Linkin Park's Golden Ticket (ft. Elamin Abdelmahmoud)

In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy are joined Elamin Abdelmahmoud (@elamin88), host of Pop Chat (@popchatcbc) to discuss Linkin Park’s 2000 debut Hybrid Theory. A re-exploration of this album for its 20th anniversary in 2020, and after the death of Chester Bennington in 2017, reveal a long-lasting impact for fans of the band and their relationship with vulnerability and emotional space. Find out more about Linkin Park’s influence, Bennington’s reaction when the label wanted him to ditch Mike Shinoda and go solo, and the immense success of Hybrid Theory on this week’s podcast.

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See you next week for another episode of CHP.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Why does it feel like night today? Something in here
is not right today? Why am I so uptight today?
A new episode of Columbia House Party is all I
got left, Jake, what's up?

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Man?

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Not much? Feeling feeling uptight? Mmmm? Whatever? The other rhyming word.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Was, yeah, something in here is not right today? Why
am I so uptight today?

Speaker 4 (00:43):
Come on?

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Yeah? Feeling feeling not not not right and uptight?

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Yeah, there you go, that's not I'm not a good
tagline for the podcast. We've had a few of these
opening lyrics over the course of the podcast that fit
the podcast really well. And something's not right? So uptight?
Is that one works too?

Speaker 4 (01:04):
Man?

Speaker 3 (01:05):
It does speak to our I don't know existences.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
I guess uptightness and not rightness.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
I was gonna say sensibilities, but I don't know if
that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
I don't know if I don't think that's right. I
don't think a sensibility.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
We're filling time.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
Well, thank god we have a guest today, because you're
seriously not on your game. Out of the gate here, Jake.
I know this was really fun. I had so much
fun this week going back and listening to this band
in prep for this one. And I know that a
lot of what we're going to talk about today is
not the fun elements of this band. There's a lot

(01:41):
to sort through and a lot of heaviness with it.

Speaker 4 (01:43):
But I.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Don't think I expected it to hold up as well
as it does. It's just like it's still rips and
I still really really enjoy it. The connection here is
really just that today's guest wrote such a great piece
on this album that I was just like, I like
wanting and wanting and wanting to get this episode in,
and finally I was like, we're just doing it. So today, Jake,

(02:06):
we're talking about one of the most successful and influential
bands from the early two thousands, New Metal Boom, one
that blurred the lines between genres, delivered hit after hit,
and open up a door into empathetic, vulnerable lyricism in
an arena that had rarely welcomed it. Today we're talking
about Lincoln Park and their two thousand debut hybrid theory.

Speaker 5 (02:30):
War w Ight.

Speaker 4 (02:45):
Today.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Some of the year's not right today.

Speaker 4 (02:47):
I'm still what tight to day Apparently it is.

Speaker 5 (02:49):
Oh, I got that.

Speaker 6 (02:50):
I don't know what stressed being first and then how
the pressure was fed, But I know just what it
feels like to have a voice at the back of
my head set up holding.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
A side spas on a close faced watch we time
I used.

Speaker 4 (03:01):
To last every time I.

Speaker 5 (03:04):
So I know that what's time to.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
Sink or swim?

Speaker 5 (03:06):
And the basic side is hearing me braking ane, Yes,
I come, king on my back?

Speaker 4 (03:12):
Yes, whoa went and sat up my head?

Speaker 5 (03:15):
That's I co can stop? I'm here went there side
face side it does get don't cut bo get up
on my back?

Speaker 4 (03:25):
Yes?

Speaker 5 (03:25):
Side got whoa went and sat on my head? And
I got yes stops I face it side yes side asking.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
How was paper Cut the lead track off of hyperd
Theory and the the fourth single and Jake very very good.
I think album opener in terms of setting the tone
for the band and the album that is to come.
Obviously was only the fourth single, but pretty pretty killer opener.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
I think, yeah, I'm sure I'll bring this up later,
but there's I think three songs on this album that
like ten seconds of each, A specific ten seconds of
each gets stuck in my head to this day randomly,
and the chorus that song is one of them.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah, Yes, the ten seconds that Shirley gets stuck in
your head? Is you walking around with just shut up
when I'm talking to you? Shut up in your head. So,
as I mentioned off the top of the impetus for
this episode was not necessarily the usual natural connection, but
an excellent article from back in October at BuzzFeed News,

(04:31):
Lincott Park were a day one spreadsheet presence of a
band that I wanted to talk about. But we are
lucky enough to get the author of that article at
BuzzFeed News on We're joined today by Elmin abdulm Ma mood. Elemen.
Thanks for joining us man.

Speaker 4 (04:45):
Oh my god, my pleasure. I am so excited to
do this. Thank you so much for having me. Guys.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
If you don't know, Elemin is a culture writer of
BuzzFeed News and the host of party Lines at CBC
News and the host of the very excellent pop Chat
podcast CBC. You can follow him for all his great
work at Elemine eighty eight on Twitter. Another fun fact
about Elmin before we get into hybrid theory, I read
in researching for this episode, ALI mean that you're only
five foot eight.

Speaker 4 (05:15):
Yeah, that's what the internet says. I have. There's a
website and I would like to see this website for slander.
The website is heightzone dot com. I don't know where
they got random biographical information about me, most of which
appears to be correct, except for two pieces of information.
One they say that I'm American, I am not. I'm Canadian,

(05:35):
and the second one is I am allegedly five to
eight and boy, like, I was like, oh, this is
it's interesting that this is what sets me off. I
need to go into my rage gave and listen to
some Lincoln Park to soothe myself because I am furious.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah, that is uh, look as someone you're on a
podcast with a shorter man and also a podcast with
someone who's right in that range of Am I lying
about my height because I'm five ten borderline five eleven
and that's always the height where you know, either you
can round up the six foot on the dating apps
or you just be honest about it and people assume

(06:10):
you're rounding up from like five eight. So there's a
lot of too many sub six foot guys on.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
My size and just get and like have no sense
of what anything is. Like you guys are like, oh,
I'm only five ten, five eleven, I'm not that tall.
I'm like, no, untrue. You are both tall. From my perspective,
you are both tall.

Speaker 4 (06:30):
But the thing is, I don't claim tallness or shortness
for that matter. I just claim my height like I'm
just like, hey, I am five eleven and I would
like to live as a five eleven person. And I
don't want to say that I'm six feet all right,
is not a thing that I'm interested in. But similarly, like,
don't don't don't drag my name through the mud like this,
or specifically three inches lower to the mud. That is

(06:51):
not cool.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Yeah, you're not pulling a Fred van Vliet here where
you're rounding up to six feet you know, when you
got your shoes on and stuff, you're that's.

Speaker 4 (07:00):
Not my play. That is not my play.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
Yeah. So you also you also mentioned before we came
on that you were wearing a jersey today, and I'm
curious as to what jersey you're wearing.

Speaker 4 (07:09):
It is a Liverpool jersey. It is a Liverpool Oh
oh interest, I've never gotten that response before.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
Jake is a Tottenham fan.

Speaker 4 (07:19):
So oh, what is it like being third or fourth?
I don't know who even remembers.

Speaker 3 (07:23):
I mean, it's better than it's better than what it
usually is.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
That's to shit.

Speaker 4 (07:28):
I will say that like I'm I'm Tattenham adjacent in that,
like I am. Similar to how a lot of people
say they have a lot of black friends. I have
a lot of Tottenham supporter friends, and so I try
not to slander Tottenham too much. But also it's just
fun to do it. It's too it's too easy. I
can't lie.

Speaker 3 (07:46):
I gotta say being a fan of both the Maple
Leafs and Tottenham and the Blue Jays, and I guess
it is kind of like just take your shots. Nothing
thing I can say.

Speaker 5 (08:01):
No.

Speaker 3 (08:02):
Actually, actually it's fun being shit all the time.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
Yeah, look, it's very much. I know that this meme
is overused. The bane like you, you are, I was
born in the darkness. I didn't see light whatever.

Speaker 5 (08:14):
I mean.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
There's one more connection here, I want to mention before
we get into the Lincoln Park discussion. And I'm hoping
that this is more accurate in researching you than the
five foot eight fact we were at Queen's at the
same time we were. Yeah, I was there four to
eight and the Internet told me you were there from
five to eleven.

Speaker 4 (08:34):
That is I'm entirely correct. Yeah, we did overlap. Yeah,
I was. Yes, I was. Also, man, I was there
for six years. Six years, which is a mighty long
time to be there.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Huh. Yeah, I was there four I'm a Calma wit
so Yeah, I was there four to eight, and then
I was back a bunch in O nine and twenty
twenty eight or twenty ten to like visit friends and stuff.
But I actually I went back in the fall of
twenty nineteen to like speak on this panel, and that
was the first time I had been back like since then.

Speaker 4 (09:03):
Oh wow, see, like I might. So I'm from Kingston.
I spent oh cool, spent my youth there, So I was.
I was born in Sudan, but I moved to Cana
when I was twelve, and from twelve until like I
guess twenty one twenty two, ish Ion was my home.
So I go. I go back quite often, and like,
I don't know, man, I love to be dragged as

(09:25):
a as a queen's kid, but also like I'm very
proud of it. Like it's both both are true. Yeah,
I mean it can be both. Like I look, it's
not like I cover sports. It's not like I use
my business degree or anything. It's just I happened to
have gone to Queens Ell. I mean, I'm curious, so
you moved here from the sit down when you were twelve.
This is something we can get into a little bit more,

(09:46):
because obviously Lincoln Park was an important band to you
not long after that age. But how much was music
a part of like that transition for you, whether it
was like, you know, connecting with friends or just finding
a place here like was that or was music something
more like as you got into your teens it became
a bigger part of your life. No, it was honest,

(10:07):
it was pretty immediate. Like for me, I came from
Sudan and I didn't really know a lot of English
and I had no friends here, and so like the radio,
it was one of the first friends that I made,
which is to say that I listened to a lot
of Butterfly by crazy Town, Big Song and also Nelly
Furtado's on Like a Bird. That was the year that

(10:28):
I came and like music became my way of making
a lot of friends. One of my first close friends
was someone who listened to a lot of metal. It
is not immediately obvious that an immigrant kid from Sudan
who lives in Kingston who doesn't speak much English, would
listen to metal as their first genre. But that was
because of the friends that I made when I first

(10:50):
arrived in this country. So music was very much like
the path in and I would say like the first
band that I actually fell in love with was probably
Disturbed also that era.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
Yes, yeah, speaking Blake's language.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Disturbed was like maybe grade eight, grade nine, grade ten,
like my favorite band, and I legitimately thought that they
were like the best band in the world, and like, yeah,
I liked Lincoln Park and slip Nod and Limp Biscuit
and stuff like that, but Disturbed was it for me.

Speaker 4 (11:17):
Yeah, listen between I would say like ninety nine to
two thousand and one, like Disturbed ran the town. Like
there's just I can't remember a band having as much
of an impact on me as they did not. But
this is a Disturbed episode. But you know, like there
is there's something about the energy they had and like
the vibe that they had that was kind of you know,
it was like you listen to the music, I'm like,

(11:38):
I'm a little bit worried about me, but also I
really like this.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah it's good, So let's change this out to Lincoln
Park obviously the band we're talking about today, and they're
not you know, they're not too far removed from that
same kind of moment, and you know, rough genre, like
the music doesn't sound the same as Disturbed, but I
feel like a lot of bands like that kind of
got lumped in together. So all I mean, you wrote,

(12:02):
you wrote that great piece for BuzzFeed News about the
twentieth anniversary of Hybrid Theory, and I want to talk
about that a little bit more when we get deeper
into the album. But I guess, just at a higher level,
why did you want to come on and do this
episode with us and why is Lincoln Park so important
to you?

Speaker 4 (12:19):
Well, you know, I was thinking a lot about this
this anniversary of Hyber Theory, which was in October twenty
twenty twenty year anniversary. And I guess like that number
hit me kind of hard because I was trying to
remember all the emotions that I was going through that
that album kind of grounded me in, emotions of feeling
kind of you know, in a foreign place, emotions of

(12:40):
having fights with my parents, probably about not you know,
being able to go out on a Friday night or whatever.
But like, but the emotions, even though the fights were dumb,
but the emotions were so real and so like intense
because you feel everything so intense in that period, And
I was like, my god, I can't believe that he's
been twenty years and I'm thinking about that album that

(13:01):
I think if you go back and listen to now,
and you guys were mentioning this about like like a
song like paper Cut, Like I think part of the
reason it sounds so fresh is that, like it's just
such a good way to immediately plug into those emotions,
like there is no filter, Like when I listen to
those songs, I am immediately twelve and thirteen. Again, I'm not,
you know, it doesn't like I actually like I don't

(13:22):
think I can listen to it as an adult, Like
I don't think I'm capable of doing that because when
I put it on, I'm like, I'm in that world.
And there's something timeless about about that, because like not
every album is like that. You know, there's lots of
albums from that period of time that you listen to
and you're like, no, that just sounds like a two
thousand and one kind of record, but not this, Like
you just like it's something about it that is just

(13:44):
so visceral.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
Yeah, the thing that for me, this is a I
guess kind of weird, but it puts you in the
time and age. But like, I don't know, I felt
like I was back on roller blades when I went
back to listen to this album. It's just like that's
the rough age. All Right, we gotta take a break.
We're gonna talk a lot more about Ligot Park and
hybrid theory after this, all right, Jake, I forgot to

(14:20):
ask you before that usual first break what your connection
is the like at Park. Are sorry to leave you out, Jake.

Speaker 3 (14:25):
Oh, that's fine, I mean, not as strong as you guys.
I think I own this album because I think everybody
of our sort of generation owns this album. I'm kind
of unsure in my memory of that. They weren't a
band that stuck with me for a long time, but

(14:45):
obviously I was very aware of them throughout their existence
because they were so huge. I remember I got really like,
very much like I think probably ninety percent of their demographic.
You know, when this came out, I was eleven or twelve,
I guess, so right in that like I'm angry and
sad but I don't know why. So perfect for Lincoln Park,

(15:08):
and I remember really liking it when it came out.
I had heard One Step Closer first, and I was like,
that's a cool song. I think maybe the reason that
I didn't ever get like super deep into them is
because they kind of came out right when I was
kind of transitioning out of being into sort of the
new metal stuff and I was more finding my way
into like punk and those kind of things. So while

(15:30):
I like this, it was kind of in giant air
quotes uncool to me almost immediately, and so I think
I kind of moved away from it and I never
really went back to it until recently. But like I said,
I've had other than like the inescapable singles on this
record that, like everybody knows, I've had just like bits

(15:50):
and pieces of it swirling in my brain and like
not even really being able to identify what songs they are,
but like knowing they're Lincoln Park, and then going back
listening to it being like, oh, that's what that song
that I've been kind of singing to myself for twenty
years is, which I think speaks to which I think
speaks to them.

Speaker 1 (16:07):
I challenge you to go back and look at press
photos of them from the time of this album and
come to face to face with the fact that you
clearly had no idea what cool look like or was,
because these guys had it.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
I will say, I think a reason I didn't go
back to them they didn't stick with me, is a
thing that bothers me to this day. And if you
watch their early music videos from this album, the SlowMo
poses of their DJ hitting his turntables and their music
videos drives me crazy this day. It's an irrational thing.

Speaker 4 (16:44):
Cool.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
No, it's absolutely not the coolest part.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
They also look like fight club extras.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
So they do, they really do?

Speaker 1 (16:56):
All right, We got to go through a bit of
the band's background here just to fill you, and I
know the Lincoln Park stories been well told, so I'm
going to just kind of zoom through it here. Mike Shanoda,
Rob Bordon, and Brad Delson were three high school friends
in an LA suburb. After high school, they started a
band called Zero That's x e RO the Cool Way
to Spell Zero. They recorded and produced in Shnoda's bedroom studio,

(17:21):
and this was back in nineteen ninety six. They really
got no traction. So the vocalist that they had paired
up with at that point, Mark Wakefield, he left. They
were auditioning singers and Jeff Blue, who at that point
was with Zoma Music, recommended Chester Bennington, who was formerly
of Gray Days, So Bennington hooks up with them. They
changed the name from Zero to Hybrid Theory, and Shnoda

(17:44):
and Bennington immediately it's like, Okay, that vocal trade off
is going to be that's going to be kind of
the staple of what we're doing here in blending genres.
As Bennington told Krang, I noticed that Mike's rapping was
really good, and I felt I could improve on their
melodies as far as where they're horuses were concerned. Something
did tell me that, yeah, this is the one. This
was the golden ticket to get inside Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.

(18:07):
In nineteen ninety nine, via an online street team, they
released the Hybrid Theory EP, which at that point was
a self titled EP. Obviously they would eventually change the name,
and that included this song, which you can get a
feel for where they were at in terms of their
sound of evolution at this point. This song is and

(18:29):
one and It did appear on one of the special
anniversary re releases of Hybrid Theory. There have been like
fifty different releases of Hybrid Theory over time. This is
and one one of their earliest tracks and actually the
first song they wrote as a band with Chester as
a part of the writing process.

Speaker 5 (18:51):
Justin Oh.

Speaker 7 (19:04):
Left up the Stone, no One to Kill Me, to
Kill my Elma.

Speaker 1 (19:37):
King a part of my Heart to find release, I'm
taking you one of my blood to bring me peace,
taking a part of my Heart to find release.

Speaker 6 (19:43):
He said you one of my blood to bring me
peace breaking a part of my Part to five release.

Speaker 3 (19:48):
Taking me one of my blood to bring.

Speaker 8 (19:49):
Me peace breaking a part of my Part to five release,
Taking you one of my.

Speaker 4 (19:53):
Blood to break peace.

Speaker 5 (19:59):
Kid.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
So, they released the self titled EP. Not a lot
of label interests, and it's not that the songs. Obviously
you go back and listen to and one and it's
a Lincoln Park song. It doesn't sound too far a
cry from what would eventually make the Hybrid Theory album.
None of these songs off the EP actually made that album.

(20:32):
There was some up and down here. Dave Farrell left
the band for about eighteen months and the band was
Baggy and Back because the chemistry felt off without him,
but he was part of another band that was more
successful at that point, so they released his EP and
it's not getting traction. They do a bunch of showcase shows.
Jeff Blue had invited a bunch of label reps to
a rehearsal that they did, and they were universally passed on.

(20:54):
The feeling was that the styles clashing was too different
and that they you know, Lincoln Park in retrospective said
that they felt because they didn't fit the quote unquote
frat rock vibe of bands similar to them at that time,
that labels didn't really see it now. In a bit
of good fortune, Jeff Blue then moved to Warner Brothers

(21:15):
as a VP, and he signed them to a development
deal in nineteen ninety nine. He also suggested they changed
their name. Lincoln Park is a nod to the park
of the same name different spelling in Santa Monica and
not unfortunately, Lincoln Park in Cambridge, Ontario, where I played
just a ton of baseball around the time that Lincoln

(21:36):
Park would have came out. It was extremely funny to
me that Lincoln Park was a park that I went
to all the time.

Speaker 4 (21:43):
Jake.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
Sorry to get a five one nine talk in here,
but had to shoehorn at least one reference.

Speaker 3 (21:47):
I'm used to it, Jake.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
By the way, sorry, I should have explained when Ellamin
was talking about growing up in Kingston that Kingston is
on the other side of Toronto, also along the four
oh one, but the opposite direction.

Speaker 3 (21:57):
Kingston's actually the one town that I know where did
geographic weeks that's in between tron Montreal.

Speaker 1 (22:03):
Oh right, yeah, that would have passed it a bunch
of times.

Speaker 4 (22:06):
Yeah, they're like, oh, the place you stop between exactly
the train.

Speaker 3 (22:09):
The train stops there.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
I know, Yeah, I mean that's what Cambridge is. Cambridge
is the en route when you're driving from Toronto to
the US via like the Detroit Way. That's where you
stop to get a coffee and lunch.

Speaker 4 (22:20):
Big facts. There's a Wendy's there. I'm a fan.

Speaker 5 (22:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yeah, it's a great place to pull off the highway
and then pull right back on the highway. So I
was in Cambridge when hybrid theory was coming out. So
let's dive in a little bit. So they get signed
to this developmental deal to Warner Brothers. Thanks in large
part to Jeff Blue. The label, though, was listening and
wasn't super impressed right away, and as the band told

(22:46):
Alternative Nation in twenty seventeen, the label actually tried to
get Chester to break off from the rest of the
band and do something in a more traditional rock sound.
This is Mike Shanoda relaying this story in twenty seventeen.
He said, his loyalty was there from the very beginning
when we were recording Hybrid Theory. We're basically a new
band with a new record deal. The label could have

(23:08):
shelved us at any moment, and we were halfway through
recording when our A and R started losing faith in us.
He took Chester aside and suggested he take the band over,
or put me on keyboards, or even kick me out.
He told him, you're the talent. You should make a
rock record. You don't need the wrapping. Chester finished the
conversation and came in to tell us, and I said,
so what did you say to him? And Chester said,

(23:29):
I told him to go fuck himself. So you can
tell that there's a quick chemistry there. I have to say,
you know, Jake, there have been overtures of other people
to you know co host this podcast to kick both
of us off, I'm sure, and I have responded to
them similarly, telling them to go fuck themselves. I hope

(23:49):
you would do the same for me.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
I usually respond, yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (23:53):
Okay, So let's dive into the album. I mean, there's
a lot to there's a lot to kind of discuss here,
and obviously the music is unique and very good, and
it's this cool kind of blending of like voice wise,
it's Stone Tuble Pilots, there's some Deftones in there, some
of the Smiths, there's some new metal, there's some whatever
Shnoda was doing at the time. But I think what

(24:16):
stood out most to me and definitely stands out most
going back and revisiting it, is the lyrical content here
from Chester. I'm going to play Crawling, which was the
third single off the album here as kind of an example,
and coming out of that clip, we'll talk a lot
about the writing process here and the lyrical side of
Lincoln Park that you know, fourteen fifteen year old me

(24:37):
maybe slept on but grew to appreciate over time. This
is the third single off every Theory, Crawling.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
There's something inside of me that falls beneath the surface, consuming, confusing,
the slack of self control of fear is no worrying, controling.

Speaker 7 (25:28):
I can't see, just find myself again.

Speaker 3 (25:33):
My walls are closing in sets of coms. Too much pressure.

Speaker 8 (25:40):
I felt this way before somewhere instant shady were.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
Now forgive me for going through the singles in uh
backwards order here, But ell, I mean, what was what
was your first introduction to Lincoln Park? It or I
guess not song wise, because I think I think everyone
had the same uh kind of first first introduction with
One Step Closer and then in the end as a
one two singles punch. But what were your like initial

(26:49):
impressions and did you like them right away when you
heard them, and kind of what stuck out about them
for you?

Speaker 4 (26:54):
Well, you know, so my introduction to the Lincoln Park was,
I guess the same as everyone else, which it's just
that like period of ubiquity of One Step Closer and
in the end, which were like those two singles were released,
I think like a month apart in total, Like it
was just like a really short period of time and
uh shout out to kar Rock, one of five to
seven Kingston's best rock they were, but they were bumping

(27:18):
these songs really hard, and so like as someone who's
like trying to learn English but also just trying to
like listen to what Canadians are, like this this is
my sophisticated understanding what the radio did at the time.
Like it just like was like a constant really catchy melodies,
right like one Step Closers has One Step Closer has
catchy melodies in the end has incredibly catchy melodies, and

(27:40):
so they just like get stuck in your head and
you're like, why am I still thinking of these songs?
I used to love really wholesome Sudanese music that it's
like about like the fucking Nile or whatever, and like
now I hear I am like shouting shut up when
I when I'm talking to you. And so I think
it was just like the incredible ability that they had
around a melody. And also just like I think I

(28:02):
was scared of One Step Closer, like I was scared
of what Chester did with his voice, because I don't
think I'd ever heard anything quite.

Speaker 3 (28:10):
Like that before.

Speaker 4 (28:12):
Even but if you remember that period of time in
new metal, like there weren't a lot of people who
were doing that there were before that, and there were
after that, but just in that small window of time
in the year two thousand, you know, I would say, like,
not many people were screaming like that on the radio,
and so that was that was my introduction, is being like,

(28:32):
what is this?

Speaker 1 (28:33):
I'm scared of it, but also I love it. Yeah,
that's good, that's great. And you know, like Bennington said,
you know, the melodies is where he could kind of
fit in it, and that that obviously pulls it all
together and makes it a lot. I mean, it makes
for better songs, but it also makes it more marketable,
I'm sure. And it's usually the Bennington parts that kind
of carry the more emotional weight, both because of his
vocal style and because so for background. The writing process

(28:57):
here was generally, at least for hybrid theory and medior
bur Mike and Brad would write the music, and then
Mike and Chester would work on the lyrics together. Chester
had a very by all accounts of very painful childhood
in contrast to Mike's more standard suburban upbringing. As Shannoda
told iHeartRadio, it was kind of a peanut butter and

(29:18):
jelly situation. And the goal was and This is again
Shanoda to have interpretations of universal feelings, emotions, and experiences
and as everyday emotions you talk about and think about.
Bennington expanded a little bit on this to Rolling Stone
in two thousand and two. It's easy to fall into
that thing, poor poor me. That's where songs like Crawling

(29:39):
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. Now, Jake, we've talked a lot over the
course of this podcast about how the tone in pop
punk and emo kind of shifted over time to be

(30:00):
you know, very you know, borderline misogynistic or talking about
you know you did this to me, you hurt me,
to be very inward facing. And that kind of started
with Blink one a two in a jokey way, and
you know, acts like Dashboard Confessional and I feel like
Chester Bennington really pushed this exploration of, you know, how

(30:20):
our traumas shape our actions, but how that's not an excuse,
and he goes into that, you know, with prospective substance abuse,
with perspective, the sexual assault, the experience, the bullying he
was a victim of. And I think that, you know,
laying it all out there as these are things that
I'm dealing with, and these are the traumas that have
shaped who I am, but also maintaining that level of

(30:41):
ownership over how you process that and how you put
that back out into the world. And again, I don't
think I was at all consciously processing this at age
fourteen fifteen, and probably a lot of other people weren't either,
But that's such a core part of the Lincoln Park
experience in these early albums and especially Chester. I'm wondering

(31:01):
your thoughts on that, Jacob, And if you know, when
you went back to revisit this album this week, if that,
if you felt that and if it came through for you.

Speaker 3 (31:09):
Yeah, I mean again I'll say yes and no and
only know in the sense kind of like how what
Ellamin said a few minutes ago, but how he can't
really listen to this as an adult because it is
such like a time and place record I think for me,
because I kind of perhaps unfairly kind of dismissed because

(31:33):
they got so big and they were so associated with
sort of a type of music that I had kind
of left behind, so to speak. I never really like
took their emotionality, I guess all that seriously, and I
was just kind of like, Okay, that's kind of a
fun song. I like the song whatever, I know, like
the other that. Like, they were just kind of like
in the end band to me for a long time.

(31:54):
And then when Chester passed, all of the tributes and
writings about him really kind of took me as a shock,
Like I didn't know that people looked to this band
that way, and it was kind of surprising to me
because they're just not a band I associated with true

(32:16):
emo like True I was kind of put them in
the box with like your Corns, I guess which not
the corn doesn't also talk about serious issues and have
very deep connections with people. But they're a band that
I never really looked at in that way, and I
felt the same link in Park. But then when Chester died,
I was kind of like, oh wow, people whose music

(32:39):
tastes are very similar to mine look to this band
and this guy this way, and it made me sort
of not fully reevaluate, like the music still doesn't really
grab me, but I also think that's because I can't
listen to as an adult because they're it's like hybrid
theory Lincoln Park, and so it's like very much a thing,
like a specific thing. But I did find it in

(33:00):
how deeply people feel connected to Chester's lyrics and his vocals,
and then going back to it now with maybe more
of a more objective viewpoint, I definitely get it more
than I think I ever gave it credit for beforehand.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
Ella, mean, where do you fall on that? I mean,
obviously you talked about how the emotion in the songs
kind of gripped you, But was that was there an
understanding of kind of the lyrical content or was that
more of a kind of post factor reflection for you
realizing that, you know, hey, Chester and Lincoln Park were
kind of opening up these topics.

Speaker 9 (33:36):
Well, it was also it's kind of the conversations that enable,
you know, like the people I knew who were listening
to Lincoln Park were much more comfortable talking about their
emotion and their damage than other people.

Speaker 4 (33:47):
And I think it took me a long time to
realize how powerful that was because I just thought, like, oh,
everybody does this, and it's like not true at all.
And you kind of get to realize that a little
bit later in life in a sense. And so what
was powerful about their legacy? And I agree with you
that like the force of it hit me all over
again after Tester's death, but like it was really the

(34:08):
way that we can park created a space for people
to feel and and have those emotions. And like, one
of the people that I talked to for that piece
was Mike Shanoda, and he actually talked about how like
one Step Closer was the song that the radio played,
but then everybody came to their concert and they had
this massive Catharsism moment because so many of the other

(34:28):
songs are much more deeply emotional, and they like they
allow themselves to get hurt and get angry and get
bitter and process those emotions together in the music. And
so it ended up converting a lot of the fans
who didn't know what to expect because they just thought
that they were the shut up when I'm talking to
you band. But then they would you know, show up
and like have this like deeply emotional experience and be like,
what the fuck is happening? Why am I feeling all

(34:50):
these things? And you know what, like I hear you
when you say that you thought that they were the
kind of like the in the End band in the
sense of like sometimes a band gets so big that
you're like, ah, like they're just that this they're the
band that does that one song, and that works against
it still works against them, like even now. But but
they got they got deep cuts, man, they got like

(35:10):
they're not even like bangers. They're just like this song
is like really emotional and like the only reason it's
here is to just process this emotion.

Speaker 3 (35:17):
And I think that's a good point too, because I
feel like because they became like the in the End
or like the numb Encore guys, I feel like, like
I don't know me and as bigger fans of the band,
perhaps it guys disagree, but I feel like the songs
of theirs that got like ridiculously huge are not like

(35:38):
they're good songs. I don't mean that is like good,
but like in the End doesn't move the needle for
me a lot.

Speaker 5 (35:53):
It starts with I don't know why.

Speaker 4 (35:56):
It doesn't need no matter how hard you try to
keep that in mind.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
Aside as Roger.

Speaker 5 (36:01):
Explaining a due time, Oh my old time is a
valuable thing.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
Watch it flop by as the pendulum swings. Watch a
countdown to the end of the day. The clock takes
life away. It's so much, really it didn't look down.

Speaker 5 (36:14):
Below, watch the time go right out the windows, trying
to hold off it.

Speaker 3 (36:18):
Didn't even know or wasted ads to watch you. I
kept everything inside.

Speaker 5 (36:23):
Didn't even know.

Speaker 4 (36:24):
I tried it all fell apart.

Speaker 5 (36:26):
What it mentally will eventually be a pummaro time. I
tried it so and got so far. It doesn't even
I had to love it doesn't even.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
Jake to to your point about the you know, the
main songs maybe not hitting you as well it was.
It's interesting to go back and read some of the
retrospectives on this and like, you know, Ian Cohen uh
said that other than the singles, the albums like pretty
for some of the rest of the songs are pretty forgettable,
and I don't I don't feel that way at all,
Like I think, I think run Away and a Place
for My Head and a Cure and Cure for the Itch,

(37:36):
like those are all songs that fit really well and
create like a pretty complete emotional experience over the course
of the album. With respect to in the end. Yeah,
it probably did put expectations or the way they were
framed kind of you know, out of their control. It
was obviously a very very major success. It was their

(37:56):
second single and their highest charting and you know, there
is still I don't think that's a bad song, Jake.
I think that the piano's nice. I think it's It's
one of the best examples of that contrast between Shanoda
and Bennington. You know, the band had also in the
writing process really pushed experimenting with with Chester's voice and
what his identity as a singer would be, because I

(38:17):
guess he was, you know, to hear Shanoda tell it,
he would like fall into that habit that all of
us do when we sing songs of bands we like,
and he would try to sing like other singers subconsciously,
and I feel like, you know, them, finding what Chester's
voice is was an important part of that process for them.
But you know, the successive in the end to Ella

(38:39):
Mean's earlier pointed to his entire essay at BuzzFeed News
is that the enormity of that song did open up
those things, and Bennington told MTV around that time, I
can't talk about this crappy thing that happened to me
and expect him being Shanoda, to be able to sing it.
It has to be vague enough for both of us
to go we can relate to it, and we found

(39:00):
that by writing in that way, our lyrics were hitting
home with a lot of different people and a lot
of different age groups, and that's something that Gilmour helped
them work through. And Ell mean, I know you wanted
to talk about Gilmore's involvement with this album a little bit,
so I think that's maybe a natural time to give
your Gilmore feelings, because it does sound like, you know,

(39:20):
he had a good hand and kind of massaging all
these disparate parts into what was the finished product.

Speaker 4 (39:27):
But the best part is like they didn't really like him,
Like that's you know, like so they Mike Shout was
given this interview where he actually like told people that
the part where Chester's shouting shut up when I'm talking
to you. Perhaps the part that Leaky Park is most
well known for is not only about Don Gilmore, but

(39:48):
directly to the face of Don Gilmore as he sitting
there recording this song. Because because like Don Gillore was
like big for producing a lot of like big rock bands,
like he did, like Eve six, he did like Lit.
He's the guy that a label calls when they're like,
we want a good rock hit on the radio and
we want it to sound awesome, And so he shows up.

(40:08):
He's got this unbelievable talent in Chester and he's like,
I don't really know what to do with this hip
hop thing. You guys have like a weird additional part,
but whatever, And like from the way that Shanoda describes it,
he actually sounds like he was quite dismissive of how
to like fully incorporate that into the record, and so
they had like a really you know, tough and tenuous

(40:31):
relationship with him when they were working with him. Now
they obviously the records sold big. It's a top selling
record of this millennium, like presumably that's why they brought
him back for media or they're like, fuck he's bad,
but whatever, he's also good. But it's so interesting to
me that like he's the inspiration behind such rage and
it's because he wanted to put them in this box

(40:54):
because he's like, I know what I can make you.
I know the thing that you know, the radio wants
to hear, and in fact, the radio did want to hear,
but they they were trying to like push back and
try to create something more. And like by the time
that they were done working with him on Meteor, they're like, yeah,
like this is done, We're going to self produce the
rest of our albums. So they did. But yeah, it
was always fascinating to me that he's like the object

(41:16):
of the rage and one step closer.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
Yeah, and you know, to hear the band tell it too,
it was like he got so dismissive at points that
like Chester would give him new lyrics and he'd reject
them without really even reading them and just be like,
go back and do it again. And like, I guess
that one of the maybe why they were able to
skew Young was that they didn't swear in there in
their songs early on, like shut up is the is

(41:40):
the big bad word, and to hear them tell it,
it's because Gilmore was pushing them to you know, express
themselves better, which is a nice place to come from.

Speaker 4 (41:50):
You know.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
I wonder if Gilmore was trying to make sure that
all the songs were radio friendly, But as Shanoda told
Rolling Stone, it was scary in the beginning when we
started writing about what we felt. But once we realized
we weren't the only ones who felt that way. Once
we saw the audience was coming along with us on that,
it freed us up. We wanted to be a little
more descriptive. Instead of just going fuck all the time,
we wanted to go into detail. So the biggest curse

(42:12):
word on the album is shut up when I'm talking
to you, shut up off of one step close, I
cannot take the.

Speaker 2 (42:30):
Same the thing that said.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
Obvious weds Day make no sense.

Speaker 7 (42:41):
I found the Sages lessa here.

Speaker 5 (42:44):
The less you say, you'll find out everything.

Speaker 1 (43:16):
So not only did they write that song amid kind
of label and producer pressure, as they were having trouble
finishing Runaway as well, and that frustration comes through, they
also didn't like the way it turned out, and Chester
didn't want it on the album anyway at all, but
it became the first single and was what allegedly hooked
programmers in at a radio convention, which according to Blue

(43:39):
got them to kind of rush the recording and the
release because there was this buzz building. So those were
kind of the singles. Paper Cup, which we played off
the top was also a fourth single. After our next break,
We're going to talk a lot more about the legacy
and the impact of this kind of space for vulnerability,
But element before we do that, I'm just wondering the
non singles on the album. Do any stand out to

(43:59):
you as favorites? Did any really hit home for you?

Speaker 4 (44:02):
Oh? My god, where do I even start? I mean, okay,
go through all of them.

Speaker 1 (44:06):
Man, all we got is time producer Dylan can cut
this down. After all we got his time.

Speaker 4 (44:11):
I was always always surprised that Runaway wasn't a big
single because Runaway is like this like really beautiful song
that it's like, it's like really good at angst, And
I think it's actually genuinely, honestly hard to be good
at angst, because it is this emotion that people can't
control very well and can't articulate very well. I think
A Place from My Head is kind of a strange song,

(44:34):
Like if you go back and listen to the way
that Shanoda takes that beat, it's like a weirdly syncopated
kind of rapping, like you don't really expect someone to
flow on that on that on that kind of music
that way. So it's just always interesting to me. If
you ever get the deluxe edition, which I highly recommend
that you do, there's My December, which is like a

(44:55):
really soft sort of piano song entirely written by Mike Shanoda.
I don't know why it got relegated to the bonus
version of the album because, like, to me, it's just
like it's just a beautiful adult contemporary radio song that
should have been played, and it's just Gester sing on
that song. But it's like completely perfect. Yeah, there's just
so many I mean, like, listen, this this album is

(45:17):
twelve songs long, and you can so easily imagine eight,
possibly nine singles from it. The fact that they only
managed to keep it to like I think it was
four is already an impressive feed to me.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
All Right, we're going to talk about how this album
was received, how those singles pushed hyper Theory to be
one of the best selling albums, I mean, not one
of the Aslan said, the best selling album of this millennium.
We're going to talk about their their legacy, specifically with
respect to creating that space to feel after this so

(46:05):
Hybrid Theory was a massive success in retrospect, it's you know,
it's gotten a lot of accolades. A Loudwire called it
the number ten best hard rock debut. Rock Sound called
it the number one modern classic of the last fifteen years.
It was Kerrang's number eight rock album of the two thousands.
I won a bunch of awards and was nominated for
a bunch of others. There was initial success too. It

(46:26):
debuted at number sixteen on Billboard. It's sold four point
one million copies in the US out of the gate
to make it the top selling album of that year,
and it eventually hit Diamond status eleven times platinum per download.
It is the best selling album of the twenty first
century and the highest selling debut album since Guns N' Roses.
Despite all of that, it was clear that some places

(46:48):
didn't quite get it yet. You know, it got called mediocre,
a derivative. It got lumped in with a lot of
other new batal bands or frat rock, as Shanoda called it.
You know, there were some places that appreciated PopMatters called
them a far more complex and talented group that will
continue to fascinate and challenge music standards. It was up
and down, and I think that that makes sense for

(47:10):
how it was received in the time, just because of
everything else that was going on in the kind of
genres around them.

Speaker 4 (47:18):
Ell.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
I mean, part of your essay kind of touched on
how they were received at the time. Do you have
much reflection on that in terms of like why maybe
it didn't hit as critically as it did as it
resonated with like literally millions of people.

Speaker 4 (47:32):
Well, I mean, I think part of that is you
got to remember that it was landing in the middle
of this new metal moment that was kind of at
that point overstaying. It's welcome, you know, like you'd had
or you'd already had Poppa Roat, you'd already had limb Biscuit,
you'd already had you know, seven dusts, you'd already had corn.
And they've been at it for a while. Like this

(47:52):
album came out, I think a week after Chocolate Starfish
and the Hot Dog Flavored Water, so which, first of all, woof,
what a big week for music. But I remember one critic,
I can't remember who which critic it was, but one
critic called it slam dancing in a highchair of music.
Like he was like, lo, this is this is this
is music for for babies to cry to, essentially, and

(48:14):
it's because that's what the rest of the new metal
scene was seen as, and it was it was hard,
you know, at least like visually to distinguish them from
the rest of the new metal scene, like that weird
lighting that they had for the one Step Closer video,
Like obviously they wanted the resthetic in their vibe to
be like, oh, like we're we're with those people, and
they you know, they toured with those people and they
got grouped with those people. So it's easy to imagine

(48:38):
why the critics who maybe listened to a couple of
songs were like, no, no, no, this is not this
is not serious or good music. And maybe that is
the case, but like it is emotional music, and I
think that elevates it to a different realm of discussion.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
Yeah, that all that all adds up to me. Yeah,
I think the best thing that we can say about
it is that it got a major seal of a
that we'll talk about in just a second. Obviously, this
was a massive success. They get the whole touring buffet
Ozfest Family Values their own headline tour. They played three
hundred and twenty four shows in two thousand and one,

(49:13):
as they told Rolling Stone, which seems impossible but apparently
they did it. Yeah, they also got the heavy soundtrack treatment.
They released that remix album, Reanimation with Farrell back in
the mix, that also did really well. And then Mediora
came out in two thousand and four, which is, you know,

(49:33):
really to me, it is an extension of hybrid theory.
Those albums pair really well to me, Jake, I know,
when we were prepping for this episode, you brought up Faint,
which is actually off of Mediora, and I think because
those two albums sounded similar and were similarly popular. And
then also we're both on Collision the Collision Course matchup

(49:53):
with jay Z. It can be one of those things
where like, oh, yeah, which one of those albums is
this song from? But yes, they big seal of approval
is of course that they got to do a collaboration
mashup with jay Z. Jake, you mentioned numb Encore earlier
on and I apologize. I know you like Faint a lot,
but we're gonna play the numb on Core clip because

(50:14):
it is, by a large margin, the best song off
that Collision Course mash up. Yeah, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 5 (50:22):
Thank you.

Speaker 7 (50:23):
Quaw to hi?

Speaker 1 (50:25):
Who can I get a call.

Speaker 6 (50:33):
On that time?

Speaker 4 (50:38):
What he.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
Mean?

Speaker 4 (50:41):
It should?

Speaker 5 (50:42):
Don't know?

Speaker 1 (50:42):
Want that time? Niould make some noise? Get him jay?

Speaker 6 (50:47):
Do you know President Hoe? Riddle me that wrest of
y'all know well, there can't none of young mirror me back?

Speaker 1 (50:53):
Yeah, hand me rappers. Why can't gee rapp it his problem?
Young hho raps? Great, you're dead.

Speaker 6 (50:58):
Let me take over the globe, prey grant. I'm in
bowey chance slow express out the country. But the blue
beever still connect on the low. But God got a
triple deck.

Speaker 4 (51:07):
Who were you young? With the fucking respect?

Speaker 6 (51:08):
Yep, yep, bray open the grand closure, God damned your
man hold crack the can open again? Who you gonna find?

Speaker 1 (51:15):
Open a head with no pants?

Speaker 3 (51:16):
Just draw this race sut shirt?

Speaker 6 (51:18):
Who you're gonna see? You can't replace him. I need
you to remember one thing. I came, I saw, I
conquered reckon sale. So down consoles my fucking if you
want this umcre I need to spain to yourn.

Speaker 4 (51:31):
So come on.

Speaker 7 (51:33):
What you want to.

Speaker 8 (51:36):
Feeling so famous?

Speaker 5 (51:38):
St under the surface. You don't know what you're expected.
Pressure fucking your shut every seven take a Statue one

(52:24):
that time?

Speaker 4 (52:31):
Oh so good.

Speaker 1 (52:32):
Yeah, I was gonna ask did you did you have
time for the collision course?

Speaker 7 (52:35):
Was that?

Speaker 1 (52:36):
Was that your stuff?

Speaker 4 (52:36):
Absolutely? But I gotta tell you my favorite part of
Naboncore is when Mike Shanoda very seriously says, get them
jay as though like it is the permission of Michael
fucking that is going to unleash jay Z upon the
mask like that, it was like jay Z is holding back,

(52:59):
but no, like Shew says, get them j and and
off he goes. I honestly, first of all, let's let
us just talk about how there were just a bunch
of good mashup records at the time and this came
out and like like absolutely just destroyed them the rest
of them. Like do you guys remember the Gray album,
Like when the Danger Mouse did that jay Z? Yeah,

(53:21):
like the J and the Beatles one, and then you
get Namancore, Like what what a time? I don't know
you did say that Namancore is the is the best one.
But I gotta tell you, like Points of Authority nine,
nine Problems, one Step Closer is a bop. I do
I do go back to that one pretty often.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
Yeah, that's true. I tried to avoid ninety nine problems
because I really don't need that song stuck in my head,
and it is that will get wedged in there for
weeks at a time. The other option here was, of course,
to play a fort minor clip because you know, I
do remember the name. Yes, that's where Shinoda went afterward.

(53:59):
So around this Lincoln Park did have seven albums in total.
It ended with One More Light in May of twenty seventeen.
This is where we pivot to a more somber side.
On July twenty, twenty seventeen, Chester Bennington died and what
was ruled a suicide by hanging. As Jake kind of
discussed earlier on, there was just a remarkable amount of

(54:21):
tributes and outpouring and guest performances at their first show back,
and they set up the One More Light Fund in
his honor, and just about everyone in the industry and
every fan wanted to contribute to it in some way.
The band is still on hiatus to this day. Shnoda
has said that they're open to it, but they're not
really sure what formatd take. And they still love performing
live and in the studio and stuff, but you know,

(54:44):
what do you do with it? Do you replace Bennington?
Do you create a new band with the same remaining members?
Is you know, is a question there. And I think
that Bennington passing away in twenty seventeen offered, you know,
and hyper Theory to in twenty twenty, you know, there's
kind of been a renewed look back at Lincoln Park

(55:05):
and what they what they meant and former guest Heney
fo Dura Kiev had an essay at the time of
Chester's death about how he was a mirror for the
pain of others. And ELLA mean, I know that you
linked to that in your essay on the twentieth anniversary
of Hybrid Theory and you called it music toweep and
scream and fall apart two without reservation, And I just

(55:27):
want to open it up now. I mean, I don't
want to just read your essay back to you, but
your conversation with Shanoda and your own reflection on this
album and Lincoln Park as a whole. You know, what
do you think the legacy is here for them? You know,
obviously there's the they stand out as Yeah, they were
a very early two thousands band doing something that was
very of that time, but also I feel like, and

(55:50):
the impression I get from your essay is that you know,
there is a longer lasting and maybe more important legacy
that Lincoln Park had had a big hand in around
that time.

Speaker 4 (56:00):
You know, when I returned to this album, and like
I said earlier, prist of all, I am very much
in Case in those emotions. But I'm also I guess,
like in Case in the gratitude for having those emotions,
because I think it's very healthy to know your rage
and know your rage well and have language for it,
you know what I mean, Like have language for the

(56:21):
things that are bothering you, the things that you are
trying to process, the darkness that you sometimes have to
live in, even in that period of time when you're like,
I don't really know much about the world, I just
know that these feelings are really intense. And I guess
like the way that Chester managed to share his demons
with people and really put you in it, like that's

(56:42):
that was something that was not available to me widely
of the time, So that you know, I get I
get very irritated when people kind of criticize Looking Part
for being sort of a commercial product, because of course
they are. But what was revolutionary about them is that
they made all those emotions themselves a commercial product. And
I think that is actually a really hard thing to
do to invite people to your darkness, right and and

(57:06):
be able to sit in it and actually like manage
to sell records out of that, because you managed to
make it so compelling, Like you know, and you mentioned
Mediora about like a song like Somewhere I Belong is
to me like lyrically, it's just so precise, you know,
A song like Numb is also so precise in terms
of describing all those emotions. And I didn't there weren't

(57:27):
other genres where I saw men feeling things. There weren't
even that many men feeling things in rock music at
the time. But Lincoln Park were very comfortable being that band.
And I guess like that is its greatest legacies, that
it created the space where it was wildly popular and
commercially successful to be as vulnerable as possible, and like

(57:50):
that is, you know, that is just not a thing
that I'm seeing right now, And it's genuinely like a
thing that I miss about them. I think it's a
thing that I miss about the space that they created.

Speaker 1 (57:59):
Yeah, for sure, and I agree with that a lot.
And you know, when when Chester died, I remember being
like more shaken up than I would have expected had
you told me ahead of time. And I don't think
I had really sat with as much of the influence
as they had. And you know, I've talked a lot
about on this podcast about how, you know, over the
course of let's say, two thousand to two thousand and

(58:20):
five was kind of where I found my way and like, Okay,
you know I could be emotional and vulnerable and stuff
like that, and you know, you don't maybe you don't
think of because you were fourteen at the time or whatever,
that they had that influence and they really did. And
it was crazy. It was a wild day to be
on Twitter and see the amount of people that felt similarly. Jacob,

(58:42):
I just want to revisit your earlier comment about your
surprise level when you know you did see that outpouring,
do you I'm just wondering if you have more thoughts
on having gone through this episode and reading El Means
Piece and reflecting back to when when Chester passed, the like,
does this kind of reshape the way you think of

(59:04):
Lincoln Park?

Speaker 3 (59:05):
Yeah, kind of I mean, I don't think this album
is ever going to be for me, but I also
think that's fine obviously. But I do think that something
that I don't think I necessarily gave them, I think
a thing that I sort of in my younger days
held against them is actually what makes them so kind
of impressive and important in the sense that like just

(59:29):
to pick on in the end again because it's the
biggest one, Like that song is very simple and like
lyrically it's a simple piano line and like the chorus,
you know, I tried so hard, I got so far
it didn't really matter. Is like not like you know,
it's never gonna be up there in like the great
Stanzas of music. But I think that's what makes them

(59:50):
so important and sort of what Ellamin was saying, like
there the accessibility of that being so simple is you know,
like pop music is generally not as complex of the music,
which is not a bad thing. And I think specifically

(01:00:11):
when you're a rock band whose audience is probably people
who don't think about these kind of emotions a lot,
and you can deliver that package in such a simple
way that's accessible and that isn't talking down to anybody,
And as you guys were saying earlier, it was very
first person, so it's not you know, ascribing any of

(01:00:34):
it to anyone else. I think that's a important thing
in especially in sort of frat rock music, to use
the disparaging term, which I don't even really think is
necessarily what Lincoln Park is. But I do think that they,
while they might not ever be my thing, I do

(01:00:54):
think that, especially in light of Chester's death and everything
we've talked about since then, what we talk with today,
it's I think there's a bigger place for them in
rock music that I would have thought there was even
just like four years ago.

Speaker 4 (01:01:12):
I think you're describing it exactly right, like you're saying.
What I'm hearing you say is that like they are
kind of democratic, you know, in the sense of like
democratizing those feelings, or at least like they approach the
way that they make those feelings in a way that
is really democratic and makes it feel like it's for everyone. Like.
One thing that's interesting about this record is that it's

(01:01:32):
sold twelve million copies since it has come out in
the last twenty years, but three million of those have
been in the last three years. And I think that
is fascinating, like three years since Chester's death, which tells
me that there is something about the period of time
when you're going through certain emotions where you will keep
referring back to maybe like archetypal and sort of storied

(01:01:54):
pillars of like, oh, this is how you process adolescence.
And I kind of feel like maybe this album, not
all of the Lincoln Park's work, but maybe this album's
kind of become like a fundamental part of that tapestry
in the last couple in the last few years or so,
like I started that piece that I wrote with Lil Peep,
who's a rapper who's since passed away. He overdosed a

(01:02:17):
couple of years ago. But the day or like a
week after Chester's death, he was performing in the end
in a like a like a weird la club with
a bunch of teens. He was himself, I think he
was seventeen or eighteen when he died, and like every
single one of them knew the words and even though
they would have been like two when the song came out.

(01:02:37):
And I think there's something about like there's a staying
power that's like, Okay, you're going through your Lincoln Park
phase in life. It's kind of like you reach Shakespeare
when you're fourteen, you listen to link Bark when you're thirteen,
and I wonder if that's going to be just like
a thing that persists for a while, Like that's just
like a place that you go when you need it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
Yeah, I think that's well said. I think that's that
makes a lot of sense. And yeah, I think to
your point, you know, it hit innumber one on iTunes
and Amazon and it went back to twenty seven on Billboard,
which is you know, there's obviously something about it there
that that's resonating over a long period of time, over
two decades now.

Speaker 6 (01:03:09):
Jeez.

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
Okay, so we're at the part of the podcast where
we we gotta kind of start to wrap up, So
I guess just quickly. Normally we'd you know, banter a
little bit about rankings of the songs of the album,
but we're running a bit long here, and also I
think we we covered a lot of that as we
went through. So Jake, I guess i'll kick it to
you first, since you know you have this aversion to

(01:03:31):
in the end, wondering what your favorite tracks on the
on the album are. I know Faint is your favorite
Lincoln Park track, but that is not on this album.

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):
For the record, I knew that Faint wasn't on this record.
I just wanted to talk about because, like, even though
I don't really like the Park, I generally think that
Faint is one of the best rock songs of like
the Millennium. It's it's so good.

Speaker 4 (01:03:53):
I can't we can talk with that right after this conversation.

Speaker 3 (01:03:57):
It's it's so good. I think points Authority is probably
my favorite song on this album, which I know we
didn't talk about, but it's the one that gets stuck
in my brain the most. I also really like a
Place for my head, And even though it's like not
really my thing explicitly, I think Crawling is a pretty
for exactly all the reasons we've talked about today. I

(01:04:17):
think Crawling is a very important song, So I would
put that number three.

Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
What about you, Ell, I mean, do you do you
have a top three or are you able to narrow
it down like that or not?

Speaker 5 (01:04:27):
Really?

Speaker 4 (01:04:27):
Well, I definitely have a top one, and a top
one I think is paper Cut. Paper Cut is a
perfect distillation of what Lincoln Park do, just like as
a band like it is the rap and the metal
in perfect harmony. I actually know it about this. In
that conversation, I was like, did you guys mean to
put paper Cut as the first song? And he was like,

(01:04:47):
we listened to all of our songs and were like, yeap,
paper Cut. We have no doubt it's gonna be the
very first one because it really does do that. It
distills the project of what Lincoln Park is about. So
paper Cut is like the one for me, and then
I guess I was like, maybe two and three I
would do. I would say Crawling at number two and

(01:05:09):
somewhere between Runaway and A Place from Ahead for number three.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
Yeah, I think that's that's a good ranking. I'd have
paper Cut a little lower, but I think those are
my top four, probably in some order. So ell mean,
what we do at the end of each episode is
we pick a song from the episode to go on
our mixtape that best represents the conversation we had or
or just the guest's favorite. Are you are you down

(01:05:32):
for paper Cut to be the representation from this episode
or do you have a different choice for our mixtape?

Speaker 4 (01:05:37):
I would say, well, that's an interesting question because I'm
not like what is the job of this mixtape? Is
it to introduce people to songs that may not have
heard or is it to be like to be a
perfect representation of the conversation.

Speaker 1 (01:05:49):
It can go a lot of different ways that we
have not been consistent with it. Sometimes we go with
the big single because it insists upon itself. Sometimes we
go with you know, you don't need to play the
single because everyone will have heard it, So here's something else.
Sometimes it's you know, the song we went deepest on
during the conversation. We can go a lot of different ways,
so this is this is kind of this is the

(01:06:09):
nice thing when we have guests, is Jake and I
don't have to choose as much. We can just put
it on your lot.

Speaker 4 (01:06:14):
Well fakes a lot. I appreciate that, you know what.
I think. Let's go with paper Cut, just because it
is not as well known a single as the rest
of them. It's always like kind of confused me why
it was the last single like it was. It was
released as a single almost a year after the album
came out, and it just didn't get as much play
as it should have. It also came about like three

(01:06:35):
weeks after nine to eleven so maybe that was also
part of like part of the reasons why it might
have not. But if you haven't heard paper Cut, I
would say payper Cut is the one to go to.

Speaker 1 (01:06:44):
That's great and we met our quota for one nine
to eleven reference per month on the podcast. It yes,
always manages to come up when you're talking about music
in the two thousand to twenty ten range, as we
do so often on here. All right, paper Cut is
heading to the mixtape at this point the podcast. We
want to, of course, especially because we're running long. We

(01:07:05):
want to thank producer Dylan for all his great work
putting these episodes together, and you can go to at
Elmen eighty eight to support ell Meen and check out
all his great work at CBC, at BuzzFeed News and
especially with the pop Chat podcast over at CBC. So
please go. I mean, I'm sure you guys if you're
listening to this follow Elamen anyway, but go check it

(01:07:26):
out and check that podcast out element. Thanks so much
for coming on man, We really oh yeah. Also make
sure to check out that essay that we keep referencing,
and we can drop a link to I was over
at BuzzFeed News in October twenty twenty eleman, thanks so much.

Speaker 4 (01:07:39):
Man my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me
on to.

Speaker 3 (01:08:22):
Please try to fish. This is fun.