Song Info

lpliveusername · November 20, 2013

- 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

Step Up

And One

Part Of Me

Ambient

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

Points Of Authority

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

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

Cure For The Itch

Pushing Me Away

REANIMATION

Pts.Of.Athrty

Enth E ND

Frgt/10

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

X-Ecutioner Style

H! Vltg3

Wth>You

Ppr:Kut

Rnw@y

My Dsmbr

1Stp Klosr

Krwlng

Buy Myself

METEORA

Foreword

Don't Stay

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

Hit The Floor

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

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

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

Big Pimpin'/Papercut

Numb/Encore

Points Of Authority/99 Problems/One Step Closer

MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

Wake

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

In Between

In Pieces

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

Burning In The Skies

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

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

Wretches And Kings

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

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

Roads Untraveled

Skin To Bone

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

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)

Victimized (M. Shinoda Remix)

Roads Untraveled (Rad Omen Remix feat. Bun

Until It Breaks (Datsik Remix)

A Light That Never Comes (Rick Rubin Reboot)

Burn It Down (Paul Van Dyk Remix)

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

Guilty All The Same

The Summoning

War

Wastelands

Until It's Gone

Rebellion

Mark The Graves

Drawbar

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

MALL

LP UNDERGROUND

A.06

Dedicated

Sold My Soul To Yo Mama

Standing In The Middle

Announcement Service Public

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

26 Lettaz In Da Alphabet

Across The Line

What We Don't Know

I Have Not Begun

YO

Slip

Soundtrack

In The End (Demo)

Program

Bang Three

Robot Boy (Test Mix, Optional Vocal Take)

Broken Foot

Esaul

Blue

Homecoming

Points Of Authority (Demo)

Clarity

Asbestos

Bunker

So Far Away

Pepper

Debris

Ominous

Forgotten (Demo)

Basquiat

Holding Company

Primo

Hemispheres

Cumulus

Pretty Birdy

Universe

Apaches, Foot Patrol, and Three Band Terror

Aubrey One

Malathion+Tritonus

Berlin One, Version C

Blanka

Heartburn

Breaking The Habit (Original Mike 2002 Demo)

Dave SBeat feat. Joe

Froctagon

Rhinocerous

After Canada

Animals

Basil

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

Grudgematch

Hurry

OTHER

Blackbirds

Burn It Down (Charly Beck Remix)

Complimentary

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)

High Voltage

Issho Ni

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

Lost In The Echo (The Dual Personality Remix)

My December

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

Not Alone

Resurrection

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

She Couldn't

The Wizard Song

Unreleased

We Made It

Wretches (Remix)

linkinpark.com Background Music

UNRELEASED

"Burn It Down" Remix with Tech N9ne

Chicken Basket

Dust Brothers song

Fucking Awesome

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

Pictureboard

Machine Shop Mixtape song

Unknown collaboration with unknown artist (London September 2015)

Edited May 16, 2016 by lpliveusername

[AndOne] · November 20, 2013

This is really really great! I was just talking about that to Mark yesterday that we should collect all the track comments for the LPU songs but this is even better!

Rasputin 93 · November 20, 2013

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 November 20, 2013 by Rasputin 93

Justin · November 20, 2013

Thank you very much for compiling all this info. Very good read!!

Geki · November 20, 2013

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 November 20, 2013 by Geki

GlassCastles · November 20, 2013

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 November 20, 2013 by CASTLE OF GLASS

JZLP-Benningstrong · November 20, 2013

Wow, epic post.

Geki · November 20, 2013

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.

GlassCastles · November 20, 2013

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.

Skipees · November 20, 2013

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?

Geki · November 20, 2013

So they put the wrong version on LPU13?

Yeah, wtf. Lol. They should have gave us vocals on this demo considering the fact they the band has said the song underwent 30 different chorus changes, etc.

Astat · November 20, 2013

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...

Justin · November 21, 2013

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

JZLP-Benningstrong · November 21, 2013

Something that is missing is a commentary about each album in general, i'll try to search some of them.

lpliveusername · November 21, 2013

Thanks!

Updated!

RU and STB has identical descriptions...

He was talking about both songs.

JZLP-Benningstrong · November 21, 2013

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

StaticXero · November 21, 2013

...

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

Justin · November 21, 2013

I think he is refering to vocals by chester or him

Yeah but still you would think he would mention even in passing that Lupe Fiasco and Kenna did make a song with this and it was on Download to Donate.

StaticXero · November 21, 2013

Yeah but still you would think he would mention even in passing that Lupe Fiasco and Kenna did make a song with this and it was on Download to Donate.

yeah, he should have done this but we all know his memory :lol:

LPMaskMan · November 21, 2013

Great compilation! I like to read about the songs' background.

lpliveusername · February 19, 2014

Added some things.

Can anybody transcribe what Phoenix said about Until It Breaks in this video?

JZLP-Benningstrong · February 19, 2014

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?

maxstar · February 19, 2014

lpliveusername, great idea! Thumbs up! Edited February 19, 2014 by Maxthunderer

thedamian58c · February 19, 2014

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.

lpliveusername · February 20, 2014

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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