Superlatives
A Vulture series in which artists judge the best and worst of their own careers.
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Its, in a word,a lot.
Shinoda remembers much of the process well, revisiting the work 20 years later.
(Any legacy rock band would kill to have a YouTube video with billions of views Linkin Parkhastwo.)
And in a post-emo rap world,Hybrid Theorysounds even more ahead of its time.
Below, Shinoda goes over all the highs and lows of 20 years of Linkin Park.
Biggest revelation from revisitingHybrid Theory
We were younger than I remember.
Theoretically, I know we were about 20, 21 years old.
I look at them and I feel like Im looking at two roommates out of college.
Hybrid Theorytrack whose meaning has changed the most over the years
In the End.
Its such a weird one.
The way the chorus came to me was in almost unabashed pessimism.
If you listen to the lyrics, its so pessimistic, and Im not really that pessimistic.
Actually, my friends often accuse me of finding the silver lining in things too often.
Basically, the songs were like an outreach.
And it wasnt a farce.
Thats how I felt at the time.
But in the big picture, thats not who I am.
The songs were like,If you feel this way, come together.We always talked about a catharsis.
They got to get out all these negative and difficult thoughts and emotions.
If there was going to be a calling card, thats it.
It starts off with this really bouncy hip-hop beat.
I was influenced by everyone from Jay-Z to Timbaland Timbo a lot.
I think I was making a beat or something.
I got toKid A,and I was like,Oh man, I dont know about this.
What are they doing?
This is really avant-garde.
Linkin Park album covers, ranked
Ill probably sayHybrid Theoryfor No.
1 that icon of the soldier with the wings.
We had seen the Banksy stuff in art publications likeJuxtapoz.
It was the essence of Banksy that sarcasm, political, and sociopolitical commentary.
We also love the idea of stencil art.
I made the soldier; Frank [Maddocks] stenciled and sprayed it.
I didnt come up with the idea for the wings.
The stencil on its own is a definitive piece of art for the band.
Best-sounding Linkin Park song
Best-written Linkin Park song
This is like picking your favorite children.
[But] Waiting for the End is easily a standout for me.
That was very collaborative between me and Chester on the lyrics.
And he played the verse from Waiting for the End.
I was like, Dude, thats what this song needs.
We werent even listening to the memos so that fix Waiting for the End.
We were just listening to them to see what we should write that day.
Once we matched those two things up, it was one of my favorites.
Its still one of my favorite songs weve ever made.
[2010sA Thousand Suns] had the most happy accidents.
I dont even know how I arrived at that idea.Its such a unique thing to have happened.
He was just so great live.
He had off nights just like anybody else, but his average show was spectacular.
In the studio, Im going to probably side with our fans.
I think its a 17- or 18-second-long scream.
So he just held the note as long as he possibly could.
He was having a really good day in the studio.
I dont remember exactly how far.
And hes like, I dont know how long just to scream that part.
Im like, Dude, Im not touching that vocal.
Im just going to rearrange the song around what you just did.
Best bad review
I immediately go to one that, at the time, was very well-known.
These days, people have forgotten about it a bit.
The European press, but in particular the British press, was really nasty.
I dont know what was going on culturally at the time.
They were so sarcastic and so manipulative and deceptive.
At one point, I did say to somebody, Thats not being said.
Youre the only person thats said that.
Weve done interviews every day, and Ive never heard that thing you just said.
I was really offended.
I was pissed that that was going around.
And all you could do is say No to that.
And theyll just go, Yeah, right.
Eventually, that really drove me on our second album, when we were writingMeteora.
I was like, No.
We can prove that we made the first one by making another one thats just as good.
It was great because, at the end of the day, that story did go away.
Ill tell you the low point, which I cant believe our publicist didnt catch.
We did a photo shoot for a magazine where they shot us individually on a green screen.
Im like, Okay.
The issue came out.
It was all of us superimposed in test tubes in reference to the manufactured band thing.
Thats a huge jump from Were going to assemble you guys on the cover.
We didnt know there was a concept involved, and nobody told us.
They just did it, and the Photoshop was fucking terrible.
We got it, and we immediately called management like, What the hell happened?
You guys didnt know they were going to do this?
They were like, No, and weve already called the magazine, but its out.
They put it out.
Theres nothing we could do.
Fans brought it to the show for us to sign, and we were like, What is this?
To connect with it in a way that is meaningful in their lives.
They mean it literally, in some cases, because theyll tell us the story about what happened.
To have been listening to that statement for 20 years is insane.
Weve always tried to not become numb to that comment, to always respect that statement.
Weve always thought its important to not make a joke out of that.
Its a very confusing thing when you hear something thats that extreme so many times.
We dont take ourselves that seriously.
Im not a doctor.
Im not [physically] saving anybodys life.
Yet weve written some songs that people have found that much meaning in.
Its something were grateful for.
I always remind people: We didnt want to be famous.
We didnt want to be popular for the sake of being popular.
Its a different time.
Now people just want to be famous.
Im always so excited when I hear artists who are creating from a more pure place.
If we got money, we spent it on music stuff every time.
It was never like, Oh, lets buy fancy cars, outfits, jewelry.
Just things that we thought mattered.
Even right now, Im on Twitch five days a week just making shit.
Somebody asked me, Are you making good money on Twitch?
Im like, The Twitch channel doesnt even pay for itself [laughs].
Im just on there making shit.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
