Hybrid Theory, the debut full-length from multi-platinum rock band Linkin Park, celebrates its birthday today. Right out of the gate, this album was a true gamechanger in making rap-rock a commercial cash cow – but it’s the songwriting and chemistry that worked for Linkin Park from day one. Rejected by labels several times over, LP persevered and eventually became an arena-filling rock act.
Of particular note is the chemistry between all members of the band, but especially between vocalists Mike Shinoda and the late Chester Bennington. On tracks like “In The End” and especially “Forgotten”, the two trade back and forth vocal codas in intense displays of real and cathartic emotion. And on “A Place For My Head” is where things get really crazy (for Linkin Park, anyway). Between it and “Points Of Authority”, they’re the two big album standouts on a CD full of them.
Interested parties can revisit the album below, as well as check out a full LIVE set of the band before Hybrid Theory was even released – right here.
Chester’s voice will ring out forever and a day.
It’s easy to fall into that thing — ‘poor, poor me’, that’s where songs like ‘Crawling’ 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.
— Chester Bennington, Rolling Stone Magazine, 2002
