 July 2014):
There are so many pieces of humanity in the video – the goal is to feel, to allow people to see and feel, but the end result is about healing

Mark Pellington (LPU Chat 31 July 2014):
deadzeezorn @Mark : there was a flying airplane, a coincidence? We were shooting near an airport, but the genius edition Jackie London worked them in a beautiful way – it brought up a lot of emotions about 9/11
Things in the global psyche – the escalators, the sense of abandonment, loss, decay

Mark Pellington (LPU Chat 31 July 2014):
How did you come up with this amazing idea? What did inspire you? – I just listened to the music and let my brain open, it’s different state of mind. I close my eyes, I listen to music, and I let go inside of my. I wrote down 50 images or so in 3 hours
Images that come out of feelings my brain is accessing during my personal connection to music

Mark Pellington (LPU Chat 31 July 2014):
@markp How long did it take to film & edit the video? A: It was a two day shoot. We accomplished a lot in two days! the editing took about 10 days, Jackie London is a great editor. I have to give a lot of credit to her. She is GREAT.

Mark Pellington (LPU Chat 31 July 2014):
dianaciobotea: Is there a global message that you want to transmit through this video? A: The fact that I’m talking to people around the world, I’m seeing that music and imagery transcends all borders
The bottom line is that it is a GREAT song, all I was doing was brining it to life visually.

Mark Pellington (LPU Chat 31 July 2014):
matheuspinheiro: Mark, other themes emerged while working in the clip? A: Every idea found its way in there.


A Line In The Sand
Mike Shinoda (Twitter 19 June 2014):
The opening vocal part on A LINE IN THE SAND was written years ago, while we were making A THOUSAND SUNS #TheHuntingParty
It didn't work back then. But when I was working on this song, I sang the vocal and it (finally) fit.#TheHuntingParty
There are lots of different guitar tones and amp setups on this song, giving each part its own flavor, and holding attention over 6 minutes
LINE IN THE SAND is one of my favorite #TheHuntingParty songs. It feels like it does everything that LP does, in one song.
MOSH PIT
Brad's solo and Rob's drums at the end of LINE IN THE SAND are one of the best moments on #TheHuntingParty
The fill that ends the song was an improvisation. I didn't know Rob could play that fast, ha
OK guys, we're done! Thanks for all the love on #TheHuntingParty

 

Phoenix (LPU Chat @ VyRT 23 May 2015):
A Line in the Sand is my favorite live song right now... Always fun playing new stuf

 

Mike Shinoda (Reddit AMA 12 August 2015):
[Hey, Mike. Big fan. Since the release of Linkin Park's The Hunting Party, I've been wondering, was it intentional that the riffs to Victimized and A Line In The Sand sound similar? If so, why did you do it?]
Not intentional...but Victimized was a bit of a precursor to THP album in a way, so it makes sense. Sometimes we can't see the forest for the trees...

 

MALL

Joe Hahn (Billboard 9 September 2014):
I met (Puro) on tour because he was a drummer in a band called Deadsy years ago, so it was cool to get together with him because he’s a great friend. There’s three songs on the score that fit really well with what’s going on and actually became particular themes throughout the film. A lot of them were just little song ideas that (Linkin Park) had that didn’t really quite have a home, and this was our way of finding a home for them. And then the rest were just kind of experiments that Alec and I were able to put together, but it was definitely inspired by the band’s music. We do have a whole album’s worth of score to put out.

Devil's Drop

Mike Shinoda (Twitter 06 February 2015):Trivia-the guitar loop on DEVILS DROP was a recording on my phone, during a band meeting the 1st time I played it youtube.com/watch?v=6EnkwS_M6Nc

 

LP UNDERGROUND

A.06
Chester Bennington (LPU Chat April 2003):
[Chester, thanks so much for coming to chat with us. Tell Brad that I hope he feels better. My question is, what is that song that you were singing in the corner on the Meteora DVD and will it ever be released?]
That didn't really have a name at the time (the one on the DVD). That song actually didn't make the record and never got finished, but on the commercial for our record Meteora on the very first commercial before the graffiti one where it was just black with LP 03.03 that song was the intro part so it was kind of used.

 

Mike Shinoda (Reddit AMA 12 August 2015):
A.06 was a demo we tried to flesh out, but never really liked the longer version.

 

Dedicated

Mike Shinoda (LPU Chat 07 April 2010):
[Mike I was just wondering today, did you write Dedicated? and Bleed it Out?]
Dedicated: 100% (I think). BIO: most of it, but not all.


Sold My Soul To Yo Mama
Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Underground 4.0 CD Case):
Joe's instrumental song "Sold My Soul..." is a landmark: usually we work on instrumental LP songs together. However, Mr. Hahn put the majority of this track together on his own (that's my boy... *sob*).

Standing In The Middle
Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Underground 4.0 CD Case):
"Standing In The Middle" is a brand new song I did with Kutmasta Kurt and Motion Man. You may remember them from the "In The End" remix from "Reanimation." This is the first time this track has been made available.

 

Announcement Service Public

Phoenix (LPUnderground.com 31 January 2007):
Linkin Park Fans,
What’s happening? We have quite a bit of news for you.
Firstly, our new album has officially entered the “mixing stage” of the process. We have put more into the new album than anything we have ever done before. After over a year of writing, recording, and setting unrealistic finish dates for the record (sorry about that!), we are in the home stretch. The new album is very exciting for the six of us, and we can’t wait until everyone can hear it! When can you get your first taste? We are looking to release the first single in March.
Some of you may think you have already heard some new music; not true.
You have heard either Qwerty, or Announcement Service Public… both tracks that came out of our recording process, but neither of which will be on the album. They are currently available on this year’s LPU CD, go check out www.lpunderground.com.
Also, get ready for LPTV. We are going to be releasing a series of internet webisodes on www.linkinpark.com that will give a history of Linkin Park, as well as an inside look at the studio experience with the new album. LPU members will have access to extended footage on almost all of the LPTV episodes.
Lastly, for all of you street teamers, we will be opening the team in the coming months to all you who believe in us, and want to help us spread the word – look out for more coming soon on how to join.
I can’t wait until you can all hear the new music!

 

Qwerty

Rob Bourdon (Linkin Park Underground 5.0 Newsletter):
[...]We wanted to play a new song in Japan that was different from what we have done in the past that had a lot of energy live. We had a very specific idea of the kind of song we wanted to play but we didn't have that type of song yet. Being able to rehearse and record at the same time enabled us to create the song Qwerty, which is the song that we ended up playing. After trying to mold a song we had already written into the right one for the show (which didn't work) we decided to write a brand new song 3 days before leaving. An hour before one of the last rehearsals we stopped working on a song named Grecian and decided to start a new song based on an idea that Phoenix had brought in. The song Qwerty came together in an hour and then it was rearranged over the next three days in the rehearsal room and the studio. The lyrics were actually finished on the flight to Japan.
For two weeks prior to leaving we were running back and forth from the recording studio and rehearsal spot, creating new songs and relearning the older songs. At some points it got really hectic. After playing Qwerty on the last day of rehearsals, we knew that it was going to be a great live song. It's a little nerve-wracking to write a song and then play it in front of thousands of fans a few days latter, but it was also very exciting to be able to play a song that was still in the works and see how the fans reacted to it before finishing it.
Overall, I think Qwerty got a great response live. I thought it was incredible that the fans actually recorded the song on thier cell phones and then posted it online. Despite the audio being barely audible it was really cool to see all of the file trading and posts of the song. Since the live performances went well we decided to track it with our producer Rick, who had some great suggestions to make the song even better. Qwerty will always remind me of that quick trip to Japan, and you can look out for it perhaps as an Underground exclusive in LPU6...

Mike Shinoda (LPU Chat 22 August 2006):
the song known as "qwerty" -- a rough title BTW -- is actually still in progress. we did those lyrics on the plane on the way to japan! i'm not sure if it'll make the album, but we liked the song enough to play it!

 

Mike Shinoda (MTV.com 30 August 2006):
We thought we’d play the new song live to give you a little insight into how things are going. But ’QWERTY’ is actually still in progress. We [wrote] those lyrics on the plane on the way to Japan! I’m not sure if it’ll make the album, but we liked the song enough to play it!

 

Rob Bourdon (AOLMusicNewsBlog.com 20 December 2006):
It's probably the heaviest song we've ever written. And usually those songs tend to be the most fun to play in front of an audience.

 

Phoenix (LPUnderground.com 31 January 2007):
Linkin Park Fans,
What’s happening? We have quite a bit of news for you.
Firstly, our new album has officially entered the “mixing stage” of the process. We have put more into the new album than anything we have ever done before. After over a year of writing, recording, and setting unrealistic finish dates for the record (sorry about that!), we are in the home stretch. The new album is very exciting for the six of us, and we can’t wait until everyone can hear it! When can you get your first taste? We are looking to release the first single in March.
Some of you may think you have already heard some new music; not true.
You have heard either Qwerty, or Announcement Service Public… both tracks that came out of our recording process, but neither of which will be on the album. They are currently available on this year’s LPU CD, go check out www.lpunderground.com.
Also, get ready for LPTV. We are going to be releasing a series of internet webisodes on www.linkinpark.com that will give a history of Linkin Park, as well as an inside look at the studio experience with the new album. LPU members will have access to extended footage on almost all of the LPTV episodes.
Lastly, for all of you street teamers, we will be opening the team in the coming months to all you who believe in us, and want to help us spread the word – look out for more coming soon on how to join.
I can’t wait until you can all hear the new music!

 

Mike Shinoda (LPU Chat 10 March 2008):
we didn’t write QWERTY “for” japan…we were writing it for the album. i don’t know if we’ll ever debut another song live…maybe!

 

Mike Shinoda (AbsolutePunk.net 13 July 2015):
Yeah, we’re already starting to throw ideas together. I’m always writing. It’s always an ongoing process for me, but we never know. Chester and I joke that we’ve already made the mistake of telling people what the next record is going to sound like. I remember on Minutes to Midnight, we wrote a couple really heavy songs. He went out and told people, “Oh, this album is going to be the heaviest record we’ve ever made.” Then it ended up that only two of those songs made the cut [laughs], and the rest of them did not. People were just like, “Wait, what the fuck? You told us this record was going to sound like…”
We had a fan track that we called “Qwerty” that was super heavy. It actually sounded more like Hunting Party. We put that out as like, “Hey, just for fun. We’re not going to put this on the record. You can have this one.” So people thought that was what the album was going to sound like, and then they put on the album. “Hands Held High” is on there. “Leave Out All the Rest” is on there. “In Pieces,” and all these not heavy songs. A lot of them are heavy in emotion. “Leave Out All the Rest” is literally about dying, so emotionally that’s very heavy [laughs], but it was not the sound that we had said. I hesitate to ever tell people what the records are going to sound like because the only way to really understand it at the end of the day is to actually hear the album.


You Ain't Gotsta Gotsta
Mike Shinoda (LPUMB December 2008):
In previous years, we've released LPU CDs that contain b-sides, live tracks, and lesser-known songs from the band. This year, we have decided to do something totally unprecedented and unexpected. The LPU8 CD contains six totally new, original studio songs that Chester and I recorded in our free time in the past couple of years. But these aren't normal Linkin Park songs.
Working on a song for an album is sometimes a lot of work, and occasionally we need some time to unwind. When Chester and I unwind, sometimes we make another kind of lighter, fun song. We call these songs "cookies." I think came from the idea that you get your dessert (your cookies) after you eat all the rest of your meal.
The songs on the LPU8 CD are random, silly, and they fall into a variety of styles, from a James-Brown-Meets-Bobby-McFerrin track called "You Ain't Gotsta Gotsta" to a mock electro-club-banger called "26 Lettaz In Da Alphabet."

26 Lettaz In Da Alphabet
Mike Shinoda (LPUMB December 2008):
In previous years, we've released LPU CDs that contain b-sides, live tracks, and lesser-known songs from the band. This year, we have decided to do something totally unprecedented and unexpected. The LPU8 CD contains six totally new, original studio songs that Chester and I recorded in our free time in the past couple of years. But these aren't normal Linkin Park songs.
Working on a song for an album is sometimes a lot of work, and occasionally we need some time to unwind. When Chester and I unwind, sometimes we make another kind of lighter, fun song. We call these songs "cookies." I think came from the idea that you get your dessert (your cookies) after you eat all the rest of your meal.
The songs on the LPU8 CD are random, silly, and they fall into a variety of styles, from a James-Brown-Meets-Bobby-McFerrin track called "You Ain't Gotsta Gotsta" to a mock electro-club-banger called "26 Lettaz In Da Alphabet."

Mike Shinoda (LPU Chat 4 September 2009):
our magnum opus is "26 lettaz"

Across The Line
Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 11 November 2009):
For those of you who have been keeping track, “Across The Line” is a brand new, unreleased song. It was recorded during the “Minutes To Midnight” sessions, and was originally entitled “Japan.” We know a lot of the fans on the LPU boards have wanted to hear this song, in its entirety, for a long time. We’re putting it on the LPU9 CD for you!

Brad Delson (LP Underground 9 Press Release 30 November 2009):
The LPU is a movement. Their support of the band is inspiring. So we try to give back to them whenever we can. When we heard that they had been talking about ‘Across The Line,’ we knew we had to make it available for them.

Mike Shinoda (LPU Chat 9 December 2009):
I don’t have any idea if it will be played live. It will have to compete for a setlist spot vs. all our singles and the song from the new album though…

Mike Shinoda (LPU Chat 9 December 2009):
Across the Line just baaarely missed the cut. If there were 12 songs, I think it was #13.

Mike Shinoda (LPU Chat 9 December 2009):
Across The Line was in progress around the same time as most of the songs from MTM. No More Sorrow, LOATR, LTGYA, etc.

Mike Shinoda (LPU Chat 9 December 2009):
I think Across The Line is all Chester’s voice, although I often do the rough vocal as we’re writing it, and sometimes we leave some of my vocals in. Not sure on that one.
Definitely not anyone but me and Chester, tho

Mike Shinoda (LPU Chat 9 December 2009):
Across the Line was written by all of us. The majority of the music came from two separate demos I did at my house. Chester and I did the vocals and lyrics.

What We Don't Know
Brad Delson (LP Underground Newsletter Anniversary Edition):
That was the song that we started during the Minutes To Midnight writing period, and we kind of left it as it is, and then never really finished it. To me I just love the feel of it and even in its current form I like it. I always thought it had a lot of potential to be a great song.

 

I Have Not Begun

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 17 November 2010):

The new LPUX CD is now available to LPU members. It’s definitely the strongest LPU album to date, with demos from all eras of the band. There are a few tracks on there with vocals from both me and Chester.
This is one of the tracks from the CD; it’s called “I Have Not Begun.” It was a demo recorded around 2009 (although the lyrics were written earlier, which you can tell because of the “Machine Shop” reference!).
Go to http://lpu.linkinpark.com/to join the LPU. This album is available for purchase by club members (and, as mentioned before, LPU members get first access to tickets to our upcoming North American tour).
Lyrics on following page…

 

YO

Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Underground Eleven booklet):
This was a demo for Minutes To Midnight. It never got any vocals... We thought this would be a nice way to open up this LPU 11 album.

Slip
Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Underground Eleven booklet):
We did various versions of this song, but never felt compelled to release the song. It has never been released until now. It was in the first batch of songs (with "Blue") that we worked on together when Chester joined the band.

Soundtrack
Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Underground Eleven booklet):
We tried different vocal treatments, but they never really panned out; I think we felt this track was a bit too poppy. We tried turning the guitars up really loud to counterbalance it, but at the end of the day, this song didn't make the cut.

In The End (Demo)
Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Underground Eleven booklet):
These were the original verse lyrics that I wrote for this song, and the original melody in the bridge. I remember putting this together in our rehearsal studio on Hollywood and Vine, working overnight in a room with no windows. I had no idea what time of day it was; I just slept when I was tired, and worked on this song until it took shape. The first guy to hear it was Rob, who told me (I'm paraphrasing) that this was "exactly the kind of song he wanted us to write."

Program
Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Underground Eleven booklet):
This Meteora demo has some cool sounds in it, which are in stark contrast to the bludgeoning guitar riffs. Definitelly a Meteora-era demo.

Bang Three
Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Underground Eleven booklet):
This was the original demo for "What I've Done." I had forgoten how different this bridge treatment was from the bridge solo we ended up at. This chord progression might have sounded cool with vocals, but we wanted to do a guitar solo, so we ended up changing the chords.

Robot Boy (Test Mix, Optional Vocal Take)
Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Underground Eleven booklet):
Chester and I liked this arrangement of the vocals, but some of the other guys wanted us to take another stab at them. So this version went away... I never minded this version.

Broken Foot
Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Underground Eleven booklet):
This was what I imagine all our Meteora demos sounded like. I always thought this might have sounded cool with some rapping in the verses.

Esaul
Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Underground Eleven booklet):
This was one of the first demos the band had ever written. When Chester joined the band, we finally put together enough money to do a proper recording of it (this one) in a "professional studio." These were the original lyrics and performance.

Blue
Mike Shinoda (ShoutWeb October 2000):
The chorus melody for "Crawling" was originally the bridge of a song that sucked that we wrote. That other song we didn't like and we weren't going to use it so we had this melody. It just occured to me to take this melody that I liked and to write music around it. I did that and then Brad came in and added a little more and helped me out with it. Chester wrote some new words. Everybody worked around it.

 

Mike Shinoda (linkinpark.com 17 July 2002):
as we work on things, we start to narrow down to a smaller of songs. inevitably, when some songs are less interesting, but have a great guitar part or sample, we try to take that part and put it into another song that seems to be coming together better. so we combine similar songs to create a better song.
originally, the chorus to crawling was a bridge from another song. chester and i needed a chorus to put in that song, and he just sang it there with no guitars. after we recorded the vocal track, i wrote the guitar under it. and we took it into the studio and everyone added their magic.

Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Underground Eleven booklet):
I forgot this song existed until I found it on a CD in a box in my closet this year. This song and "Slip" were done in sessions leading up to the recording of Hybrid Theory. We eventually abandoned the song, but decided that there was something special about the vocal at the end of the song. Chester and I took the melody, wrote new words to it, and wrote new chords underneath... and it became the chorus of "Crawling."


Homecoming
Brad Delson (Linkin Park Underground 12 booklet):
With Minutes To Midnight, we threw our playbook out the windows. Rick challenged us to write songs in a entirely different way: create an instrumental seed and put vocals on it right away. If the initial blueprint wasn't overtly inspiring, we would move on to creating something new. We must have written over a hundred of these seeds before arriving at the twelve finished songs that made the album.

Points Of Authority (Demo)
Brad Delson (Linkin Park Underground 12 booklet):
One of my favorite songs from our Hybrid Theory writing sessions. You'll notice the bridge from the album version is actually the chorus in this early version. The bridge here was ultimately replaced by the demo chorus - our version of musical darwinism.

Clarity
Brad Delson (Linkin Park Underground 12 booklet):
I love how this one builds. Works cool as an instrumental.

Asbestos
Brad Delson (Linkin Park Underground 12 booklet):
This may be the first time I've ever heard this one!

Bunker
Brad Delson (Linkin Park Underground 12 booklet):
We worked in so many different studios during the Minutes To Midnight writing and recording sessions. Our work culminated at Rick's house in Laurel Canyon. However, much of the material on the album actually came straight from demos recorded during pre-production writing sessions.

So Far Away
Brad Delson (Linkin Park Underground 12 booklet):
This one has a special place in my heart. Part of the inspiration behind this song was an attempt to play with a particular back-and-forth song structure. Also, a foreshadowing of Shinoda's melodic facility.

Pepper
Brad Delson (Linkin Park Underground 12 booklet):
People ask how we write a song. The assumption is usually that it starts with words or a melody - that we have the idea for the song before we begin. In reality, we almost always start a demo with an instrumental impulse. Usually the music will help dictate where the vocals will take the song.

Debris
Brad Delson (Linkin Park Underground 12 booklet):
This demo thrived on the strength of the beat. Comes in demanding attention. The chorus here probably would've been better as a bridge. The demo bridge has a nice chord progression - might've worked as a chorus.

Ominous
Brad Delson (Linkin Park Underground 12 booklet):
With Meteora, we were eager to prove that our first album wasn't an aberration. The joke is that a band has their entire lives to write their first album, and six months to write their second. In our case, this was probably accurate. Our early song-writing approach was always to craft nearly finished instrumental tracks, and subsequently finalize words and melodies. This put an exceptional amount of pressure on the vocalists, often in the final hour of the recording process.

Forgotten (Demo)
Brad Delson (Linkin Park Underground 12 booklet):
One of our earliest songs. Definitely a fan favorite. The spirit of this song is intimately interwoven into the formative identity of the band.

Basquiat
Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Underground XIII booklet):
This was a track I originally started just after I finished the Fort Minor album and was never really sure where to take it. After this, we moved into "Minutes To Midnight" and tried a few vocal ideas on it, but nothing really materialized. Maybe it was meant to be an instrumental.

Holding Company
Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Underground XIII booklet):
As we started making demos for "LIVING THINGS', this was a track that surfaced. We were still figuring out the right time for the songs on the album at that point.

Primo
Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Underground XIII booklet):
Although we opted for a different final direction for "I'LL BE GONE", I always loved this longer version of the song. I think this is a good example of how a different structure and arrangement can totally change the vibe of the song. Plus, this has a different chorus.

Hemispheres
Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Underground XIII booklet):
The beat treatment on this demo was a fun experiment - I took a loop and put it through a tight slap delay - the same effect treatment that was used to make the iconic vocal on the hip hop song "Planet Rock." But here, I changed the "tone" of the effect so that it changed with the chords of the song.

Cumulus
Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Underground XIII booklet):
We tried many times to make this song work, but it always seemed too poppy for the album(s) we were currently working on.

Pretty Birdy
Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Underground XIII booklet):
There were usually three incarnations of our early demos: 1) mostly done in the computer with drum programming, keyboard, bass, and some live guitar 2) adding real drums and vocals 3) adding more live instrumentation, structure and arrangement work. This version was in stage two. Check out the original guitar in the bridge.

Universe
Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Underground XIII booklet):
Another post-Fort Minor demo. The main sounds were piano and mellotron, which gave it a slightly more classic vibe. Vocals never materialized, but the track has a cool, dark, introspective vibe.

Apaches, Foot Patrol, and Three Band Terror
Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park Underground XIII booklet):
In its final version, "UNTIL IT BREAKS" was an experiment inspired by side two of the Beatles' Abbey Road. On side two, the Fab Four created a medley based on various musical songs/demos/ideas; each one flowed into the next, creating a roller coaster experience. In the midst of making "LIVING THINGS," we found ourselves with these different demos that seemed to want to blend into something, and "UNTIL IT BREAKS" became that track. The three demos are found in their raw versions here.

 

Aubrey One

Brad Delson ("Track By Track With Brad - 1" 23 January 2015):
What's up? This is track-by-track with me, Big Bad Brad, and today we're talking about the newest and greatest offering from the LPU, the LPU 14 CD.
The first track on this offering is a demo of a song called "Aubrey One". And this was a really incredible prolific creative time for the band. We started making music that was experimental in nature. So around that time we started making music really irrespective of song structure or the traditional format in which one would operate when recording demos for an album. It was really free form. The band was totally committed to do something purely based on the artistic mirror and the possibilities at our fingertips in the studio. I remember we played some of these for Rick just to get his feedback. He was really inspired by the kind of wilderness and radical experimentation going on and encouraged us really just to keep doing whatever we were doing. And ultimately these demos turned into the songs that made the album A Thousand Suns.

 

Malathion+Tritonus

Brad Delson ("Track By Track With Brad - 1" 23 January 2015):
Ok, so this one is called "Malathion+Tritonus". This is a demo from 2008 that was made in Berlin and one the things that was cool about A Thousand Suns is although we wind up recording many of the principal instruments at NRG here in southern California, we worked in a number of different studios around the world. I think Mike worked in a studio in Prague one day, like in the country side. This one was recorded, this demo was partly recorded in Berlin. And just starting to move around different studios gave the album A Thousand Suns a really collective vibe.

 

Berlin One, Version C

Brad Delson ("Track By Track With Brad - 1" 23 January 2015):
Alright, this demo is called "Berlin One". Another German influenced track for you. We spent a lot of time in Germany over the years. And thing is cool about being on our band is we really feel like we belong to so many different places. Certainly our roots are here in Los Angeles but when you travel to different parts of the world, being Asia, Europe, South America, cities all over the US, we feel like we're a local band in a lot of these places and certainly that's true for us in Germany.
This demo, "Berlin One", says, the notation is "Version C", and one thing to know about our writing process is we'll do many many songs which ultimately get withered down into the ones that you hear on the finished album. Sometimes we'll have 50 or a 100 songs written or demos written to make up that 11 or 12 that everyone hears on the album. And to make the things even crazier, each of those 50, 70, 80 songs there might be 30 or 40 versions of each one. So you can see why a good record keeping is important in the studio, so we actually know what we're working on. And that the... our writing process is really open, it's really expansive and only by the end of the process that we have to start to converge all the pontential creativity and refine it into the finished album.

 

Blanka

Brad Delson ("Track By Track With Brad - 2" 30 January 2015):
Alright, this one is called "Blanka". You guys are getting a lot of demos from A Thousand Suns. This is definitely guitar driven demo. I'm almost certain Mike played the guitar on this demo. The knock on me during this period of time is that I stopped playing guitar, which is entirely true. But I did get inspired to pick up other instruments in the studio, work on production, editing, keyboards, drum machines. I've played guitar since I was 13 years old, 12 years old, which was, let's just say a long time ago, and one thing that's cool about being a musician is there's ways to make music on so many different kinds of instruments, and specially on Linkin Park. Whatever clause of to what roles we, each individual play during the making of an album. So if someone feels like playing drums, they can get on the drums and play drums. If someone wants to sing or work on lyrics or, in this case, if the singer wants to, you know, do anything, it's all open in the end now. I think for a 100 other albums we just listed Linkin Park. We used to say like "guitars, Brad Delson", you know, and "drums, Rob Bourdon", and know we just put "Linkin Park is" because really what you hear is the fact of all 6 of us working together in every aspect of what we're making.

 

Heartburn

Brad Delson ("Track By Track With Brad - 2" 30 January 2015):
This one is called "Heartburn". It actually doesn't give me heartburn listening to it. I dig this one. This is from 2007 which is just around the time, you know, I would say it's somewhere in between the Minutes To Midnight time and A Thousand Suns. Minutes To Midnight was certainly a really creative period for us as well. Our first 2 records were definitely close, more closely related sonically than some of our later works. And around this time we met with Rick. We really talked about the possibilities of doing really anything in the studio. So the process of making Minutes To Midnight was a long one. There's a lot of experimentation and really just kind of breaking down and then building up our band from scratch. We didn't wanna repeat ourselves, we didn't wanna do what we done before, and Rick really helped us to break out of our confort zone and start writing music that we were inspired to make and really just to pursue greatness in whatever form it took.

 

Breaking The Habit (Original Mike 2002 Demo)

Brad Delson ("Track By Track With Brad - 2" 30 January 2015):
Cool, so this is a really special demo. This is a demo of "Breaking The Habit" from 2002. I think it's called "The Mike Shinoda Version". Mike is a fantastic songwriter and he's really proactive in bringing ideas to the band. He starts a preponderance of our demos and songs on which we all wind up working, and you can actually hear him singing on this one. This song was written really quickly. I think he had this very specific idea in mind and was able to do the music and vocals in a very short matter of time, brought it to Chester, and Chester had a very personal visceral reaction to the lyrical content. And ultimately, you hear Chester singing it, and certainly these lyrics are interestingly vocal authentic to Chester and to Mike who wrote the song. And, again, some of the best songs, you know, happen so fast, and then there's songs we love we take 2 or 3 years to write, so this is definitely one that was just meant to be.

 

Dave SBeat feat. Joe

Brad Delson ("Track By Track With Brad - 3" 6 February 2015):
This is called "The Dave SBeat Featuring Joe". This is a rare Joe on vocal that's made its way onto this demo. Joe is actually a really good singer. People might not know that but he's got a very high range, high register and that's certain you come to the show, you see him belting away back there. He actually does have a really strong voice and I think on, even on Hybrid Theory, he was, instead of scratching other samples that we knew we wouldn't be able to clear, he actually made his own vinyl, we made our own samples and a lot of the vocal samples on Joe's original Hybrid Theory vinyl are actually just samples of Joe saying stupid stuff and singing. And certainly you got a little of that flavor here on this demo from 2009.

 

Froctagon

Brad Delson ("Track By Track With Brad - 3" 6 February 2015):
This demo's called "Froctagon". Definitely has a punk rock tempo. I love that tempo. There's definitely a punk rock influence on our band. I personally listened to a lot of punk rock bands in high school. I know Chester did too. Mike's got some of that going on. So does Dave. I just love the attitude of it, I love the tempo, and I love the etos, you know? Do whatever the fuck you want and don't take "no" for an answer.

 

Rhinocerous

Brad Delson ("Track By Track With Brad - 3" 6 February 2015):
So, in 2002 we had the unique privilege of making our second record. We basically fought for years to try to get a record deal and make our debut album, and to our shock, really, Hybrid Theory became, I think, the biggest selling record of 2001, maybe, in the United States and certainly also around the world was one of the most commercially successful records. That was our first album, people were very skeptical, they thought, you know, "how could these young guys, like, do this, like, who really wrote the album?". We did write that album and people loved to ask us when we were making Meteora "guys, don't you feel a lot of pressure? This is, you know, they call 'the sophomore swamp'. It's easy to make one great record, but then never follow it up." And there was certainly a lot of pressure at that time but it wasn't really pressure from the outside world, it was pressure we put on ourselves to make another great record and prove that we weren't just an one-trick-pony or an one-act-band. And even to this day a lot of the songs on Meteora are some of the best songs we've writen and they're the most fun to play live and unfortunately Rhinocerous didn't make the cut but it was certainly part of the journey to get there.

 

After Canada

Brad Delson ("Track By Track With Brad - 3" 6 February 2015):
So this is the 10th and final track on the LPU 14 CD. We're really, again, excited to be able to share with the LPU demos that people never get to hear. They're critical part of the journey to making all the albums we've made from Hybrid Theory to Meteora to Minutes To Midnight to A Thousand Suns to Living Things to The Hunting Party and everything in between. Every time we go onto the studio we wanna reinvent ourselves, we never wanna take the opportunity for granted, we wanna challenge our audience. We know our audience is smart. We wanna be passionate and honest and put all the visceral creative energy that's gets spent up and use it as a really pure form of self expression. And we've been blessed to work with so many amazing people that would've helped us, guide us, and shape us and grow our creativity. And I'm not sure what comes after Canada. Maybe... maybe US, maybe Mexico, maybe Central America, maybe South America, maybe Europe, maybe Asia, maybe Australia, maybe even South Pole. But I know I'm gonna go home and sleep. It's been a great 2014. This is certainly a great LPU 14 and I just thank you guys for joining me today. This is been track by track with Big Bad Brad. Peace.

 

Animals

Mike Shinoda ("LPU 15 Track By Track - Animals (2011 Demo)" 11 December 2015):
Hey guys, this is track by track with me, Mike, uh, for LPU 15 and the first track on this CD is "Animals". Something in the back of my head wants to tell me that somehow it worked itself into "Roads Untraveled". And if that's the case then you can see just how far like an original demo can go to turn into something that it's completely not. It may have been just also a case where we made this song and then I liked that kind of groove of the drums and then I started a new song with that groove. It's a song that never really got finished, uh, didn't find a place on the album but we wanted to share it with you. Uh, and, uh, kind of unusual to have like that triplet feel rapping thing going on. So, yeah, "Animals".

 

Basil

Mike Shinoda ("LPU 15 Track By Track - Basil (2008 Demo)" 8 January 2016):
Hey guys, Track by Track for LPU 15. The second song on the CD is called "Basil" or "Basil", how do you wanna say it. At the time we were writing this demo, we thought we would going to be making or doing music to a video game. That video game relatively quickly fizzled out, but the ideas of the songs and kind of the vibe of the thing eventually turned into A Thousand Suns. This is pretty much as early as you can get as far as a demo. And so it doesn't really sound like A Thousand Suns ended up sounding like. It was a moment in time when kind of a little rap, almost freestyle kind of thing, I quickly wrote this thing out over a beat that I've made on my laptop. And this is what it turned into.

 

TooLeGit

Mike Shinoda ("LPU 15 Track By Track - TooLeGit (2010 Demo)" 15 December 2015):
Hey you guys, this is the track by track for LPU 15, with me, Mike. So now it's time to get into the extra tracks we decided to do for you guys. The first one is called, this one is called "TooLeGit". It's a demo roughly around the time of A Thousand Suns. This is a great example of a song is kind of been in progress. The verse has some words, those words were rough, and they're kind like happening in a way that's a little bit free association. It's like the first things that come to mind you just kind of write them down, you don't spend a ton of time trying to make them to make sense. We might throw down just "la la la" on the top of another part because we got a melody but we don't have words yet. And so you hear on the course of this song here Chester just singing "darara rararada". Sometimes even if I got words I won't sing them on the track because sometimes weak words will make them think less of the song than strong words. So I'd rather they just hear "lalala" and no words. So that's something that happens in our process and this month's song for you is "TooLeGit".

 

Pods

Mike Shinoda ("LPU 15 Track By Track - Pods (1998 Demo)" 23 January 2016):
What's up you guys. It's Mike and this is track by track for LPU 15.
There are three songs that are all basically movements in one piece of music and it was called "Pods". In 1998, I was actually still in college at Art Center in Pasadena. I was studying illustration. Parameters of the project were a little wider, so you could kind of like... if you wanted to bring in sculpture, if you wanted to bring in installation, performance art, paintings, drawing, whatever you wanted to do. Since I had never really turned in a project that was music based in school, I decided to turn in a music project. "Pods" was what it was, and it ended up being basically like what would happen if I kind of just did a stream of consciousness piece of music. So in other words, it would start wherever it started and it would evolve into wherever it ended up, and any idea that I put into it, I'd keep it and I'd stick it into the piece. So it ended up being kind of long, and here I divided it into three movements.
You know, although most people, when they think of Linkin Park, they think of rock and rap first, the electronic component has always been a big part of what we do, and at the time in '97, '98, I was really into jungle music, which is kind of officially an electronic style or sub-genre. So at the end of "Pods 1", you'll hear, you know, jungle beats.
"Pods 2" I think there's more of that Linkin Park kind of sound. You know, some more old-school drum machines going, and it does definitely get into that like, you know, like a more of a hip-hop beat, with some more industrial or rock elements over top of it.
And on "Pods 3" you definitely get more of the hip-hop influence, and it gets really grimy towards the end. I wanted it to kind of crescendo out into the end. You can hear all of the earliest reference points and influences that took me to what my contribution to Linkin Park's sound ended up being.
It was an art project, it was an experiment, it was a random like assortment of sounds and music that I wanted to share with you guys.
It's one of the earliest, It actually pre-dates, I'd say like 75% of most of the other Xero, early Linkin Park music that any of you have ever heard.
So I thought that would make this year's LPU, being the 15th anniversary, I thought that would make this one special.

 

Chance Of Rain

Mike Shinoda ("LPU 15 Track By Track - Chance Of Rain (2006 Demo)" 5 February 2016):
Hey, this is track by track with Mike for LPU 15. The sixth track on the CD is called "Chance Of Rain". That's a song actually called "Voices". We went with the demo title cause it never really got out of the demo phase. We were making, as I recall, Minutes To Midnight. Most of the ones that didn't make the cut were the more mellow ones. And we really like these songs, it's just we didn't... we thought that Minutes To Midnight already had enough mid-tempo and mellower type of stuff on it, so we didn't want to put all the mellower songs on it. And our favorite by far was Leave Out All The Rest. Songs like In Between and Valentine's Day were also among them. And to us, to include a song like this one, Voices or Chance Of Rain, and potentially lose a song like, I don't know, like No More Sorrow or something just seemed like not what we wanted to do. But we always liked this song and it made actually all the way to the mix process and, you know, just at the very last minute it didn't make the cut. For the most part people only knew the band as Hybrid Theory and Meteora. To be writing pieces of music like this one was really wild for fans to hear, we knew that, but we also knew that this is the type of music we like to listen to, this is the type of music we were capable of creating. That's what Minutes To Midnight was all about. Was about expanding our horizons and trying new things and getting comfortable making music that didn't sound like what people expect.

 

Grudgematch

Mike Shinoda ("LPU 15 Track By Track - Grudgematch (2009 Demo)" 16 February 2016):
Hi guys, this is track by track with Mike. For LPU 15. We're now into our bi-monthly releases, the song for these couple months is called Grudgematch, that was the name of the demo.
It was during the time of A Thousand Suns, which was the album we were making. We're further along in the process. And we were still writing things to kind of fill in the album. We also were looking at news and looking at things that were going on in the world and I think there was already stuff about nuclear war on the album, like we were already starting to put those elements in there, but there wasn't yet the conflict down like the real like aggressive element.
A Thousand Suns ended up being Wretches And Kings and When They Come For Me, those were probably the two that were the most about being on that type of scenario. But before those came about we were experimenting with the song Grudgematch. Maybe you can think of like militias in third world countries. Those stories in the news were kind of things that were inspiring us at the time, like to write a song to represent those on the album.

 

Hurry

Mike Shinoda ("LPU 15 Track By Track - Hurry (1999 Demo)" 15 April 2016):
Hey, what's up, you guys? It's track by track with Mike. For LPU 15. This release is a song from around 1999. The demo is called "Hurry", because the song never got words or lyrics or anything. What's interesting, I think, about this track is that it was basically completely made on an MPC. At that time, the idea of really blending hip hop and rock was still very new and the technology then wasn't what it was today, so I was trying to figure out ways to add this hip hop flavor to the music creation process, so rather than recording the drums and the guitars the way you would normally record them, I was recording them straight into the MPC, and then I was programming them out inside the box. In this song, all the drum sounds you hear, all guitar sounds you hear are actually basically being played off of pads. Brad's playing "Duh duh duh, dun duh duh duh, duh duh", and then that would be one button. All the drum parts are actually sampled from individual hits by Rob on drums mic'd up in our practice studio. I think it was after "A Place For My Head" and probably before "With You" and "Runaway", so definitely like the rawness of this track and also the evolution hasn't really happened yet. But for those of you that have heard earlier Xero demos, Linkin Park's, you know, original name, there demos called "Carousel" and "Part Of Me", and if you play this song next to those then I think that you can really hear that's the era of the band that this came from.


OTHER
Blackbirds
Mike Shinoda (8-Bit Rebellion! Press Release 30 March 2010):
We really liked the song and thought this would be a unique way to give it to our fans.

 

Mike Shinoda (MTV News April 2010):
When you finish the game, you get access to "Blackbirds" which is a brand new Linkin Park song that we basically finished specifically to this game. So it's exclusive to the game. It's not gonna be on an album, it's not gonna be on anything else.

 

Mike Shinoda (LPU Chat 07 April 2010):
Blackbirds will probably be on iTunes a little while after the game has been out

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 28 April 2010):
Sorry, I forgot to add the most “mysterious” part: the intro rap verse. That was a demo / freestyle session that was the template for the bridge. Lyrically, this is what some of my demo rap stuff sounds like–it kinda makes sense, kinda doesn’t…thought it would be a cool way to open up the song.

 

Burn It Down (Charly Beck Remix)

Martin Von Auen (Thüringer Allgemeine 10 November 2015):
It took eight weeks until we heard back from Linkin Park. We participated in a public tender and ultimately then got the chance. Especially Charly had already given up on it.

Martin Von Auen (Thüringer Allgemeine 10 November 2015):
And they also keep a big portion of the money too.

 

Complimentary

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 10 December 2012):
With Stagelight now out for Windows, a number of you guys are checking it out. This week, I wanted to do something special for all our early adopters who are helping us spread the word: I made you guys a song.
This session can be downloaded and opened in Stagelight on Windows 7 or 8. It’s not an audio file and doesn’t contain any audio so (for now) only Stagelight users get to hear it.
For those of you who haven’t checked it out yet: Stagelight is a new music-making program designed by Open Labs and me. It’s the result of years of testing on stage and in the studio. With it, anyone at any level can make a great song in as little as a few minutes. It’s powerful and it’s simple, and you can buy it for only $10 HERE.
Again, thank you for being the first to check out Stagelight.

 

Covers

Chester Bennington (LPU Chat 2 August 2011):
Playing covers is something we don’t do very often, so we have to be picky about that kind of thing. But eight years ago when we didn’t have very many songs to play live, we would actually play songs like “Wish” or any of the other Deftones songs or whatever we could throw in our show because we only had like 36 minutes of music. So I don’t know how often we’ll do covers.

 

Darker Than Blood

Steve Aoki (Billboard 27 June 2014):
I threw out the drop because it didn’t fit, and [Linkin Park rapper] Mike [shinoda] rewrote the lyrics because he was like, ‘They’re too happy.’ He wanted to make it darker.

 

Steve Aoki (Mitch Schneider Organization June 2014):
’Horizons’ definitely has the definitive ‘Neon Future’ sound. It’s not quite done yet, but it’s the track I have worked on the most of all the songs on the album and I can’t wait for people to hear it.

 

Chester Bennington (AltWire 12 March 2015):

We did work on “Horizons” together while we were doing “A Light That Never Comes.” We didn’t finish it at that time, but we began working on it as well. We knew we wanted to do something to put on a CD, and Steve wanted us to do something that he could produce on his record as well. Part of that collaborative and creative endeavor included this song. We’ve worked on it since then, kind of passed it back and forth for a while…we’d work on it for a little bit, then kind of cool off, then work on it for a little bit. But then we finally finished it. And the song is really great. I think that it’s a bit darker than the other song. I actually like it a little more than ALTNC just because I think the music is so cool and the structure is a little different than I think what we normally do, but it’s really cool. I think working with Steve is awesome, and I love being able to dive deep into the electronic world and expose our music to people in a way that is fun. Clearly we like to play around with lots of different mediums. Working with Steve was just a lot of fun, and I hope that people really like this track.

 

Mike Shinoda (AltWire 04 May 2015):
We started “A Light That Never Comes” and “Darker Than Blood” at the same time, but ALTNC came together faster. We actually finished “Darker Than Blood” during our Hunting Party sessions, where we were pretty much writing nothing but heavy rock the whole time, which might be why it finally came together. It was a change of pace at the time.
I wanted “A Light That Never Comes” to be more of a Linkin Park song, and “Darker Than Blood” to be more of an Aoki song. We did more of the heavy lifting on the former, Steve did more of the work on the music track of the latter.

 

Steve Aoki (Spin 12 June 2015):
I kind of gave everyone the blueprint for what Neon Future was about, but I wasn’t like, “This is my thesis…” I think everyone generally can agree that the future is bright, so with that in mind, there was no real, like, “No, I’m not going to be a part of that.” With some artists I really wanted them to actually narrate and be a part of the concept outside of the music. With Luke from Empire of the Sun, it was really important we workshop the song together. I worked closely with him to develop the idea and the topline in the studio with him. Being in the studio with him, finding out how he works, it made me realize he was one of the most prolific artists I’ve ever worked with. The Linkin Park song [“Darker Than Blood”], it was a chameleon evolving into a human, really. Maybe a monkey to a human is better. We didn’t come from chameleons.
Producers, especially in an electronic space, produce to the current sounds and cultural space of what music relates to, and get it out as soon as possible. The idea for “Darker Than Blood” spawned from over three years ago. We started writing the song in January of 2013 with “A Light Never Comes,” a collection of ideas we started coming together, so we said, “Okay, let’s actually spend the time developing these into songs.” Every five months we’d come back to it and say, “Let’s keep this section because this is an idea that lasted five months; it didn’t deteriorate away because a trend moved or whatever.” In 2015 when we finally released a song it didn’t feel like ideas from 2012. It sounded like a classic.

 

Final Masquerade (Acoustic)

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 18 February 2015):
Hey everyone,
We made something cool the other day, and we wanted you to have it. Here’s a special unreleased acoustic version of Final Masquerade. Stripping it down to bare bones brought the sentiment of the song right to the surface. Thanks for all your support over the past couple months – we hope you enjoy the song. Click here:
http://linkinpark.com/thankyou

 

Brad Delson (linkinpark.com 18 February 2015):

In this stripped-down intimate version, the words and storytelling lead the way. I loved working on this special recording of "Final Masquerade", and we're excited to share it with our fans.

 

Chester Bennington (AltWire 12 March 2015):

We just do spontaneous kind of stuff, you know? It was like, “Hey, let’s do this. Could be fun. It could open up some opportunities and get people to look at the music a little differently.” And that was kind of like what we looked at. We were like, “Hey let’s do this for fun!”

 

High Voltage

Mike Shinoda (Theprp.com 09 December 2000):
The "One Step Closer" Import single will feature a remix (by me) of an older hip hop track of ours called "High Voltage", along with a slower song called "My December". What's nice for me about these things is that I did the majority of the writing on those songs, and I produced and mixed both.

 

Rob Bourdon (linkinpark.com Chat 29 July 2002):
We didn't play High Voltage on Project Revolution because we didn't fit into the set as well as some other songs. We replaced it with It's Goin Down, becuase we had some other artists on the tour that were perfect to help us out with that

 

Issho Ni

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 22 March 2011):
We are thrilled to announce that the NEW www.downloadtodonate.org Japan site is up now. Donate $10 or more, and get access to great music. We intend to add more tracks in the coming months; anyone who donates will have access to these tracks PLUS future tracks that get added. Right now, we have new recordings from Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Angels & Airwaves, B’z, Hoobastank, Sara Bareilles, Flyleaf, Staind, Slash + Myles Kennedy, Counting Crows, Plain White T’s, Elliott Yamin, Enrique Iglesias, and Linkin Park.
The Linkin Park song is entitled “Issho Ni,” meaning “we’re in this together.” It’s an instrumental song that I cooked up this week to benefit the cause.

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 24 March 2011):
This is “Issho Ni,” the Linkin Park song we contributed to www.downloadtodonate.org. There were a lot of positive comments (thanks), and I also saw some of you were saying: 1.) you thought it should have been arranged in a different way, because you wanted more “action” earlier in the song, and 2.) you thought there should have been vocals.
I’ll tell you what: you guys edit it, add vocals, sample it, do whatever you like–I’ll let you finish the song. The vocals don’t have to be about Japan, they can be about whatever. Sing, rap, rearrange, remix, write new material, whatever….and I’ll post the best versions I hear up here on http://www.mikeshinoda.com.

It's Goin' Down
Mike Shinoda (linkinpark.com 10 September 2001):
the mtv VMA's were fun. i had a good time getting together with the xecutioners again. and for those that are into hip hop, i just got the advance of their album, and i think it's definitely worth checking out. the song joe and i did with them is on there. ...anyway, it was a big hollywood-style event, and we're all pretty glad to be done with it and back to a little more normal routine. we're touring in europe for the next couple of weeks, and then comes family values. check the tours section. word.
--Mike

 

Joe Hahn (E! 26 February 2002):
They are pioneers of deejaying. As turntabling developed, they were one of the original crews to come up [from the underground]. It's a great honor to work with them because I respect them so much.

 

Rob Swift (MTV News 25 February 2002):

They had just dropped their album and were still trying to get known. We heard the record and fell in love with every song on it. We were like, ‘Yo, Linkin Park is capturing the same energy that we want to capture in our music, so why don’t we try to collaborate?’
Rob Swift (MTV News 25 February 2002):
In the end, it sounded like we were together every step of the way. I think that’s what happens with good musicians. You don’t have to be there present in order to get across what you want.
Rob Swift (MTV News 25 February 2002):
Mike [shinoda] is kind of ignoring us at first [in the video], but once we start scratching, he sees that we’re talented as well, and what we do on the turntables and how we express ourselves could only add to and intensify their music.
Rob Swift (MTV News 25 February 2002):
What it’s really about is bridging the world of DJing and scratching with the world of rock. Bridging the turntable with the guitar and the vocals with what we’re doing on turntables and making it real. With a lot of videos you see girls with bikinis and cars. With this, it was just us being ourselves. The way you see us in the video is the way you see us every day.
Rob Bourdon (linkinpark.com Chat 29 July 2002):
We didn't play High Voltage on Project Revolution because we didn't fit into the set as well as some other songs. We replaced it with It's Goin Down, becuase we had some other artists on the tour that were perfect to help us out with that

Rob Swift (The Times-Picayune 02 July 2004):
During the recording of "Built From Scratch," a Loud executive brought a copy of Linkin Park's "Hybrid Theory" to the studio, hoping to spark a collaboration. We stopped the session and sat there and played songs from the album and pretty much fell in love with everything we heard. We knew that we wanted to work with them. That same night, I called (Linkin Park vocalist/rapper) Mike Shinoda. The first thing he said was, 'Wow, the legend Rob Swift on the phone.' It let me know that he was a fan of us. Once I got on the phone with him, I knew that (the collaboration) was going to take place.

 

Rob Swift ("Groove Music: The Art and Culture of the Hip-Hop DJ" 1 May 2012):
My role on that song was just more of a supporting role.
Rob Swift ("Groove Music: The Art and Culture of the Hip-Hop DJ" 1 May 2012):
We'd show up at places and it would be like, 'Yo, is Mike Shinoda here? Are you going to perform 'It's Goin' Down?' And after, like, hearing that a thousand times we tried to figure out ways to perform 'It's Goin' Down' without Mike Shinoda and that didn't work. It never worked.
Rob Swift ("Groove Music: The Art and Culture of the Hip-Hop DJ" 1 May 2012):
The album revolved more around who we collaborated with and it didn't really shine a light on us artistically.

 

Lockjaw

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 10 December 2008):
Thanks to DigiDesign, I got a chance to preview the new ProTools 8. I made a short new instrumental song on it. Here’s a link to the video, which includes audio of the song.
Sparkart is working on making the videos embeddable. For now, please just put the link up if you want to pass this around.
http://www.mikeshinoda.com/video/Videos/protools_8_linkin_parks_mike_shinoda_in_the_studio

 

Lost In The Echo (The Dual Personality Remix)

Joe Hahn (indabamusic 8 November 2012):
Great remix by The Dual Personality. A progressive, club friendly track, that I will definitely spin. Very moody and smooth, kinda like a good whisky.

 

My December

Mike Shinoda (Theprp.com 09 December 2000):
The "One Step Closer" Import single will feature a remix (by me) of an older hip hop track of ours called "High Voltage", along with a slower song called "My December". What's nice for me about these things is that I did the majority of the writing on those songs, and I produced and mixed both.

Mike Shinoda (Theprp.com 09 December 2000):
We actually recorded it more recently, at a studio in Nashville. It was an idea sparked by the KROQ album. We figured, why not just write a new song, put it on that CD, and give it away for the holidays? So it'll be on our website soon.

 

Brad Delson (MSN Live Chat 2001):
I like the song "My December." It's about going home.

 

New Divide

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 28 March 2009):
We’ve been working on a new song in the past couple of weeks that has been a lot of fun. The backdrop for the song is built on layered, heavy synths and a sharp performance by Mr. Bourdon. We’re keeping the drums a little looser on this track, not doing too much studio trickery…it creates a nice interplay between the organic feel of the rhythm track and the more robotic feel of the keyboards. Bass and guitar are next, meanwhile Chester and I are emailing lyric notes back and forth…
mike

 

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 24 April 2009):
BREAKING NEWS: Linkin Park will be working on the score for Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen.
Although I wasn’t at liberty to say it before, the song I’ve been referencing here on mikeshinoda.com in the past few weeks…is actually being done for Michael Bay’s new Transformers film, due out June 24th.
In addition–and probably ever cooler–we have been offered the unique opportunity to help score the film. The song we wrote is being used as one of the themes, and we will be writing various interpolations on that theme, and trying out some other thematic ideas as part of the (very large) team scoring the film.
My bandmates and I are working with award-winning film composer (and resident ass-kicker) Hans Zimmer. We met with Hans last week, and heard some of the incredible things he and his guys have done with our new song. In the next few days, we’ll be doing some work with Hans’ amazing writing and recording crew.
Michael Bay has shown us select scenes from the film, and it looks incredible. I can’t wait for you to see it.
mike

 

Brad Delson (Linkin Park Underground 8 Newsletter):
When we were approached about contributing a piece of music to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, we welcomed the challenge. In fact, we had already begun writing songs for an upcoming album, so we thought we probably already had something that could work in the film.
We began sorting through existing material--much of which we're incredibly excited about. That's why we were so surprised to discover that, in spite of the fact we had already developed dozens of great ideas, no one particular sketch felt perfectly suited for Transformers. In other words, we would have to craft a song to represent not only our band, but the seismic robot brand...from scratch. And we only had about a week until we had to play something for Michael Bay.
Well, most of you probably already know the end to this particular story: "New Divide" might be one of our best-received offerings ever. The movie people liked the musical themes we created so much that they integrated the melodies into the movie score itself. And Revenge of the Fallen has already grossed more money than the pet rock.

Mike Shinoda (Kerrang! August 2010):
There have been times when I feel that everyone’s looking at me and saying that they need me to make it happen. Usually I can do it. But there have been occasions when I can’t and that makes me feel that I’ve let myself and the other guys down. It can be rough.
A good example is the song we did for the Transformers movie [2009’s New Divide]. We had to write something new and the band were looking at me like, ‘Okay Mike, what do you have?’ So I brought in a few things and it wasn’t there. That made me think, ‘Shit, am I going to be able to do this?’ Obviously, in the end, I did. But that’s when the pressure’s on. That’s when it’s time to find out if I can actually deliver.

Brad Delson (MusicRadar 19 July 2012):
[...]New Divide – that's a heavy song, a high-energy song, and you don't know what's a keyboard and what's a guitar. That appearance versus reality is interesting to me sonically, where things you think are one thing are actually handcrafted, and it's something completely different. It's that 'I don't know what I'm listening to.'

 

Chester Bennington (Twitter 23 August 2015):

First 2 shows of the EU tour have been so much fun!! Even when I inhaled a mouth full of my own spit and sang ND like a dying dog! Haha

 

Chester Bennington (Twitter 23 August 2015):

ND is New Divide BTW


No Roads Left
Rob Bourdon (SoundSpike 19 July 2007):
[How many songs did you write?]
We estimate somewhere between 100 and 150. Some were very rough and just in the demo form. About 30 got closer to the final form. We ended up recording 17 total. We put 10 of those, plus an intro, on the album.
[Will any of the remaining songs see the light of day?]
I think so. One of them was released as an iTunes exclusive, called "No Roads Left," and I think the other ones will eventually find their way out. We don't know exactly what we're going to do with them yet. We have four or five other songs that are kind of really good and almost done. So, I think so. A lot of them will probably never see the light of day. We're going to hide them and erase them, because they're horrible.

Rob Bourdon (LPU Chat 18 November 2009):
Not sure if we will play No Roads Left live, we did try it out and didn’t love the way it came across live.

Mike Shinoda (LPU Chat 17 June 2011):
We played it in practice once or twice and it doesn't really sound good.

Not Alone
Mike Shinoda (MTV.com 19 January 2010):
We had a demo [for 'Not Alone'] — the music was laid out, we had done the song a little while ago ... we just never used it because we never thought it was done. [After the tragedy in Haiti], we listened to the demo again, essentially scrapped all the words, rewrote the words ... when you've got that idea and emotional charge in you and you put that in the lyrics, for me it does make better lyrics.
There's an authenticity and a passion that you can hear in Chester's voice on this track; we literally wrote [the new lyrics] via e-mail, before he had flown out from Arizona to L.A. [to record them]

Brad Delson (Loveline 28 January 2010):
This was a track that we originally worked on with Rick Rubin during the Minutes To Midnight sessions, and one of our favorites, and it unfortunately didn't make it on the album, but fortunately we had it on a semi-finished form and Mike and Chester really were burning midnight oil. They rewrote the lyrics to kind of express their emotions about what happened to Haiti and remixed the song, got it ready for this compilation in about 24 hours and I think it's actually better... I'm actually sure it's better than the early version. We're really really proud of it.

Resurrection
Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 19 January 2010):
The new Download To Donate track, “RESURRECTION” is now live on MusicForRelief.org! I produced and mixed the song.
If you already downloaded the album, just download again, and the song will be included.
Don’t forget to donate.

Mike Shinoda (Loveline 28 January 2010):
I have a quick... I don't know if any of you are interested in the story about this song, but the one we already played is called "Not Alone". That's the Linkin Park song on music... the Download To Donate album. This song, called "Resurrection", is done by Lupe Fiasco and Kenna who are... I guess I can call them friends of mine. This song was being done at the exact same time that the Linkin Park song was being done. I was literally on the phone... [he was in the vocal booth talking to them on the phone] I was in the vocal booth. We have footage in there so if you go on our website you will see footage of us doing this. We're in the vocal booth at our studio working on our song and I'm talking to Lupe and Kenna like "ok. well, yes. send the tracks over tomorrow and I'll mix it" I mean it was... it was crazy and he literally sent... what's funny is... I don't know, Brad, if you know this, but they sent over their rough of their song... they sent it over at the exact same time that we finished our song. Like I finished the mix at like 3:30 and I looked at my computer and the rough of Lupe's... rough from Lupe came in.

 

Rock And Roll (Could Never Hip Hop Like This) Part 2

Rob Bourdon (XFM Online 17 June 2004):
We're planning on doing some writing soon, but we find we can write and demo stuff on the bus or wherever. Once you get started on a track and have ideas you need to preserve the spontaneity of them.
As for collaborations, I'd love to do some stuff with a number of people. I've recently been working with [Gorillaz and Deltron 3030 member] Dan The Automator, and [Automator side project] Handsome Boy Modelling School have offered us the chance to do some stuff with them. I can't say exactly what I've contributed - you'll have to wait and see.
All of those guys are so creative and versatile. They have a style, but at the same time they love to break rules and surprise people. We're also hoping to do some stuff with Korn or Snoop or whoever on the Projekt Revolution tour.
In what we do its all creative. Creative screwing around, that is. It may just be for fun and not work out, or it may be great and we'll release it. You'll just have to wait and see.

Dan The Automator (Contactmusic 03 November 2004):
We've been fortunate enough to work with both the people who originated a lot of stuff in hip-hop and some of the guys who have perfected it. So we put them with the people who have done the best job of co-opting hip-hop to make the biggest impact in electronica and rock. Hip-hop is the biggest influence in pop culture. We put that all together in one song and it tells a big story.

 

She Couldn't

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 3 July 2009):
Many of you have asked about an old demo that is floating around. The song is called “She Couldn’t.” We recorded it in 1999 during the making of Hybrid Theory, but it never made an album and was never released by us. For legal reasons, that’s all I can say about the song, but I hope this clears things up!

 

The Wizard Song

Chester Bennington (LPU Chat April 2003):

No the wizard song will never ever ever be released because it doesnt exist. And not only that but yes there will be meet and greets on Summer Sanitarium and we are trying to arrange how they will work so we'll update you in the future.

 

Mike Shinoda (Reddit AMA 12 August 2015):
[Hey Mike, do you still have demos of "The wizzard song" from Pre Meteora time? I want to hear it so badly! Cheers and see you in Düsseldorf! Can't wait to see Fort Minor(+LP) Live!]
That was from the DVD right? We do dumb crap like that all the time, and sometimes it gets captured on camera. Does anyone have the link to the LPTV episode where Chester, Dave, and I were jamming backstage--I think it was a ska jam?

 

Unreleased

Joe Hahn (OnStage 01 January 2002):
Chester just did a song with Cyclefly and also with DJ Lethal, and Mike and I just finished a track with the Visionaries too.
KeyKool (MySpace.com/visionaries 10 October 2006):
Hey, LMNO did a song with Mike Shinoda back in the day, maybe 6 years ago.
Then the Visionaries recorded a song with Joe Hahn and Mike Shinoda, and I believe some of the rest of the group was supposed to add stuff to the song...anyhow, it was before the "ReAnimation" album, and we all decided not to put the song out....so, I guess it's just one of those, never heard, never put out things.
We've only heard a rough version of the song, and never heard anything after that.
Kool, give thanks.
KeyKool - Visionaries
www.upabove.com

 

We Made It

Busta Rhymes (Rolling Stone 11 October 2007):
It feels like Rocky won the fight or something. It reminds the people who are successful to go and help those that haven’t been so successful, and represent the unity between people. This song speaks volumes to the globe — it ain’t just about the ‘hood, it ain’t just about the suburbs, it’s about everybody. This is one of those songs that can’t be described better than touching the souls of the common people.
because people haven’t seen the Busta Rhymes that they have grown to know and love. Not that they haven’t been getting the traditional party records, ’cause I always do that better than anything, but the whole thing when I come out with the outfits, the hat, the coat. I’m promising the same track record I always set for myself, which is the phenomenal collaborations that people don’t usually do before I do ‘em, to continue as a legacy. You can definitely expect something super duper stellar. Hot energy joints and songs that are a little bit more approachable aren’t going to feel as dark, even though I got a lot of situations to talk about, ’cause of the last year. I still have so much to be happy for.
I’m trying to resolve the legal situation. They’re getting ready to pass laws on what we are and aren’t allowed to say. That’s totally against what the United States Constitution is. In the eyes of the U.S. government, we’re undesirables cause we don’t have a birthright. And it’s unfortunate but this is a real thing that not a lot of people are aware of.

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 16 April 2008):
so here’s the official news:
we are pleased to announce a new song, about to hit the streets…a new collaboration we did with the incomparable busta rhymes. chester, busta, and i just shot the video with director chris robinson.
the song is called “we made it” and will be featured on busta’s new album “blessed.” chester sings on the hook (i did some harmonies) and i do the second verse. i did some production work on it, and brad laid down some guitar at the end.
as many of you may realize, this is the first time LP has been “featured” on a new song by any artist. we have done individual cameos in the past (and did a “mash-up” of existing songs with a certain mr. s-dot-carter) but this is the first time you have seen “featuring linkin park” on any all-new song. for my part, the thing that drew me in was the musicality of the track and the sincerity of busta’s performance. it’s a song about overcoming adversity and celebrating the difficult obstacles that we overcome. i loved writing to it, and hope you all enjoy the song, which should be out soon.
also, keep an eye on our linkinparktv youtube channel for video footage and a behind-the-scenes look at the shoot and creation of the song.
to round out the experience, busta told me that he’s setting up a charity foundation (tentatively) called the “we made it foundation” that will be rewarding young students for quarterly excellence in academics and discipline–at home and at school.
more to come.
and just for fun…one of my favorite busta songs from a few years back…WOO-HAAAAA

Busta Rhymes (MTV.com 02 May 2008):
The [beat for the] Linkin Park record was given to me by Cool & Dre about seven months ago. I’m on a bus ride from New York to L.A., about 38 hours. Every time I’m on the bus, I listen to the collective of beats I get for my album, just to vibe. We was listening to that song one day when I heard the beat. Cool & Dre had the chorus on there. I was like, ‘This record is one of the biggest anthems,’ because it felt like it was speaking to the common man. It wasn’t exploiting what we usually exploit in hip-hop: the ass, throwing money, rims on the car. At this time in my career, it felt like something was needed, something inspirational. It speaks to the man in the struggle from the ‘hood to the upper echelon.

Mike Shinoda (MTV.com 02 May 2008):
Normally, I'm a little skeptical going into hip-hop tracks. This is the very first time Linkin Park have been featured on anybody else's song. We did the mash-up project with Jay-Z, but that was featuring his music and our music. It's an entirely different thing. What that all comes down to is the strength of the track. That's due in part to Cool & Dre and in part to Busta. When we came in, we did our thing to it and added that next level of something new and different. Each party had a mutual appreciation.
We were touring in Asia at the time. We cut a lot of our parts in a studio in Taipei. It kinda fit the theme of the song 'We Made It.' We're recording vocals in China, halfway across the world. He's in New York and L.A. doing his thing. On this track, I got to know Busta a little better. He's very much that character, that personality that you see. But there is a side of him that's very humble and down-to-earth that other people don't get to see.

Busta Rhymes (HipHopDX 29 May 2008):
The record was inspired by the situation that transpired with T.I. right after the BET Hip-Hop Awards. My legal situations were current, and his legal situations were current, and Akon had his, you know, history of legal situations in the past ... We wanted people to as bad as things might look for us sometimes just know that it ain't over until you say it's over at the end of the day. 'Cause nobody can really dictate what the outcome of your destiny, what your life is going to end up becoming, unless you let it happen that way.

 

Wretches (Remix)

Ryu (Twitter 24 September 2010):
RT @_marissasmith: you did an lp remix? Yeah. "Wretches and Kings" Get busy committee remix coming soon!

Scoop DeVille (Twitter 21 February 2011):
"Wretches and Kings"remix comes out TODAY! @getbusycommittE @m_shinoda @divinestyler1 @therealryu @ApathyDGZ @SCOOPDEVILLE

Get Busy Committee (Twitter 21 February 2011):
Update: "Wretches & Kings" remix will not be released today. =[ sorry guys.

 

linkinpark.com Background Music

Mike Shinoda (LPMB 2009):
This link is actually real...but they're not demos. These are songs I made for linkinpark.com when we released Minutes To Midnight. The first one is actually a really slow, dark improvisation on "What I've Done!"
Someone should tell the people on youtube (in the comments or something...link to this post).


UNRELEASED
"Burn It Down" Remix with Tech N9ne
TechN9ne (Twitpic 24 July 2012):
Now time to get writing on the first batch of verses!
Mike Shinoda (Twitter 24 July 2012):
“@TechN9ne: Now time to get writing on the first batch of verses! http://twitpic.com/abf32z ” M: Looking forward to hearing it #LinkinParkRemix
Tech N9ne (Music Times 18 May 2015):
[...]Linkin Park, I've already done a remix with them. It didn't make it out—it was a "Burn It To The Ground" remix. I did it for them, so they're aware.[...]

 

Chicken Basket

Mike Shinoda (mikeshinoda.com 17 October 2009):
It’s been a busy week. Studio every day, working on new stuff. This week, I did a song where the music sounds like Santogold (or Santigold, if you like) meets Postal Service meets At The Drive In or something. Very weird…but even weirder, the vocals are crazy–I asked our engineers what they thought it sounded like, and the responses I got were things like “Peter Gabriel” and “Huey Lewis, in a really good way.” Four-part harmonies that ebb and flow with the track. I feel like I’m on drugs when I’m listening to it. It’s tentatively called “Chicken Basket.”

 

Dust Brothers song

Mike Shinoda (metal-is.com 26 January 2001):
In all reality, we're just trying to concentrate on this one, but we've thrown out a couple of things. Right now, we're working on a song with the Dust Brothers and we're hoping that it goes on their album, but we'll see. When we write, we write by recording, we don't jam or anything, which means we have to record somewhere loudly. In the past, the place that we found was easiest to record in was my room. My walls are about three inches thick and my neighbours must have thought people were dying in my house! The whole neighbourhood could hear it!

 

Fucking Awesome

Chester Bennington (MTV.com 26 October 2009):
It’s kind of funny, because I wrote a song, and I was positive it was a Dead by Sunrise song, and I was in the studio playing it, and [LP guitarist] Brad [Delson] goes, ‘You are putting that down right now!’. And I was like, ‘Well, apparently that’s a Linkin Park song.’ The song is called called ‘F—ing Awesome,’ by the way.

 

My December (Remixed by DJ Crook of Team Sleep; featuring DJ Shadow)

Brad Delson (OnStage 01 January 2002):
We're planning on releasing a remix CD in early 2002. We've brought out some of our favorite DJs, producers, and creative people to reinterpret and reconfigure songs from Hybrid Theory. [Artists such as] Jay Gordon from Orgy, Humble Brothers, Z-Trip, and DJ Crook from Team Sleep, to name a few.

DJ Crook (Twitter 06 September 2013):

[Hi! I was wondering if there's any chance to ear the old 2002 My December remix by Team Sleep :)]
Hello! @nmlssit, probably never..sorry!

 

Pictureboard

Mike Shinoda (LPU Chat 2005):
a place for my head used to be called esaul and there was a song called pictureboard which we actually played on stage one time probably 5 years ago with linkin park. we played it after we changed our name. i think that was the only time we played a xero song that wasn't on hybrid theory after we changed our name.

Mike Shinoda (LPU Chat 04 September 2009):
Pictureboard is a song. I've never seen it online I'm pretty sure it's not out there. We have a bunch of songs that aren't out there, though

Mike Shinoda (LPMB 2009):
I have not ever heard a real version of "Pictureboard" online. All the ones I've ever seen are fake, I think.

Mike Shinoda (LPU Chat 19 November 2011):
Pictureboard has samples in it. Can’t give to LPU.

 

Machine Shop Mixtape song

Phoenix (Linkin Park Underground 4.0 Newsletter):
Recently, we decided that we wanted to write and record a new song for one of the upcoming Machine Shop Mixtapes Machine Shop is going to put out. It had been over two years since we had been in the studio recording Meteora, so we decided it was time to let everyone hear something new. So, we blocked out three days in the studio to sit down to write, and record the new track. For those of you who are somewhat familiar with our normal song writing process, this decision was departure from what has become our standard writing process. Normally, a song will be worked on individually, or in pairs, over months of time. For this new track we wanted to challenge ourselves and finish a song in three days, with all six of us working through all the parts together. At the end of this experimental writing process, we didn't actually complete the song in our three days in the studio, but we were able to lay a great framework for the song. The vocals for the song were then worked on in home studios.
So, buckle your seatbelts and prepare yourselves for a Linkin Park song like you have never heard in the coming months. This new track will be available exclusively on a future Machine Shop Mixtape, so stay tuned for more info.

 

Rob Bourdon (LPU Chat 09 March 2006):
We attempted to go into the studio for a day and the song turned out a disaster. Right now we're focusing on our new album, but later on we'll focus on re-writing that.
Mike Shinoda (LPU Chat 2009):
Went to studio, tried to record song, whole thing fell apart, idea abandoned.

 

Unknown collaboration with unknown artist (London September 2015)

Mike Shinoda (NME 07 September 2015):
I have no idea what it’ll sound like yet. It won’t sound like ‘The Hunting Party’. We like to surprise people.

Edited by lpliveusername
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RU and STB has identical descriptions...

 

and of course thk you very much for doing that! This will help many new fans when all those infos are compiled together like all the others lists etc. Every day I love LPL a bit more...

Edited by Rasputin 93
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Wow, epic list! You forgot to add Mike's description of LITE, he says the song at the core is about letting go of emotional baggage that is weighing you down. It's in LPTV.

 

 

Actually, there are a lot of notes and commentary on tracks throughout LPTV. I could try and find a lot of it. However, there is so much commentary from the band from LPTV/tons of different interviews that it'd be almost impossible to find it all.

Edited by Geki
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A few LPU XIII tracks. Mike's track by track.

 

Basquiat

This was a track I originally started just after I finished the Fort Minor album and was never really sure where to take it. After this, we moved into "Minutes To Midnight" and tried a few vocal ideas on it, but nothing really materialized. Maybe it was meant to be an instrumental.

 

Holding Company

As we started making demos for "LIVING THINGS', this was a track that surfaced. We were still figuring out the right time for the songs on the album at that point.

 

Primo

Although we opted for a different final direction for "I'LL BE GONE", I always loved this longer version of the song. I think this is a good example of how a different structure and arrangement can totally change the vibe of the song. Plus, this has a different chorus.

Edited by CASTLE OF GLASS
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Where did you get Mike's descriptions of Basquiat and Holding Company?? Anyways, that's cool about Basquiat. It kind of reminds me of Mike's MTV Scores he did back in 2005, same goes for Divided, Universe and all of those similar sounding MTM demos.

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LPU XIII Track by Track w/ Mike: Part II

 

Hemispheres

The beat treatment on this demo was a fun experiment - I took a loop and put it through a tight slap delay - the same effect treatment that was used to make the iconic vocal on the hip hop song "Planet Rock." But here, I changed the "tone" of the effect so that it changed with the chords of the song.

 

Cumulus

We tried many times to make this song work, but it always seemed too poppy for the album(s) we were currently working on.

 

Pretty Birdy

There were usually three incarnations of our early demos: 1) mostly done in the computer with drum programming, keyboard, bass, and some live guitar 2) adding real drums and vocals 3) adding more live instrumentation, structure and arrangement work. This version was in stage two. Check out the original guitar in the bridge.

 

Universe

Another post-Fort Minor demo. The main sounds were piano and mellotron, which gave it a slightly more classic vibe. Vocals never materialized, but the track has a cool, dark, introspective vibe.

 

Apaches, Foot Patrol, and Three Band Terror

In its final version, "UNTIL IT BREAKS" was an experiment inspired by side two of the Beatles' Abbey Road. On side two, the Fab Four created a medley based on various musical songs/demos/ideas; each one flowed into the next, creating a roller coaster experience. In the midst of making "LIVING THINGS," we found ourselves with these different demos that seemed to want to blend into something, and "UNTIL IT BREAKS" became that track. The three demos are found in their raw versions here.

 

Truth Inside A Lie

Ryan: Usually the music I write reflects how I'm feeling at the time. With this song, I wanted to write something epic that was melodic and just full of emotion, but I also wanted to explore different sounds that I normally don't use.

 

The guys from LINKIN PARK had so many interesting ideas that just made this song that much better. They are insanely talented and I couldn't be more proud of the song we came up with during LPU Sessions.

 

Change

Matt: LP brought such a positive and humbled approach to songwriting. Great vibes. It was like working with people I had known for years.

 

Adrian: These guys are true professionals. It was a real treat to learn from their years of collective experience. There were no egos, just a room full of enthusiastic musicians trying ideas, working together to complete a song.

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One of the interesting threads here, great work.

 

Pretty Birdy

There were usually three incarnations of our early demos: 1) mostly done in the computer with drum programming, keyboard, bass, and some live guitar 2) adding real drums and vocals 3) adding more live instrumentation, structure and arrangement work. This version was in stage two. Check out the original guitar in the bridge.

So they put the wrong version on LPU13?

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One of the interesting threads here, great work.

 

 

 

So they put the wrong version on LPU13?

Pretty Birdy clearly has live drums on it, so it's in "Stage 2." Not necessarily at the END of Stage 2. Or they could have muted out the vocals if they didn't feel they were good enough to release, as we've suspected about numerous other LPU tracks from 2010-present.

 

Also, judging from Mike's "Universe never got vocals" comment...wow. The guy clearly forgot that Resurrection even exists. Pretty embarrassing, considering that track was just released in 2010...

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The Requiem: mike commentary

 

That first track, “The Requiem,” is actually made up of sounds that you’re about to hear on the album. There’s a Juno pad that appears a little bit in that that also appears in “Journada Del Muerto,” and the pad is the main pad underneath “Blackout.”

 

Blackout :

 

We have a song called “Blackout” that we got a scat vocal for, but every time we tried to write words, it sounded terrible. So Rick suggested we try automatic writing. He said, “Do you know what that is?” I said, “No.” He said, “I’ve tried it with Tom Petty and Johnny Cash and Neil Young.”

 

So naturally you gave it a go?

 

Mike Shinoda: (Laughs) I’m like, “That’s a good start. How do I do it?” He said basically, I want you to walk up to the mic and start pretending you know the words. Any words that come to mind, let them fall out and that will ho

 

pefully let you know what the part needs to be. You’re going to start finding words that fit. There’s a few songs on the record that we never wrote the words down for. Like I’m still finding myself having to figure them out because we just got up to the mic and started putting stuff down.

 

http://www.examiner.com/article/linkin-par...a-thousand-suns

 

__________________________

 

Mike talking about Living Things

 

''It doesn’t lose any of the creativity of the newer stuff and it brings in the energy of the older stuff. It’s kind of a comprehensive sound. I feel like we’ve been able to take all the stuff we’ve learned on the way and put it all together in each song and still keep it fresh and forward-thinking.

 

Whenever we get in the studio we react really badly to anything feeling like it’s a throwback or a repeat of what we’ve done—as long as it feels like we’re taking a step forward it feels good. This record echoes a lot of different random things from what we’ve learned along the way. I think every artist’s “new album” is their favorite one.

 

We’ve been immersed in this one for a year. It’s like we are currently in the eye of the storm. All of my focus is on getting this record perfect and presenting it to the fans in the way that I think is the perfect way. It’ll never be perfect, but we just do our best to make it the best it can be. I’m thrilled about the record, I couldn’t be more excited about people hearing it.''

 

 

http://www.complex.com/music/2012/04/inter...s-top-5-rappers

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...

Also, judging from Mike's "Universe never got vocals" comment...wow. The guy clearly forgot that Resurrection even exists. Pretty embarrassing, considering that track was just released in 2010...

 

Astat I found that funny too... "Vocals never materialized." Really?

I think he is refering to vocals by chester or him

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  • 2 months later...

Who is the last vocalist in the song Until It Breaks?

''The last vocalist in that song is actually Brad, our guitar player and it's funny because i think if you know that it gives a little bit of eclipse in the process of how we write, we didn't get into a point when i know what we should do here we should bring Brad to sing this part, instead it was a melody idea that brad was working on 4 months earlier, the song got into all these changes but at the end it was Brad's vocal that suited the best so that's what stayed on the record. our process is not limited to someone on guitar, someone on drums and someone on vocals , it's a lot more free moving than that and there's a lot of flying variables around to the extent that Brad singing can make it into the record''

 

It isn't perfect but you will understand everyhting that Phi said.. i thought that you were american, where are u from?

 

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39. "Part of Me" (Hybrid Theory EP) was written around a sample of a car alarm recorded by Brad.

Does anybody knows where this information came from?

 

Who is the last vocalist in the song Until It Breaks?

''The last vocalist in that song is actually Brad, our guitar player and it's funny because i think if you know that it gives a little bit of eclipse in the process of how we write, we didn't get into a point when i know what we should do here we should bring Brad to sing this part, instead it was a melody idea that brad was working on 4 months earlier, the song got into all these changes but at the end it was Brad's vocal that suited the best so that's what stayed on the record. our process is not limited to someone on guitar, someone on drums and someone on vocals , it's a lot more free moving than that and there's a lot of flying variables around to the extent that Brad singing can make it into the record''

 

It isn't perfect but you will understand everyhting that Phi said.. i thought that you were american, where are u from?

 

Thanks.

I was having some trouble to understand some words. I wanted to write everything exactly as he said.

I think I got it now. Check the first post.

 

You should add And One to your list and write it was the first song they've written since Chester came to the band. Source: LP shows where they played And One.

Done. Thanks.

 

Also added a few other things to Crawling, In Pieces, and Blackout.

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