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GRAMMYs

Blink-182

Photo by Liam Nicholls/Newsmakers

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'Enema Of The State' Will Never Actually Turn 20 blink-182s-enema-state-will-never-actually-turn-20

Blink-182's 'Enema Of The State' Will Never Actually Turn 20

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What's their age again? Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge and Travis Barker's unapologetically juvenile third album marked the first time the trio wrote consciously with an audience in mind
Dan Weiss
GRAMMYs
Jun 10, 2019 - 2:05 pm

The truth is, punk has rarely gone pop. Sure, there’s popular punk. There’s punk bands whose iconic logos and contributions to fashion and established fan bases (with said logos emblazoned on their bodies) will never die. And there’s pop-punk, of course, which has more or less come to encompass just about any band whose music is catchy, fast, and played on guitars (and it helps if they’ve ever done a stint on the Warped Tour). But you can count the ones who’ve really broken pop in America — sales, charts, radio, TV, mainstream magazine covers — on your fingers: Ramones, Green Day, The Offspring, My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Paramore. And right in the middle of those names, you have Blink-182 in 1999, crashing Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC's neverending TRL party with the very few power chords of "All the Small Things," a song whose "na na nas" have entered the Hall of Fame with the likes of "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It," "Hey Jude" and Steam’s "Kiss Him Goodbye."

Why did three tattooed Californians resonate so much and become more popular than several dozen of their Warped tourmates? Well, more than any of the above-named bands or their peers, Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge, and drummer Travis Barker gave themselves a role to play. Enema Of The State was their third album, but it was their first to write consciously with an audience in mind. And that audience was young.

There was no shortage of rock bands playing to underdeveloped minds in 1999, the year when Limp Bizkit made "stick it up your — yeah!" a summer rallying cry. However, Blink came into the public eye not just mocking norms (behold the nudist breakthrough video for "What's My Age Again?") but satirizing them (enter the boy band-puncturing "All the Small Things" clip). Plenty of teenagers hated boy bands, and Eminem threatened to beat them up, but Blink-182 dared to envision themselves in the role, playing the Regular Guys striking those absurd poses in front of wind machines, turning something expensive cheap, showing what it actually looked like cut down to earth. They did their own stunts, and people liked that. While Fred Durst really sounded like he wanted to break something, and Eminem really did seem to live many of the nightmarish situations he joked about, Blink-182 didn't come off as hateful at all.

This depends, of course, on how much "Dumpweed"'s infamous chorus "I need a girl that I can train" rubs you the wrong way in 2019. And of course, that's how Enema Of The State kicks off, putting its best foot forward directly into its mouth. 20 years and far too few gun laws later, it’s harder to see what made toxic masculinity so appealing in the first place, but the line achieved its puerile success not only because it was so hard to take seriously but because the rest of the song is about how scared DeLonge is. The fact it’s immediately followed on the album by Hoppus' "Don't Leave Me," which gives the girl the last word ("She said don’t let the door hit your ass") helps. That two of the album's three big hits are rooted in romance ("All the Small Things") and empathy ("Adam’s Song") rather than the rubber-glove humor they were known for helps, too. Blink-182 didn’t sound like they wanted revenge on their high school, and they didn’t sound like they hated themselves, either. What they sounded like were boys that teenagers could relate to rather than ones promising girls the moon in perfect harmony from their private jet.

That also means they sang about diarrhea.

"Dysentery Gary," positioned directly before those aforementioned more tender singles in Enema’s track listing, helped underscore just how powerless (but in no way humorless) Blink’s masculinity sounded through DeLonge’s whine. "Girls are such a drag" he mutters while trying unconvincingly to come up with reasons that a girl should pick him instead of the perceived jerk who presumably won out: "He's a player, diarrhea giver!" Sure, "your mom's a whore" hews a little too close to the sort of trauma that awaits women who dare view their own comments sections. But they leave it at that and go on to contemplate suicide with "Adam's Song" with no small amount of love for the depressed protagonist.

That lightness and sociability is oddly what sticks out about Enema Of The State, an album that may be 20 years old but will be frozen forever at 17. Five years prior, Green Day's epochal, excellent Dookie grappled with social conditions like apathy, sexual frustration and watching the people you grew up with shrink in the rearview mirror. But it was downright apocalyptic compared to Enema’s teen movie, which is rarely deeper than the American Pie-style cinema of the period. Hoppus and DeLonge sang about the dilemmas of parties and college and the slut-shamey realization that even the horniest dude at the party might lose his nerve when he finally gets a chance with the girl who isn't wearing underwear. DeLonge also gets to sing "Aliens Exist," an outlier that is what it says it is, and somehow became the defining aspect of his legacy as he premieres a new History Channel series about UFOs while Blink soldiers on without him in 2019.

But the legacy of Enema Of The State will always be defined by what it accomplished: remarkably clean-sounding guitars, the hyperactive drumming of Barker (an all-time rock drummer finally getting his spotlight) and episodes of adolescent romance so silly that an entire second verse of the first single could be devoted to the transcript of a prank phone call. Just because one chorus lamented that "some girls try too hard" didn’t mean that millions of young women didn't get the underlying joke that many more guys don't try hard enough. And if these three couldn't solve their relationship problems, at least they helped make high school easier by providing some good jokes about it. What's their age again?

Reel Big Fish To Wage War: The Lasting Legacy Of Warped Tour

Tower Records 1999 Hong Kong

Tower Records 1999, Hong Kong

Photo: GARRIGE HO/South China Morning Post/Getty Images

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Poll: Which 1999 Album Have You Had On Repeat? poll-which-1999-album-have-you-had-repeat-year

Poll: Which 1999 Album Have You Had On Repeat This Year?

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From Dr. Dre to Destiny's Child and Britney Spears to Moby, a lot artists released amazing albums back in 1999—we want to know which classic LP you're still jamming out to
Ana Monroy Yglesias
GRAMMYs
Sep 11, 2019 - 1:18 pm

If you miss the days of going to Tower Records, browsing through the new releases rack and leaving with a stack of shiny CDs to pop into your indestructible Discman, this is the poll for you! Even if you born too late to truly understand the extreme wave of 1999 music nostalgia currently taking place, 20 years later, perhaps you've attempted to relive the '90s through your own musical streaming journey.

Either way, we want to know which classic 1999 album you still can't get enough of, which you can tell us by taking our poll below. Make sure to read on to travel with us back to 1999, with an overview of the albums and a selection of their songs to listen to.

Polls

Which 1999 Album Have You Had On Repeat This Year?

 

Let's take a quick trip back to the turn of the 21st century, when crop tops and ringer tees were having a major moment and iMacs came in five fun candy colors. On Nov. 16, 1999, West Coast hip-hop king Dr. Dre released 2001, his long-anticipated follow-up to his 1992 debut album, The Chronic. His 68-minute opus brought us classic G-funk records like "Still D.R.E." and "Next Episode," both featuring Snoop Dogg and "Forgot About Dre" with Eminem, the Compton icon's then newly signed protégée. The latter song would earn the pair a GRAMMY win for Best Rap Performance By A Duo Or Group at the 43rd GRAMMY Awards.

Over on the East Coast side of hip-hop, in Philadelphia, The Roots released their breakout third album, Things Fall Apart earlier in the year, on Feb. 23. The dynamic LP earned the group widespread acclaim and their first two GRAMMY nominations, including for Best Rap Album. The memorable, ultra-smooth "You Got Me" featuring Erykah Badu and Eve, earned The Roots their second nomination and first-ever GRAMMY win, for Best Rap Performance By A Duo Or Group.

Elsewhere in Los Angeles, the Red Hot Chili Peppers returned with their seventh studio album, Californication. The Rick Rubin-produced 15-track LP included classics like "Otherside," "Californication" and "Scar Tissue." The last song, still an alt-rock radio staple, earned the group the second of two nods at the 42nd GRAMMY Awards, where they also received a nomination for Best Rock Album.

Read: Blink-182's 'Enema Of The State' Will Never Actually Turn 20

In another, albeit less serious, moment from the radio-friendly SoCal rock glory days, Blink-182 gave us Enema Of The State, along with hits "What's My Age Again?" and "All The Small Things."

Making our way over from pop-rock to bubblegum pop, America's sweetheart Britney Spears started 1999 right with the release of her debut album, …Baby One More Time on Jan. 12. The choreography, fashion and lyrics of both the videos for the title track and "(You Drive Me) Crazy" will live on in our '90s time capsules. If you forgot to "E-Mail My Heart," don't worry, the AOL inbox is still up and running somehow.

Fellow pop icons Backstreet Boys were ready to take us boldly into Y2K with their all-white getups and fierce poses/dance moves, as immortalized in the iconic "I Want It That Way" video and on the Millennium cover art. "Larger Than Life" was an appropriate opening track for the their third LP, the best-selling album of 1999. The beloved boy band earned four GRAMMY nominations that year, including for Album Of The Year and Record Of The Year, for "I Want It That Way."

Over in Atlanta, three powerful women known as TLC were also channeling a big Y2K mood on their GRAMMY-winning third studio album, FanMail. It featured the eternally empowering anthems "No Scrubs" and "Unpretty," and earned the trio two GRAMMYs and six total nominations.

More: Why The Millennium Tour Matters in 2019

A year and a half after releasing their self-titled debut, another powerful squad, Houston's Destiny's Child, followed up with the sophomore album, The Writing's on the Wall. With catchy-as-hell hooks on "Bills, Bills, Bills," "Jumpin', Jumpin'" and "Say My Name," the album is still one that can still turn the club up. The former track earned the group their first GRAMMY nod in 1999. The latter track, released as the album's third single, earned them two more nominations at the 43rd Annual GRAMMY Awards, along with their first win, for Best R&B Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal.

Over in the New York rave scene, DJ/producer/singer Moby moved from the underground to the global spotlight with his fifth studio album, Play. The eclectic GRAMMY-nominated LP became the best-selling electronica album with instant-classic moody house tracks like "Porcelain," "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?" and "South Side."

Related: Ace Of Base's "The Sign" Turns 25: How America Fell Back In Love With Swedish Pop

Puerto Rican heartthrob Ricky Martin led another major music moment in 1999 with his GRAMMY-nominated self-titled fifth studio album, his first LP sung primarily in English. The album offers both English and Spanish versions of "Livin' la Vida Loca," while two of the other singles, "María and "The Cup Of Life," are offered as singular Spanglish versions. "Livin' la Vida Loca" earned Martin his first No. 1 hit on the Hot 100, as well as nominations for Record Of The Year at both the 42nd GRAMMY Awards and the inaugural Latin GRAMMYs in 2000. Along with him came the first major boom of Spanish-language artists, like Jennifer Lopez and Shakira, into the U.S. pop landscape.

Don't forget to let us know which 1999 album you still love the most in the poll above, and to share it with your friends as well. As you finish watching the videos below we're only left to wonder, which 2019 bops will still slap in—gasp—2039?

Green Day, Weezer & Fall Out Boy Unite For 2020 Hella Mega Tour

Miguel performs at the 2019 Latin GRAMMYs

Miguel performs at the 2019 Latin GRAMMYs

Photo: Lester Cohen/Getty Images for LARAS

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"Black Power Live": Miguel, Ne-Yo, More Confirmed black-power-live-feature-performances-miguel-dev-hynes-ne-yo-kamasi-washington-denzel

"Black Power Live" To Feature Performances From Miguel, Dev Hynes, Ne-Yo, Kamasi Washington, Denzel Curry And More

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Hosted by Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors, the one-day event, happening Saturday, June 27, will also feature performances from Jessie Reyez, Vagabon and Twin Shadow as well as interviews and conversations with Emma González & Dream Hampton
John Ochoa
GRAMMYs
Jun 25, 2020 - 1:14 pm

Black Power Live, a music- and conversation-based online livestream benefit, has announced the lineup for its upcoming event. Miguel, Dev Hynes, Ne-Yo, Doja Cat, Jessie Reyez, Aloe Blacc, Vagabon, Twin Shadow and others are among the musical acts confirmed. The event, produced by FORM and Jammcard, will also include the debut of Terrace Martin's new composition, "Racism on Trial," featuring Kamasi Washington, Robert Glasper, Denzel Curry, Alex Isley and other special guests. 

The event will also feature interviews and discussions with Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors, who's also hosting the event, alongside Democratic candidate for Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón; activist and Parkland survivor Emma González; "Dear White People" creator Justin Simien; filmmaker and activist Dream Hampton; and others. 

Taking place Saturday, June 27, from 5 p.m.—midnight PST and streaming exclusively on Twitch, Black Power Live will raise funds for "organizations across the movement for Black lives," according to a press release announcing the event, including Crenshaw Dairy Mart, Trap Heals, Transgender Law Center, Sankofa and Black Men Build.

View the full music and conversation lineup below. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CB3Uzynj13P

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Los Angeles funk band The Brandon Brown Collective will perform Black Power anthems as well as new songs alongside some of the event's confirmed guests, according to the Black Power Live event page. The event will also feature readings from poets Aja Monet and Yrsa Daley-Ward, accompanied by Dev Hynes on solo piano. Rap/hardcore punk duo Ho99o9 will perform two new songs alongside Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker. 

Black Power Live will be a "celebration of the incredible work done by organizers and activists around the world and will be a chance to reflect, regroup, and talk about next steps," according to a press release. 

Want To Support Protesters And Black Lives Matter Groups? Here's How

GRAMMYs
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Len's “Steal My Sunshine" 20 Years L-A-T-E-R million-miles-fun-listening-lens-steal-my-sunshine-20-years-l-t-e-r

A Million Miles of Fun: Listening To Len's "Steal My Sunshine" 20 Years L-A-T-E-R

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There were plenty of weird hits in the '90s, but there is absolutely nothing normal about “Steal My Sunshine," from Len’s genre to its famous sampled riff. And don’t even start us on the lyrics
Dan Weiss
GRAMMYs
Jul 23, 2019 - 10:28 am

The 1990s, particularly the musical culture that defined the decade, was marked by a lot of things: irony, disaffectedness, angst. But "randomness" might be the most crucial component. '90s radio was a Wild West of jock jams, Pearl Jam and Nirvana imitators, ska, big band swing, the tail end of New Jack swing, the front end of Timbaland and people of all walks of life who rapped with varying degrees of success, sometimes over loud guitars. And Cake. At least the 2010s developed social media as a support network to espouse complicated feelings over something like Rebecca Black (or "OId Town Road," for that matter). The '90s did not provide memes to bring people together and help make sense of "Tubthumping." We were all alone. But we made it.

Len's "Steal My Sunshine" was one of the decade's last true non-sequiturs. It doesn't matter that the mysterious Canadian outfit put out two albums before "Sunshine" home You Can't Stop the Bum Rush or has since apparently released two others. Len, definitively, in the public eye, came from nowhere, to whence they returned, but not before offering history some butter tarts. (If you've been wondering for 20 years, the Canadian treat resembles mini pecan pies sans pecans. They're better than you think.)

No one knows who "Len" is supposed to be, least of all Marc and Sharon Costanzo, the brother and sister who became one-hit wonders under that moniker. That's asking dangerous questions, like who Harvey Danger is or what the "182" in Blink-182 stands for. Let the chaos be and it will reward you with pop bliss. So we are avowedly not going to steal everybody’s collective sunshine and run "Now the funny glare to pay a gleaming tare in a staring under heat / Involved an under usual feat / And I'm not only among but I invite who I want to come" through Google Translate.

We are going to celebrate the Costanzo siblings’ giggly homemade boredom, though, because it gives that of Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas a run for their (piles of) money. You Can't Stop the Bum Rush is a pinnacle of randomness, the cherry (or smoked salmon) on the Dadaist sundae that is the 1990s. Musicians on this thing include hip-hop pioneers Kurtis Blow and Biz Markie, Poison guitarist C.C. Deville, Broken Social Scene plug Brendan Canning and future croaky alt-rap cult hero Buck 65, who also appears in cartoon form on the cover, second from left. The only thing more unlikely than this combination of people is the album bearing a hit single, which of course sounds like none of the above-named artists. (In this ridiculously entertaining interview with Marc Costanzo, he says Sum 41's Deryck Whibley was present when he recorded vocals. Was every Canadian musician involved with Len? Did 13-year-old Drake deliver pizza to the studio?)

Because this was the '90s, Len weren’t even the only Canadians working the Completely Irreplicable and Somewhat Frighteningly Eclectic circuit; sh*t would’ve hit the fan if Bran Van 3000 started a turf war (those kids had a girl-group cover of "Cum on Feel the Noize" that starts acoustic and ends techno). But Len were The Killers to BV3’s The Bravery, so to speak, and their reward was a song that your regular, non-weird-music friends remember in 2019.

"Steal My Sunshine" is one of those tunes that was everywhere in part because the seeds for it had been planted in part by the Andrea True Connection’s "More, More, More" saturating discos in 1976 (True herself had a bonkers story, acting in more than 50 porn films before reaching Number Four on the Hot 100). "Sunshine," which sampled True’s bridge for that iconic opening hook, was merely its final form. Stylistically, "Steal My Sunshine" is inarguably pop, though the tone of it is gloriously incongruent even with itself. Marc and Sharon’s voices border on twee, with a breezy delivery that speaks to directly to the song’s famous soft-serve vibe.

But the words, whatever you make of them, speak to fighting off something dark. Taking a cue from the canned candid dialogue of Weezer’s “Undone (The Sweater Song),” the Costanzos’ verses each begin with concerned friends discussing them: “Man, I’ve never seen Sharon look so bad before.” But this alarm is confusingly offset by the cheery narrators themselves. Are we supposed to believe Sharon’s hit rock bottom because she’s made [checks notes] an “eight-foot heap” of Slurpee straws? (Holy hell that’s a specific and esoteric image.) Is this a weird Canadian in-joke? Depression in 1999 sounds significantly preferable to depression in 2019.

The chorus, which everybody kind of knows (did you know you were going to be singing “keeping dumb and built to beat” before it appeared on the karaoke screen? You did not), has a loving sound to it, of the two reassuring each other of things that may keep their heads up. But that’s under the strange stipulation of promising to steal each other’s sunshine, not to prevent the thievery of said Vitamin D. This threatens to blow “Steal My Sunshine” wide open as potentially the most mysterious are-they-vampires song since Toadies’ “Possum Kingdom.”

You Can’t Stop the Bum Rush, on its face, looks like the weirdest part of the Len saga. Once it gets the hit out of the way, the rapping begins (“Cryptik Souls Crew,” “Beautiful Day”), in comes with the squeal of rock guitar (“Feelin’ Alright,” “Cheekybugger”), and occasionally some atmospheric lounge funk (“Junebug”) or krautrock (“The Hard Disk Approach”) takes up residence like they’re the friggin’ Avalanches. But plenty of ‘90s radio anomalies made albums that sounded nothing like their reason for being (wait ‘til you hear the rest of the Sugar Ray album “Fly” is on) and the biggest shock is how little “Steal My Sunshine” — which is very possibly an anti-sunshine song — makes sense when held up to the, um, light.

Ultimately, the underlying bizarreness, enigmatic characters (in that aforementioned Stereogum interview, Marc Costanzo mentions in passing that he and his sister “really haven’t talked in a while” as of 2016), and uncanny industry connections only serve to further cement “Steal My Sunshine” as a legendary pop blip. If you have more questions than answers now about a sweet tune that you assumed had less to ponder than, say, “Closing Time,” well, you’re welcome. Bring on the memes. Your move, Lil Nas X.

Blink-182's 'Enema Of The State' Will Never Actually Turn 20

GRAMMYs

Linkin Park pose with the GRAMMY for Best Hard Rock Performance at the 44th Annual GRAMMY Awards
Photo credit: LEE CELANO/AFP via Getty Images

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Linkin Park's 'Hybrid Theory' Turns 20 what-it-meant-me-will-eventually-be-memory-linkin-parks-hybrid-theory-turns-20

What It Meant To Me Will Eventually Be A Memory: Linkin Park's 'Hybrid Theory' Turns 20

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Two decades after its release, GRAMMY.com looks back on the nu-metal champions' debut album
Jeff Yerger
GRAMMYs
Oct 24, 2020 - 9:48 am

Back in August, nu-metal heroes Linkin Park released their first new song since the passing of lead singer Chester Bennington in 2017. The song, "She Couldn’t," is a lost B-side from their massive debut Hybrid Theory, which turns 20 this October 24. Built upon a minimalist trip-hop beat and a ghostly Mos Def sample, "She Couldn’t" sounds nothing like the album that came after. There are no crunching guitars, no screamed refrains—just a band in their infancy figuring out the depths of their sound.

Hearing Bennington's voice from out of the ether hits right in the gut. When he’s not screaming away his demons (of which he had many), he could be gentle and sincere. Hybrid Theory B-Side "My December" (not to mention its Reanimation remix "MyHybrid Theory should be better understood as being universally human. 

"There's some pretty pissed-off kids all over the world," Bennington told The Guardian back in 2001. "I think that's a good thing. Anger feeds change—more so than happiness, because I think when people become happy and comfortable they become lazy and melancholy. When there's a little bit of rage behind, you get motivated."

By the year 2000, Linkin Park had plenty to be angry about. Bennington—a troubled kid from Arizona—had just joined the band as a last-ditch attempt at a music career and a life outside of a cubicle. Meanwhile, vocalist/rapper Mike Shinoda, guitarist Brad Delson drummer Rob Bourdon, bassist Dave "Phoenix" Pharrell and DJ Joe Hahn, had spent the better part of the '90s in the L.A. suburbs trying to get their music project off the ground with little success. The band had big plans to change the world, but the world wasn’t ready for them.

Linkin Park eventually landed at Warner Bros, but the label didn’t know what to do with them. First, they wanted the band—who at the time was known as Xero—to change their name (which they did, twice). Then they wanted Shinoda to rap more like Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst. When he declined, they wanted Shinoda out of the band and Bennington to be the star (to which Bennington told the folks at Warner Bros to go… well, you can probably guess). On top of all that, their producer Don Gilmore didn’t like any of their songs, and asked the band to rewrite the whole bunch. It’s a minor miracle that these songs ever saw the light of day, but against all odds, Linkin Park released what would be one of the most successful rock records in history—perhaps the last of its kind to take over the world.

Linkin Park's 'Hybrid Theory' Celebrates 20 Years

It’s easy to forget that Hybrid Theory was a debut record. The rap-rock sound they were going for already sounded so fully realized. It wasn’t just hip-hop or grunge; there was metal in there, as well as bits of screamo and electronica. It sounded futuristic. These were carefully crafted pop songs hidden behind layers of guitars and turntable scratches—decidedly more genre-diverse than their nu-metal peers Korn, Slipknot and the aforementioned Limp Bizkit. With hooks for days, Hybrid Theory songs leaned more into Linkin Park's hip-hop influences, and reached for the heights of U2, Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails.

And back to that voice. No disrespect to Mike Shinoda, who was an integral part of the band’s unique indebtedness to West Coast hip-hop, but without Bennington, songs like "By Myself," "With You" or "A Place For My Head" probably wouldn’t have had the same impact. The guy didn’t just yell these refrains, he shred them, as if his voice was on the cusp of tearing into pieces. So when Bennington yelled "SHUT UP WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU!" on “One Step Closer,” you damn well paid attention. Meanwhile, underneath the theatrics lurked the aforementioned vulnerability looking for human connection.

And boy did it ever connect. Hybrid Theory debuted at number 29 in the U.S. Billboard 200, eventually peaking at number two. It sold 50,000 copies in its first week, and it has since sold roughly 11 million copies in the U.S. alone and around 30 million copies worldwide. As recently as September 11, 2020, it has officially gone 12x platinum. The track list for Hybrid Theory read like a greatest hits collection, because that’s exactly what it was. It produced four singles – "One Step Closer," "Papercut," "Crawling" and “In The End"—each one bigger than the last, the latter of which being the band’s biggest crossover hit at number two on the Billboard 200. And although they weren’t singles, album tracks "Points Of Authority" and "Runaway" made appearances on rock radio as well. The stats almost don’t seem real, but for a good while, Linkin Park really was the biggest band in the world.

It’s not hard to understand why kids connected with the music 20 years ago. For impressionable teens who grew up in the '90s and who were perhaps too young to appreciate grunge when it erupted, too embarrassed to openly enjoy teen pop staples like 'NSYNC or Britney Spears, or too chicken to buy The Marshall Mathers LP with the big "Parental Advisory” sticker on the front, Linkin Park arrived at the right time. This record was everything for millions of kids around the world at the start of the new millennium who needed a band to scream, cry and identify with.

Despite the magnitude of their success, Linkin Park were never quite destined to be the rock revival act you’d list next to fellow early aughts titans The Strokes or The White Stripes. And yet, the massive outpouring of love and tributes upon Chester Bennington’s death in 2017 reframes the band's long-term legacy. Artists, writers and fans flooded blogs and social media to share the impact the band had on their individual lives. There were stories about people whose lives were saved by the band’s music. That same year, a woman in Orlando used a Linkin Park lyric to save a man from jumping off a bridge. There was no hint of shame in these stories. These people weren’t speaking through layers of irony, or offering sheepish condolences for a lost guilty pleasure. These were heartfelt tributes from those same 30 million kids who screamed, cried and identified with every word Bennington and Shinoda sang on Hybrid Theory. These kids knew that Linkin Park was sincere all along. Most important, perhaps, it was proof that while many of us had since moved on through the musical gateway they provided, we always had a place in our hearts for Hybrid Theory and Linkin Park. Finally, we had found a band that was speaking with us, not to us, and in the end, that’s all that ever mattered.

Beat By Beat: How "Song Exploder" Unlocks The Intimacy Of Music And Creativity

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