The Only Linkin Park Song That Matters

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People of my generation have a difficult time letting nu metal go. Their appreciation of this cultural awkward teenage phase seem to redefine itself every time they redefine their own relationship to the past. It was embarrassing, then it was corny and now it’s fun again. There were a lot of weird, colorful characters with spiky hair and braided beards then, but I think we can all agree it’s going to be mostly remembered for two bands: Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park. Slipknot is another debate.

The former appealed to the maladaptive need of teenage boys to assert their masculinity and the latter appealed to the maladaptive need of teenage boys to assert their feelings of inadequacy, so they were at the polar ends of the spectrum of the kingdom of awkward pants and down tuned guitars. They each had their place and kind of earned their legendary status. Because let’s be fair… in retrospect, not a lot of their songs were good. Let’s be real for a minute.

Linkin Park has a couple of songs that aged well: Don’t Stay, Papercut, One Step Closer and depending on what you think of Crawling and Numb, they might’ve had a zeitgeist moment with teen angst stuff. But none of these songs is going to matter in 50 years. They were not popular enough. They were straight out not good enough. No, we wouldn’t remember Linkin Park the way we remembered them today if it wasn’t for their monster it In The End.

A great majority of Linkin Park’s catalogue sucks, but this song rips. It rips so much that Loudwire announced last Monday that In The End was the first nu metal song to hit a billion plays on Spotify. That’s more or less 273 000 plays every day for the last ten years. 189 plays a minute. This is insane. Why do people love this song so much? I have a couple ideas about the popularity of In The End that I’d like to share with you.

Reason #1 - It claims the contrary of what every power ballad ever claimed

There are basically two kinds of power ballads: the one where the performer claims he is nothing without a hypothetical significant other and that he’ll never give up on trying to win her over and the one where the performer is totally over a hypothetical significant other and found a healthier relationship. In The End fits neither of these categories. It just claims: eh, being with you sucked. I’m moving on with my life and it’s the right decision for me.

Keep that in mind, I designed this rhyme
To remind myself how I tried so hard
In spite of the way you were mocking me
Actin' like I was part of your property
Remembering all the times you fought with me
I'm surprised it got so far

This is a nu metal song that advocates emotional maturity. Is there even another does that does? I’m not so sure about that. Power ballads and love songs in general are not really about love. They are songs about conquering the object of your desires. They almost never discuss the complicated side of being in a relationship. Not only In The End does, but it also reflects on being in a relationship for the wrong reasons, feeling trapped and wanting out of what everyone wants.

It’s not a message that is very common in music, but it’s something that people live through constantly and I believe they take comfort in a song that acknowledges how difficult relationships can be sometimes and that it’s better to be alone that with someone who belittles you. When Mike Shinoda says : I design this rhyme to remind myself… it’s exactly why people (self included) keep listening to this song again and again and again. It keeps hard decisions in perspective.

Reason #2 - It contextualizes failure as a part of life

Another theme that isn’t discussed nearly enough in music and that normal people have to live through every single day is failure. I mean, there are power ballads that discuss failure but they’re usually quite melodramatic. I fucking LOVE Don’t Cry by Guns N’ Roses but Axl Rose and his girlfriend need to either stay together or fuck off. There is zero benefits for exes to talk to each other sweetly like this. It’s only going to make things awkward and unclear.

In The End claims that failure is not the fucking end of the work and that it’s OK if things aren’t ever going to be the way they were before. That you move on with your life and become eventually fine again. I know Linkin Park are renowned for their melodramatic approach mainly because of Chester Bennington’s over the top delivery, but In The End a low key powerful message in its own way: other people won’t define you if you don’t let them.

What it meant to me will eventually be
A memory of a time when I tried so hard

Here’s Shinoda saying: well, I thought you were everything but you’ll barely be a footnote in my life. If that’s not empowering, I don’t know what is. Especially that is meant for people who are at the absolute fucking bottom. That’s the thing about music that is deemed either corny or melodramatic. It is when you’re feeling fine, but it makes a whole lot more sense when you’re not. If you listen to this song during a breakup, it will take a whole new meaning.

Reason #3 - Duh, it’s structured like a pop song

Kurt Cobain figured this one out a long time before any nu metal musician ever did. If you want to split hairs, you could probably say Ozzy Osbourne figured it out before him. The conventional 4/4 verse, chorus, verse really works for you if you know how to use it. Building up emotion and releasing it short, fiery choruses is a surefire way of making your song unforgettable because it just feels fucking good to sing it out loud. It’s a dopamine hack.

The chorus of In The End is simply perfect. It’s simple, but speaks to feelings we all connect to. It’s angry, but thoughtful. It’s something you can sing over and over again while muttering the verses under your breath because no one really knows them. It’s a release. It’s catharsis. That shit is a 2000 years old mechanism that allows people to live their emotions through art and there’s no flowery, complex and overwritten masterpiece that can top that.

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In my humble critic opinion, I believe Slipknot were the only musically valid nu metal band. But Linkin Park caught lightning in a bottle and wrote BY FAR the most important and influential song ever recorded in this genre. In The End is immense and I think it will be one of the songs this entire era in music will be remembered by in the future. Sometimes you do something that will outlive every critic and stupid-ass guardians of good taste and it should be celebrated.