I feel odd about the kind of morbid turn this series has taken; I've slowed down on making deep cuts playlists a bit lately, and one of the things that is most likely to spur me to work on one is when a musician dies. So several recent entries in the series have followed a frontman's death, and this is actually the 4th in a row. It's shocking and sad to hear of Chester Bennington's suicide, especially so soon after Chris Cornell's, as well as not too long after the death of Scott Weiland, who Bennington had been filling in for in Stone Temple Pilots. Linkin Park were of a different generation than those guys, and Bennington was only 41, but they dominated rock radio like few other bands have in the 21st century, and I really warmed up to them over the years. Much has been made of the fact that Bennington committed suicide 2 months after his friend Cornell, on Cornell's birthday, which is just horribly sad on so many levels. Both of those guys could sing really well and scream incredibly well, which is rarer in the rock world than you might expect.

Linkin Park deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Runaway
2. By Myself
3. Cure For My Itch
4. A Place For My Head
5. Forgotten
6. Hit The Floor
7. Don't Stay
8. Nobody's Listening
9. Wake
10. Hands Held High
11. Valentine's Day
12. The Requiem
13. When They Come For Me
14. Robot Boy
15. Blackout
16. Lies Greed Misery
17. Victimized
18. Roads Untraveled
19. All For Nothing featuring Page Hamilton
20. Mark The Graves
21. Drawbar featuring Tom Morello
22. Nobody Can Save Me
23. Sorry For Now
24. One More Light

Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 from Hybrid Theory (2000)
Tracks 6, 7 and 8 from Meteora (2003)
Tracks 9, 10 and 11 from Minutes To Midnight (2007)
Tracks 12, 13, 14 and 15 from A Thousand Suns (2010)
Tracks 16, 17 and 18 from Living Things (2012)
Tracks 19, 20 and 21 from The Hunting Party (2014)
Tracks 22, 23 and 24 from One More Light (2017)

Linkin Park were a hugely successful singles band, with a ridiculous string of rock #1s, and I've always been partial to "Faint" (which I called the 4th best rock single of the 2000s). But they've got a lot of songs I've gravitated to that weren't necessarily their most ubiquitous hits, like "Waiting For The End," "Bleed It Out," and "Breaking The Habit." There was always maybe a 50/50 chance that when they came on the radio I'd change the station, but when I didn't, I'd eagerly crank it up. They were the kind of band where I usually hear their albums in a friend's car rather than listen to it on my own (I feel like we played Hybrid Theory a dozen times on the drive to Florida for spring break 2002). But I particularly liked A Thousand Suns, which I put on my year end list in 2010.

"Runaway" charted as an album track and it really feels as instantly familiar to me as any of the big singles on Hybrid Theory. But Meteora is where I really feel like they started to get interesting. At a certain point I stopped thinking of them as a nu metal band and started to think of them this nerdy group of guys who loved metal and backpack rap and anime and IDM and managed to combine all of those things into this fairly unique package that sold a bazillion records. On the later records they really started to take apart the formula a little bit and give each album a unique feel, so you get the brooding, proggy A Thousand Suns, the harder edged The Hunting Party, and this year's more polished One More Light, which got some backlash as a 'pop' record but, listening to it now, is as poignant and vulnerable as anything Bennington ever did.

Previous playlists in the Deep Album Cuts series:
Vol. 1: Brandy
Vol. 2: Whitney Houston
Vol. 3: Madonna
Vol. 4: My Chemical Romance
Vol. 5: Brad Paisley
Vol. 6: George Jones
Vol. 7: The Doors
Vol. 8: Jay-Z
Vol. 9: Robin Thicke
Vol. 10: R. Kelly
Vol. 11: Fall Out Boy
Vol. 12: TLC
Vol. 13: Pink
Vol. 14: Queen
Vol. 15: Steely Dan
Vol. 16: Trick Daddy
Vol. 17: Paramore
Vol. 18: Elton John
Vol. 19: Missy Elliott
Vol. 20: Mariah Carey
Vol. 21: The Pretenders
Vol. 22: "Weird Al" Yankovic
Vol. 23: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Vol. 24: Foo Fighters
Vol. 25: Counting Crows
Vol. 26: T.I.
Vol. 27: Jackson Browne
Vol. 28: Usher
Vol. 29: Mary J. Blige
Vol. 30: The Black Crowes
Vol. 31: Ne-Yo
Vol. 32: Blink-182
Vol. 33: One Direction
Vol. 34: Kelly Clarkson
Vol. 35: The B-52's
Vol. 36: Ludacris
Vol. 37: They Might Be Giants
Vol. 38: T-Pain
Vol. 39: Snoop Dogg
Vol. 40: Ciara
Vol. 41: Creedence Clearwater Revival
Vol. 42: Dwight Yoakam
Vol. 43: Demi Lovato
Vol. 44: Prince
Vol. 45: Duran Duran
Vol. 46: Rihanna
Vol. 47: Janet Jackson
Vol. 48: Sara Bareilles
Vol. 49: Motley Crue
Vol. 50: The Who
Vol. 51: Coldplay
Vol. 52: Alicia Keys
Vol. 53: Stone Temple Pilots
Vol. 54: David Bowie
Vol. 55: The Eagles
Vol. 56: The Beatles
Vol. 57: Beyonce
Vol. 58: Beanie Sigel
Vol. 59: A Tribe Called Quest
Vol. 60: Cheap Trick
Vol. 61: Guns N' Roses
Vol. 62: The Posies
Vol. 63: The Time
Vol. 64: Gucci Mane
Vol. 65: Violent Femmes
Vol. 66: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Vol. 67: Maxwell
Vol. 68: Parliament-Funkadelic
Vol. 69: Chevelle
Vol. 70: Ray Parker Jr. and Raydio
Vol. 71: Fantasia
Vol. 72: Heart
Vol. 73: Pitbull
Vol. 74: Nas
Vol. 75: Monica
Vol. 76: The Cars
Vol. 77: 112
Vol. 78: 2Pac
Vol. 79: Nelly
Vol. 80: Meat Loaf
Vol. 81: AC/DC
Vol. 82: Bruce Springsteen
Vol. 83: Pearl Jam
Vol. 84: Green Day
Vol. 85: George Michael and Wham!
Vol. 86: New Edition
Vol. 87: Chuck Berry
Vol. 88: Electric Light Orchestra
Vol. 89: Chic
Vol. 90: Journey
Vol. 91: Yes
Vol. 92: Soundgarden
Vol. 93: The Allman Brothers Band
Vol. 94: Mobb Deep

This entry was posted on Friday, July 21, 2017 at 3:37 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.