u/Soaring_Symphony

I know that from The Search onward, Nate stopped literally titling the opening track "Intro __" but that doesn't mean they're not still connected.

Across the later albums, the opening songs consistently still function as introductions to said album.

The Search culminates in this

>The Search begins, I'm back, so enjoy the trip

Clouds is begins with an introduction. It's overly verbose but it basically boils down to

>I never thought I'd make a mixtape. But here you go. So... enjoy I guess.

Hope is extremely on the nose about it

>So without further ado, I'd like to introduce my album: Hope

Even Fear kind of works as an intro... sort of. The phrase that keeps getting repeated obsessively throughout that song is

>Is this what you wanted?

Given the context of it's release, that's basically saying "You wanted more music? You wanted to see how the story ends? Well here you go. Are you happy now? Is this what you wanted?"

These later 4 songs also have a characteristic found throughout the Intro series... There's no chorus.

Every single one of these songs is structured as just a stream of consciousness barrage from beginning to end.

...well, okay, I guess Fear has the "standing back watching my mansion burn" section. That repeats at the end so... it's technically a chorus? But it doesn't first appear until halfway into the song. And there's so much else layered on top of it the 2nd time. And it only repeats once. It's not a normal chorus.

And Fear, oddly, actually works really well as a closing track despite being track 1 on the EP. It feels like a climax.

So the full series would actually look like this

1. Intro
2. Intro 2
3. Intro III
4. Outro
5. The Search
6. Clouds
7. Hope
8. Fear

It's basically a little meta album almost. And it all hangs together way better than it has any right to.

Anyway, here's the playlist if you're interested

YouTube Music

Yeah, I know. Blasphemy right?

I actually love A Thousand Suns as it is. It's my favorite album from them. The sense of atmosphere. The way it immerses you into this world that just feels massive. The way everything builds toward the Catalyst and then the Messenger is just this fragile message of hope at the end of everything...

But if there's one thing that bugs me about it, it's that the album takes forever to start!

The Requium and the Radience are ominous and atmospheric, but they're extremely restrained and are more of a prologue. Then Burning in the Skies is similarly very stripped back and... still kind of feels like a prologue.

Then When they Come for Me crashes in with "try to catch up motherfucker!" and it's easy to think that the album has finally taken off at that point... only to get Robot Boy and Jornada del Muerto right after which are similarly stripped back and atmospheric... so WTCFM ends up feeling almost like a non-sequitur all things considered. It's a great song. And it's explosive. But it doesn't really make the album feel like it's actually kicked into gear.

Then you get the triple punch of Waiting for the End, Blackout, and Wretches and Kings. Only then, at the midpoint does the album finally feel like it actually has a sense of momentum.

If you didn't know, I'll Be Gone was originally intended to be on A Thousand Suns. The demo is called Primo, and it's basically a completely different song. It's framed around a soldier going to war, saying goodbye to his wife and kids, unsure if he'll make it back home in one piece.

Imagine if that had been the opening track on ATS. Before The Requiem, before the ominous warning, before any direct indication that a bomb will go off, it could have started with the grounded human perspective of one man worried he might not come home. An everyman character.

That's something the final album doesn't really have. It talks a lot about war, and destruction, and corrupt systems. But there's very little runtime dedicated to how all of that effects ordinary people. I guess you can see that in the video for Burning in the Skies. But it should have been more prominently part of the actual music.

Primo might not be as explosive as Papercut, Given Up or Keys to the Kingdom, but it would still work really well as an opening track for this album. It's pretty restrained, sure. But it has to be to not overshadow The Requiem right after it. And it would do what an opening track needs to do; set the tone for what the rest of the album will be about.

And if you look at the actual songs on the album, there's really only 9

1. Burning in the Skies
2. When They Come for Me
3. Robot Boy
4. Waiting for the End
5. Blackout
6. Wretches and Kings
7. Iridescent
8. The Catalyst
9. The Messenger.

That's less than One More Light. I think it could have benefited from having at least one more.

Also, a lot of what makes the album feel like it has way too many interludes is actually just the framing.

If you think about it, The Requiem and the Radiance are really only one movement. If you listen to either one alone, it feels wrong. That should have been just one track.

I think I would call it "The Transmission" cause that would create a cool bookend effect with The Catalyst later on.

Similarly, why the hell is Empty Spaces it's own track? It's so short. It's a nothing-burger of a track. It should have just been an intro at the start of When they Come for Me.

Both of those edits would not change the actual pacing of the album at all. Only how it's presented. And that would cut the number of interludes down to 4... which is still a lot, but it's better than 6.

So the final track list could have looked something like this.

1. Primo
2. The Transmission
3. Burning in the Skies
4. When They Come for Me
5. Robot Boy
6. Jornada del Muerto
7. Waiting for the End
8. Blackout
9. Wretches and Kings
10. Wisdom Justice Love
11. Iridescent
12. Fallout
13. The Catalyst
14. The Messenger

Here's a mockup of what that could have looked like as a YouTube Playlist

TL;DR

The giant wall of text below is just me explaining my reasoning for why I cut some songs and added others. Read through it or don't.

Maybe you agree with some arguments. Disagree with others. Maybe you don't care... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm not your mom

The links are at the bottom of the post if you just want to give it a listen.

---

I want you to pretend for a second that you were Mike in early 2024. It had been over six years since Chester's passing and, for all intents and purposes, it looked like Linkin Park as a band was over without their lead singer.

If you were in his shoes, and you had the opportunity to make one last album, a retrospective collection of all their greatest hits, how would you decide what songs to include?

I think we can reasonably break down some guiding principles as follows.

1. Because this is a retrospective look back at the history if the band, the songs included should represent that history faithfully. So you should be able to get a sense of the spirt of each album just from the songs chosen off of it.
2. No individual album should get special treatment over the others.
3. No deep cuts. Radio singles only and preferably the more recognizable ones. A casual listener should be able to recognize at least most of the track list even if they know nothing about the band. This rule is absolutely non-negotiable. It's what stops this from just turning into a personal favorites playlist.
4. As much as possible, the most iconic songs from each album should be included
5. Because this needs to function as a stand alone album, the songs included should have broad appeal. A first time listener, with no context, should be able to understand and relate to the lyrics after one listen.
6. Because this was produced 6 years after Chester's death, yet his voice is front and center in most of the music, the album should largely read as a retrospective tribute to him in respect of his memory.
7. Because this was going to be their last album ever, at least as far as anyone knew at the time, it's probably important to go out with a bang.

And I'd also add a meta rule, which only applies retroactively, that if Mike and the others included a song which appears to go against one or more of the principles listed above, but they seem to have had a good reason for it, then that decision should be respected and it should be left in.

Now, look at the official tracklist for Papercuts. Do you see the issues with it?

It seems to me that they prioritized principles 4-7 way too much and principles 1-2 largely got ignored. And they kind of bent #3 in places too.

Look at how some of the albums got represented.

A Thousand Suns only got Waiting for the End included. And while that's a great song, it sounds radically different from anything else on that album. I'd almost call it a lost Minutes to Midnight track that was released 3 year late.

One More Light similarly got only the title track. And while that represents it's album better... where's Heavy? Love it or hate it, that was the big single from OML. You can't really get a sense of what that album was about without it.

And then The Hunting Party. Oh... The Hunting Party. What were they thinking with that one? There's nothing! Not one song. I mean... come on! Not even Final Masquerade!? Why!???

Now look at the earlier albums.

Minutes to Midnight got three songs: What I've Done, Bleed It Out, and Leave Out All the Rest

Living Things got two songs: Burn it Down and Castle of Glass.

Hybrid Theory got four: Papercut, Crawling, In the End, and One Step Closer

And Meteora... ugh! Don't even get me started on that one.

You could argue there's four like Hybrid Theory: Numb, Somewhere I Belong, Breaking the Habit, and Faint. But... not really?

I mean, Lost is technically a Meteora track 2. Or at least it was produced alongside it. And also, what about Numb/Encore? They technically included Numb twice.

That's six tracks. six! There's only 20 songs total. That's over a fourth of the album. That's insane!

So how do you fix this?

Well, to start with, I know what songs should be included that weren't. It's obvious.

1. Final Masquerade. Give THP some rep.
2. Heavy. It's baffling why it wasn't included.
3. ATS should be better represented. While The Catalyst or maybe Burning in the Skies would be the obvious songs to use, I'm hesitant to use either. They both kind of fail on principle 5: broad appeal. The Catalyst basically screams "We're all gonna die." And burning in the Skies adds "and its our fault." Neither really makes much sense outside the context of the nuclear war framing ATS leaned on so heavily. So I'm leaning toward using Irridescent instead. Its message is basically one of healing and letting go of trauma. Anyone can relate to that.
4. This might be a more controversial inclusion, but I'd actually want to add Rebellion for reasons I'll explain later in this post.

Now here's the sticking point... there's already 20 songs. That's a lot for an album. Like, a lot a lot. I don't want to bloat it even more.

So I'm gonna set the arbitrary rule that 20 songs is the limit. That means... gonna have to cut at least 4 songs to make room... sorry

So that raises the question, which songs should be cut?

Well, the most obvious is definitely Numb/Encore. Maybe you like that they collabed with JZ and... cool I guess. But it's a massive deep cut. It's an odd song to include if the goal is to faithfully represent the band's history.

Only reason I can think of for why they might have added it would be on the grounds of principle 7: go out with a bang. What better way to telegraph that than with a song literally called "Encore?" But

1. Encore isn't even their song. And
2. Like I said earlier, this technically means Numb is included twice.

It's just an inefficient inclusion

Next, I think I'd cut Lost. I know, blasphemy. Put down your pitch forks.

Lost is an incredible song. I love it personally. And I can understand why they included it. It was a "new" Chester song that released after he was gone.

But that's also the problem. Because it was so new, I don't think it's really a great representation of the band's history. You can't even point toward it technically being a Meteora song to justify it's inclusion because it wasn't actually on Meteora itself.

And it had already had it's time in the spotlight like a year earlier with the 20th anniversary album. It didn't need a second round.

Now... this is the point where the cuts started to get harder. So I looked over the options again.

And I can't stress this enough. I'm not just picking songs I don't like. These are real sacrifices and there's real trade offs to scrapping some songs in favor of including others. All of this is based on the principles listed at the top of this post.

So I looked over the albums with the most songs again.

Starting with Hybrid Theory... honestly, you can't really cut anything from that. You definitely can't cut Crawling or In the End. They're iconic. Any casual listener would notice they were missing.

One Step Closer is probably important to keep in because it's the purest distillation of that album's signature aggression. That's important for Principle 1.

And honestly, I was almost tempted to cut Papercut because it thematically overlaps a lot with Crawling. But

1. The album's literally named after it. Can't cut the title track. And
2. They said back in the day that they thought Papercut was a good representation of their general sound at the time; a "hybrid" of hip hop, rap, and rock elements.

So that was a bust

Then I looked at Meteora. The remaining songs were Numb, Breaking the Habit, Somewhere I Belong, and Faint.

Man... this was a hard cut. Those four songs are all so iconic. It's hard to let any of them go.

So, I kept looking around at other options. What about Minutes to Midnight? That has 3 songs on the official tracklist... does it really need all three though?

Gotta include What I've Done. That's a given. It was the big iconic single from that album. And it's also a rare case where the most iconic song is also the one that best represents the album it's from. Minutes to Midnight was largely defined by Political Commentary. Look at songs like Hands Held High, No More Sorrow, Shadow of the Day, or even TLTGYA. What I've Done is part of that same thread because... look at the music video.

And Leave Out All the Rest is also good to keep in because it does a better job of portraying what MTM actually sounded like; namely that it was quieter and more reflective than what came before it. And it's also a massive win when it comes to paying tribute to Chester.

Then there's Bleed It Out... gotta be honest guys, this one is hard to keep in.

Again, it's a fantastic song. But nothing about it represents Minutes to Midnight very well imo. It just sounds like diet Meteora. I mean, I guess it has a cleaner rock sound. So there's that. But What I've Done already conveys some of that. And it's just framed around a bar fight...

Then I looked at the singles that were left.

New Divide. Gotta keep that in because it was the big stand-alone single back in the day.

Gotta keep Friendly Fire because that's the one token single that debuted with Papercuts. It's important to include at least one original song. And it makes for a fantastic closing track. This is a no brainer.

And then there's QWERTY... I was really tempted to cut QWERTY on the grounds that it's a pretty massive deep cut. But this was a situation where that meta rule came in. If Mike himself thought it was important enough to include, then I should respect that and keep it in.

It's important to remember that if QWERTY hadn't been included, it likely never would have seen the light of day at all. This was their one chance to give it a proper release onto major streaming platforms like Spotify.

And QWERTY also offers something that you won't get from any of the other songs off the official Papercuts. It acts as a window into Linkin Park's underbelly. Half of what made the band stand out so much from other bands at the time was the fact that we got so much bonus content. The Underground Series. If you stuck only to the biggest hits, then that would get shafted entirely and, ironically, the historical picture of what Linkin Park was would actually feel less complete.

So I can't really justify cutting QWERTY either.

I hate to say it, but between the two, I'll have to cut Bleed It Out

You could argue that Bleed It Out is important to keep in because it shows the relational conflict aspect of Minutes to Midnight. The fact Chester had gotten a divorce. That comes through in songs like Valentines Day, In Peices, Across the Line, etc. And... yeah. No other single from that era covers that quite as well.

But I think QWERTY can actually carry some of that.

No, it's not actually from Minutes to Midnight itself. But it was written in that same general time block. It shows what they were concerned with while MTM was in production. What mattered to them. What kinds of themes they kept circling back to. And I think it's safe to say a lot of people retroactively associate QWERTY with Minutes to Midnight anyway since they thought that's what the album would sound like (closest MTM song to that sound is Given Up and literally nothing else. Lol.)

And now the hardest part. I had already cut Numb/Encore, Lost and Bleed It Out. That was still one song short if I wanted to added in all 4 of the songs listed above.

I had already run through all the other options. What other choice did I have but to cut a Meteora track?

So, looking at that core set again - Numb, Breaking the Habit, Somewhere I Belong, and Faint

Of those four, which would you say is the least iconic? Not which one you personally don't like. Which one had the smallest impact in the general zeitgeist? If someone who'd never heard of Linkin Park listened through Papercuts, which one would they be least likely to notice was missing if it wasn't included?

It's definitely not Breaking the Habit or Numb. Those were huge back in the day.

It's not even Somewhere I Belong. That was also pretty big.

...I hate to say it... but it's Faint. Until I got more actively involved in this Fandom, I actually hadn't heard that one before at all. That tells me it probably wasn't as big as the others.

It also doesn't read as a great representation of what Meteora was as an album either. Production-wise, it just sounds like a more polished version of One Step Closer. And thematically... I guess you could say it's about demanding attention? That's a pretty important theme across Meteora. But Numb and Somewhere I Belong already cover a lot of that territory on their own.

Again, I know that's difficult to let go of. It's a great song. I'm just not sure it would serve this album. Those are different priorities.

So now I finally had the four slots cleared that I needed.

There's also one single from a particular album that I thought would maybe be worth swapping out for another. That being Living Things.

The songs they included for that were Castle of Glass and Burn It Down.

Castle of Glass is an obvious keeper because, say it with me now, it's iconic. But Burn It Down just isn't on that same level. I don't think any other Living Things song is, come to think of it.

Burn It Down doesn't really represent the themes of LT very well since it's just about raw destructive anger and... that's not what Living Things is about. And it also sounds really similar to New Divide in terms of how it sounds. If we're keeping ND, we don't really need Burn it Down too.

Remember, this is meant to be a retrospective walk through of all of Linkin Park's different eras. That means variety is a good thing.

Of the remaining singles I could use to replace Burn it Down, the one I think represents Living Things the best would probably be Lost in the Echo. That's all about loss, grief, a sense of fragility, and moving on after disaster. Those themes are all over the album.

And production-wise, it does a fantastic job of conveying the signature electronic rock sound that made Living Things What it was. Something about the production almost sounds cold and detached. Also a good representation of the album.

Now... that said, I'd like to circle back to why I wanted to include Rebellion as one of the additional tracks.

If I just used Final Masquerade on it's own, that would give a skewed view of The Hunting Party. That song is much more melodic and emotional than almost anything else on that album.

And of the other singles from that time:

1. Until It's Gone is an easy "no." It's very melodic, similar to Final Masquerade. And since we've already got One More Light, Lost in the Echo, and Irridescent, another song about grief feels redundant.
2. Wastelands is... honestly, I'm not entirely sure what Wastelands is even about. I didn't want to risk it. 😅 If you have a good argument for why that might represent THP better than Rebellion, let me know.
3. Guilty All the Same is a damn good candidate. But I've always kind of seen it as a sister song to No More Sorrow; not in sound design. In theme. The two songs are basically saying the same thing. So it too does not do a great job of representing what makes THP unique as an album.

Now look at Rebellion; the only single left from that era. In a lot of ways, this is basically perfect

1. It's a really good example of the album's signature aggression.
2. It has broad appeal... or at least it seems to. To a casual listener, the surface read would just be one of... well... rebellion. "Fight the system" energy. It's the same reason songs like Smells Like Teen Spirit or Another Brick in the Wall got so popular.
3. If you actually read the lyrics, it's actually saying the complete opposite. Basically, "the fight is pointless. We are caught in a never ending cycle of conflict. We keep hurting each other for no reason." That's almost the thesis statement of THP. It's all over the place. Keys to the Kingdom says "fighting in futility" and "tell me what's worth fighting for." There's a whole song called "All for Nothing."
4. In some ways, you could almost think of Rebellion as a precursor to Friendly Fire. It's a very similar message. So if it was included early on Papercuts, it would create a cool bookend effect across the album.

Now that I've gone through my reasoning, all that's left was to take the songs and arrange them according to what sounded good together.

Here's what I ended up with:

1. Papercut
2. Somewhere I Belong
3. Crawling
4. Numb
5. In the End
6. Breaking the Habit
7. Rebellion
8. Waiting for the End
9. Castle of Glass
10. One More Light
11. Iridescent (Version 2)
12. Lost in the Echo
13. Leave Out All the Rest
14. What I've Done
15. QWERTY
16. One Step Closer
17. New Divide
18. Heavy
19. Final Masquerade
20. Friendly Fire

That list is for if you want to recreate the playlist on other streaming platforms.

But I've also made playlists.

On YouTube Music

And Spotify