I didn’t know music could speak volumes to me until Hybrid Theory, and discovering it prompted me to find other kinds of music, the stuff that would give me a window into the lives of so many others. Without it, I would never have realized my passion for all things musical. It also acted as a gateway into the world of music. It represented what I felt so well, and it came as a blessing for me to see that I wasn’t alone in my miserable pre-high-school years. Quite simply, I needed Hybrid Theory to come into my life - it was angst, it was solidarity, it was important. More importantly, though, it showed me that other people felt the way I did. The lyrics reinforced my ideas even further: never before had I heard such violently misanthropic imagery in music, and Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda spoke to me in a way nothing really had before. I glommed on to the music, seeing it as a gigantic, multi-platinum middle finger to the pop conglomerates. Hearing those wonderful distorted power chords for the first time was wonderful. Coincidentally, I was starting to tire of the radio, and had started looking for some other sources of music, music which would mean something to me instead of being whatever crap Kiss 108 was spewing out. I felt so horribly alone during those early teenage years, and I thought that no one else could feel the way I did - empty, jagged, jaded, cold. I didn’t want to talk, so no one listened, and the vicious cycle continued until I was lagging behind in terms of social skills. It felt better to keep my feelings inside back then, after all. People didn’t want to talk to me for fear of having a difficult conversation, and I, reeling from the shock of a parent’s death, was perfectly happy to stay silent. I wasn’t just your average kid anymore I was the kid whose dad died. In sixth grade, my dad passed away after an uphill battle against brain cancer, and just like that my fate in middle school was set. Honestly, what probably kept me out of the “cool” cliques was other people’s perception of me rather than something I actually did. I don’t really know what the cause was, but the end result was my isolation, rejected as one of the outcasts and losers of seventh grade.
#LINKIN PARK HYBRID THEORY ALBUM TRACKLIST HOW TO#
I didn’t have the social grace to navigate the treacherous terrain of the awkward early teenage years, as someone who spent his elementary school years talking about Pokemon and playing Gamecube instead of learning how to talk to people.
I was your average middle-school outcast, and I needed something to provide an escape from the apathy I felt towards nearly everything. Not too long ago, after all, I was part of the target demographic. I think I have a pretty good idea of why the album sold so well and continues to fly off the shelves.
Everyone went home happy, despite the seeming lack of musical content needed to justify the album’s RIAA certification. Mothers, noticing the conspicuous lack of the devastating “Parental Advisory: Explicit Content” sticker, were happy to purchase the album for their kids. Teenagers blasted the singles on the radio.
Certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (500,000 units sold) within five weeks of its release, the album went on to sell approximately 100,000 copies every week for years after its release, eventually becoming one of only dozens of albums ever certified diamond by the RIAA (10 million units sold). A review from British music magazine NME cites the band’s attempt at an “eclectic” sound “as reflective of the half-measures which permeate this Arizona quintet's debut album.” This excellent summary of the album leads to one essential question, though: why did it sell so well?īecause sell it did. What’s more, there’s an omnipresent lack of creativity which mires the album in the muck of the nu-metal explosion of the early 2000s, seemingly nothing separating it from the rest of the distortion-laden bands of Linkin Park’s ilk. The lyrics aren’t particularly impressive, either - they tend to deal vaguely with generic themes such as paranoia, fighting back against society, love lost, and the like. The song structures are incredibly cookie-cutter, generally opting for the standard nu-metal and rap-metal formulae of rapping, singing, and screaming simple patterns over distorted power chords. Objectively, Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory is not a very good album. Review Summary: An album that changed and empowered a generation of teenagers.
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