Linkin Park – The 10 Best Songs
Throwing Old School Hip-Hop, Classic Rock and electronic elements into the mix, Linkin Park burst out of the So. Cal music scene. Their debut, “Hybrid Theory” was released in late ’00. Interestingly, the set’s title was the group’s original name.
The aggressive Rap/Rocker “One Step Closer” led the way with turntablist Joe Hahn’s scratching and Brad Delson’s sledgehammer guitar. The break, with Chester Bennington raving “Shut up when I’m talking to you,” was brutal.
Linkin Park has released eight studio albums. The most recent, “From Zero,” which dropped in 2024 followed a seven-year absence due to the suicide of vocalist Chester Bennington.
#10. Given Up (Minutes To Midnight, 2007)
The song is known for Chester Bennington’s 17-second scream. “We got to the bridge, and he (Bennington) knew that he was supposed to scream ‘Put me out of my misery’, but he didn’t know how many measures that part was,” remembered co-vocalist Mike Shinoda. “So he just held the note as long as he possibly could. He was having a really good day in the studio. He had a ton of control.”
“I’m like, “Dude, I’m not touching that vocal. That was amazing. I’m just going to rearrange the song around what you just did.”
#9. What I’ve Done (Minutes To Midnight, 2007)
Certified six-times platinum it was the band’s most commercially successful single in terms of pure sales and reached #7 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance at the 52nd Grammy Awards but did not win – AC/DC’s “War Machine” took the honor.
#8. Somewhere I Belong (Meteora, 2003)
The first single from Linkin Park’s second studio album, the song topped Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Tracks and Modern Rock Tracks charts.
#7. Crawling (Hybrid Theory, 2001)
According to Bennington, “Crawling is about feeling like I had no control over myself in terms of drugs and alcohol, hence the line “These wounds they will not heal…”
#6. The Emptiness Machine (From Zero, 2024)
The band’s first single to feature vocalist Emily Armstrong and drummer Colin Brittain had a several week run atop the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart.
The track was also the band’s first single not to feature the late vocalist Chester Bennington and drummer Rob Bourdon, who decided to sit out the band’s comeback.
#5. One Step Closer (Hybrid Theory, 2000)
The debut single off Linkin Park’s debut album closed every concert until 2007. That year, Linkin Park began playing “One Step Closer” toward the beginning of their live performances and sometimes at the end.
The song is rightly known for Bennington shouting the classic line, “Shut up when I’m talking to you!” The phrase was lifted from an argument with producer Don Gilmore over the song’s direction.
#4. Faint (Meteora, 2003)
The track proved popular on Modern Rock chart (now Alternative Rock) holding the top spot for six-weeks (with 37 weeks on the chart) and landed at #2 for two weeks on the Mainstream Rock Tracks.
#3. Lost (Meteora – Re-Release, 2023)
The song was initially recorded in 2002 for Linkin Park’s second studio album. It had been fully formed at the time, mixed and mastered along with the other songs but was eventually shelved. Finally, the song was officially released on February 10th, 2023, to promote the band’s 20th anniversary re-release of “Meteora.”
“Finding ‘Lost’ was like finding a favorite photo you had forgotten you’d taken, like it was waiting for the right moment to reveal itself,” explained Shinoda.
#2. In The End (Hybrid Theory, 2000)
The story goes that Bennington didn’t want “In The End” to make the final cut for “Hybrid Theory” – because it obviously didn’t fit the harder songs around it.
“In the End” went to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 during its 38-weeks on the chart. It topped the Modern Rock Tracks chart for five weeks and reached #3 on Mainstream Rock, spending 40-weeks on the survey.
On February 27th, 2024, “In The End” was certified Diamond (10x platinum) in the U.S. by the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA). A few months later, “In the End” ranked among the 100 most streamed songs of all-time on Spotify with over 2-billion streams.
#1. Numb (Meteora, 2003)
In 2022, “Numb” became the second song by the band (after “In The End”) to surpass 1 billion streams on Spotify. A year later, it became the band’s first to surpass two billion views on YouTube. As of September 2024, the music video has over 2.3 billion views on the platform.
As expected, “numb” topped both the Mainstream and Modern Rock charts.
Linkin Park, largely inactive since ’17’s “One More Light,” introduced Emily Armstrong, co-founder of Dead Sara, as their new co-vocalist (with Mike Shinoda) and Colin Brittain, a songwriter and producer, as drummer Rob Bourdon’s replacement, during a ‘24 live performance event.
Linkin Park:
Emily Armstrong – Vocals
Mike Shinoda – Vocals/Guitar/Keyboards
Brad Delson – Lead Guitar
Joe Hahn – Turntables/Synthesizers
Dave “Phoenix” Ferrell – Bass
Colin Brittain – Drums
Former Members:
Chester Bennington – Vocals
Rob Bourdon – Drums
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