{"id":265005,"date":"2025-11-01T13:31:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T13:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/265005\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T13:31:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T13:31:09","slug":"in-the-end-by-linkin-park-the-story-behind-the-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/265005\/","title":{"rendered":"In The End by Linkin Park: the story behind the song"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s 2020 and Mike Shinoda<\/a> is considering the impact and legacy of Linkin Park<\/a>\u2019s 20-million-selling debut album, Hybrid Theory<\/a>, on its 20th anniversary. \u201cAt the time, if you asked somebody what they were listening to they\u2019d say, \u2018I listen to Rock. \u2018I listen to hip hop.\u2019 \u2018I listen to jazz\u2019,\u201d he tells Metal Hammer. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t until five years later they\u2019d say, \u2018Everything\u2019. [Hybrid Theory] did some of that work. It was part of the progression towards breaking down boundaries between styles of music.\u201d<\/p>\n

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These days, genre-hopping is standard practice for the average band. But when Linkin Park dropped the album on 24 October 2000, their sound was genuinely fresh and innovative, blending neck snapping metal, sharp rap, electronics and bouncing pop choruses into an unabashed commercial proposition that captured both the zeitgeist and the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe chose [Good Charlotte producer] Don Gilmore to produce because he had proven through his recent releases in the last couple of years at that time that he could make a really polished-sounding alternative record,\u201d says Mike.<\/p>\n

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You don\u2019t have to look far to see that influence alive and kicking in the music of some of our scene\u2019s biggest bands, from Bring Me The Horizon<\/a> to Architects<\/a>. Linkin Park\u2019s take on metal and melody is still being used as a baseline today and there\u2019s no song in the band\u2019s back catalogue that does a better job of ticking all those boxes than Hybrid Theory\u2019s anthemic fourth single, In The End.<\/p>\n

In The End [Official HD Music Video] – Linkin Park – YouTube
\n\"In<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

According to Mike, the song was written in a \u201creally horrible rehearsal space in West Hollywood\u201d that the band had rented out on the junction of Hollywood and Vine. \u201cToday there\u2019s fancy restaurants there, but back then it was prostitutes and drug dealers,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t want to write about, \u2018Punch you in the face and I\u2019m so mad\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike Shinoda<\/p>\n

Having hit a groove one day, Mike decided to lock himself in the windowless room alone overnight and continue writing. By the following morning, he\u2019d come out with In The End and when he played it for the rest of the band, they were blown away. \u201cFrom the moment that demo arrived, everyone knew it was special,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The song was a far cry from the rest of nu metal<\/a>\u2019s fratboy posturing. In sharp contrast the likes of Limp Bizkit<\/a> \u2013 who lived out every hedonistic heavy metal clich\u00e9, including a release party for their third album Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavoured Water at the Playboy mansion \u2013 Linkin Park sang about frustration, anxiety and depression.<\/p>\n

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Vocalist Chester Bennington, who had joined the band in 1999 after auditioning via demo tape, was blessed with the kind of voice that could segue from angelic cleans to glass-gargled scream in the blink of an eye, but he also brought with him a childhood of trauma, having experienced abuse and bullying in his youth. The band channelled that pain and buckets of teenage angst into their songwriting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t want to write about, \u2018Punch you in the face and I\u2019m so mad\u2019,\u201d says Mike. \u201cA lot of that stuff was in the ether, but we counterbalanced it with introspection and other stuff about ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time the band released the single at the tail end of December 2001, Hybrid Theory had already sold five million copies and Linkin Park were one of the biggest bands in the world. Their previous singles One Step Closer, Crawling and Europe-only release Papercut had proved instant hits with angsty teenagers who were being turned onto heavy music, but In The End, was the gamechanger that would make the band truly omnipresent.<\/p>\n

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\"Linkin\n<\/p>\n

Linkin Park\u2019s Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington onstage in 2001 (Image credit: Scott Gries\/ImageDirect)<\/p>\n

Starting with a sparse and sombre piano riff, Mike\u2019s rapped verses were born from a frustration and self-loathing (\u201cOne thing I don\u2019t know why \/ it doesn\u2019t even matter how hard you try\u201d), but it was Chester\u2019s soaring chorus, a sucker punch of cathartic futility, that tapped into the emotional confusion of youth and connected music fans across the board. \u201cI tried so hard and got so far \/ But in the end, it doesn\u2019t even matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was part of the progression towards breaking down boundaries between styles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike Shinoda<\/p>\n

“There\u2019s a weird battle with hopelessness and the ephemeral nature of time and our lives that the song is really about,\u201d Mike told Rock Sound in 2020. \u201cWhat\u2019s so odd about the song is its almost talking about these things and saying \u2018I don\u2019t have any answers\u2019. Because usually a song isn\u2019t about having no answers right? It just kind of runs itself around in a circle lyrically. And especially as a young person that\u2019s just how I felt, that\u2019s how we all felt, we just didn\u2019t know what to make of things. In a sense that\u2019s still what goes on today, it\u2019s a timeless and universal thing.”<\/p>\n

They knew they had a hit on their hands, but at the same time, the band worried that the track was too much of a departure from their heavier material, leaving it out of their earlier live sets for fear it was too accessible. In particular, Chester publicly voiced his misgivings.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was such an entertainer, in an interview he might say something that he felt would get a good reaction out of you,\u201d laughs Mike. \u201cYou\u2019ll hear him say everything from, \u2018I like the song but I never wanted it to be a single\u2019, to \u2018I hated the song\u2019. He\u2019s on record with all those different things. Everyone liked the song but he had reservations about it being a single because it was softer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rest of the band and their label, Warner Music, were more confident. \u201cWe moved about singles to converge,\u201d explains Mike. \u201cWe did One Step Closer and Crawling worldwide, then we added Papercut just in Europe, so we could time it out and we could do In The End as one push at the end of the record.\u201d<\/p>\n

Linkin Park – In the end live 2024 ( New singer Emily Armstrong ) – YouTube
\n\"Linkin<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we\u2019d play In The End live, when we got to the bridge, it was always so loud that you couldn\u2019t hear the band play,\u201d guitarist Brad Delson told Kerrang! in 2020. \u201cNaturally, at some point, we just stopped playing at that moment. Chester and Mike would just hold out the microphones and turn the lights on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even now, In The End continues to resonate. In July 2020, it passed one billion streams on YouTube, the band\u2019s second track to do so following, Numb. The reformed band have reinstated it into their live set, with new singer Emily Armstrong performing the parts of Chester, who died in July 2017.<\/p>\n

Even Chester hinself grew to appreciate the song. \u201cI don’t really participate in picking singles,\u201d he told Australian website Vmusic in 2013. \u201cI learnt that after making Hybrid Theory. I was never a fan of In The End, and I didn’t even want it to be on the record, honestly. How wrong could I have possibly been?\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally published in 2020. Updated October 2024<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s 2020 and Mike Shinoda is considering the impact and legacy of Linkin Park\u2019s 20-million-selling debut album, Hybrid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265006,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":{"0":"post-265005","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}