Attention!!!
It is one thing to master one genre of music, but it is yet another to master two, mash them up and develop an entirely new unique sound. This is exactly what Linkin Park did in the early 2000s when they entered the mainstream music industry. Taking Alternative Rock to new heights with the incorporation of Rap, EDM and Nu Metal, Linkin Park turned the industry as a whole towards a new era of radio friendly rock music. With multi-platinum selling albums alongside global smash hits and awards and accolades from the Grammys to UN Global Leadership Awards, Linkin Park became the best-selling band of the 21st century and one of the best-selling artists in the world.
While we commemorate the first year death anniversary of lead vocalist Chester Bennington, let's look back at this band who left their mark on the Rock music scene as well as becoming pop/rock cultural icons of the new millennium.
Mike Shinoda, Rob Bourdon, and Brad Delson were high school friends who after their graduation recruited Dave Farrell and Joe Hahn to form a band, then called Xero. Initially recording and producing in Shinoda's bedroom studio, the band failed to make headway in terms of a record deal. In 1999, the band recruited Chester Bennington whose vocals complemented those of Shinoda's. In rebranding their name, the band chose the name Lincoln Park and opted to "Linkin Park" in order to obtain the internet domain name - linkinpark.com. With the new sound and new name the band finally landed a record deal with Warner Bros. Records through which they released their debut studio album Hybrid Theory.
It is no secret that the late nineties and the early noughties belonged to Pop. On one end there were the boy/girl bands such as Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, Westlife, Boyzone, All Saints etc. creating a cultural phenomenon in the music world, while on the other end there were the solo Pop stars such as Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Enrique Iglesias, Shakira and Jennifer Lopez who were gaining ground in the industry.
During the release of Hybrid Theory in 2000, Alternative Rock was not a new genre to the charts. We had the likes of Lifehouse, 3 Doors Down, Staind, Matchbox Twenty and The Calling with Creed and Nickelback even topping the charts. The initial releases off of the album - One Step Closer, Crawling and Papercut were well received globally and the critics loved the sound, with Crawling going on to win the Best Hard Rock Performance at the 2002 Grammy Awards.
But the final release In The End was the hit that cemented the band's reckoning force in the music industry. The hit reached the top tiers in the global charts and is now considered their signature song. With a prominent piano riff alongside Shinoda's rapping the verse and Bennington's vocals climaxing on the chorus, the song achieved a perfect balance of their hybrid theory of rap rock. Hybrid Theory went on to become the best selling debut album by a band in the 21st century and was nominated for Best Rock Album at the 2002 Grammy Awards wherein the band was also nominated for Best New Artist (losing to Alicia Keys).
In 2003, the band released their second studio album Meteora which experienced instant commercial success. The band continued with their amalgamation of rap rock, nu metal and alternative rock into the album easily reflected in the hits Somewhere I Belong and Numb. In a collaboration effort with Jay-Z the band mashed his Encore with their Numb which earned them the Best Rap/Sung Collaboration at the 2006 Grammy Awards. Although I believe that nothing can beat the original track. Faint and Breaking the Habit were also memorable songs from the album.
Their third studio album Minutes to Midnight (2007) reached the top in almost all the countries it started and produced their most commercially successful hit What I've Done. The album deviated a little from their nu metal sound and focused more on alternative rock which had taken over the Rock music industry at the time. The album also spawned the singles Bleed It Out and Shadow of the Day which achieved moderate success.
Following in the footsteps of Evanescence (Dare Devil) and Chad Kroeger (Spiderman) Linkin Park recorded New Divide, the main theme for the soundtrack of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The song was an instant hit as it had incorporated elements of electronic music, which alongside the popularity of Electropop and the emergence of EDM enabled the band to keep up with the changing times.
Keeping up with the times to be relevant proved fatal to the band in their fourth studio album A Thousand Suns (2010). In a significant departure from their usual sound the band chose to adopt more electronic and progressive rock forgetting their alternative and rap rock roots. Only The Catalyst proved to be successful from the album with Waiting for the End and Iridescent achieving average success as they should.
In their next album Living Things (2012), the band got the genre mix right with just the right amount of electronic music incorporated into their core alternative and rap rock. Burn it Down was the lead single off the album which experienced commercial and chart success more than any single off the previous album. Castle of Glass is the first song of the band which merged more electronic music into the song and one of the few songs that they got right with this unorthodox mix.
The success for the band with electronic music was followed up with Recharged (2013) an entire album of remixes out of which the track A Light that Never Comes, a collaboration with EDM artist Steve Aoki proved to be a commercial as well as a critical success. This hit cemented the fact that Linkin Park can be adaptable to any era and successful with the new trends and genres emerging in the industry.
The band released their sixth studio album A Hunting Party in 2014 and attempted at a return to their original sound. The record was to be entirely composed of alternative rock with their signature nu metal and rap rock flavour although the band took it further by making the sound more aligned with hard rock. However, the album did not prove to be as successful as the preceding albums, owing mostly to the mainstream being engulfed by EDM and Pop with little to no room for Rock or any other genre for that matter. None of the songs from the album were memorable with the exception of Final Masquerade and received only lukewarm reception from the fans.
Their final album with Chester Bennington - One More Light was released in 2017 which deviated completely from their sound entirely producing a pop rock album incorporating electropop into the record. The lead track Heavy was a collaboration with Pop and R&B artist Kiiara which received polarizing reviews from critics and mixed reception from fans. The album seemed like an attempt to keep up with the era of Ed Sheeran and Adele and failing miserably on the mainstream front. While the album received moderate success, the singles failed to meet the mark. Two months after the release of the album, Bennington took his own life, that shook the entire music industry. One More Light, a slow acoustic single, the title track from the album was released as the last single which received heavy radio airplay due to the lead vocalist's death.
Following the tragedy that befell the band, the members have indicated every intention of continuing with the band. What the outcome of such statements are yet to be seen. The final album's marked difference in terms of genre and the death of Bennington lead many questions as to the future of the band.
However, one thing is for sure, the legacy of Linkin Park, whether this is the end for them or not will live on as a reckoning force in Rock music. Their contribution to Alternative Rock, Nu Metal and Rap Rock will be remembered for generations as their hits In the End, Somewhere I Belong and Numb are now more or less inducted into the hall of fame of rock. Their collision of rap and rock and amalgamating genres will be carried into the future by the likes of inspired artists such as Imagine Dragons and Twenty One Pilots. But most of all Linkin Park shall remain forever in the hearts of those struggling teenagers who grew up in the noughties, because in the end they did matter.
Till the next review...
At Ease!!!
