Linkin Park - In The End

It's a weird case when a famous musician who's music you don't like dies. My hostile attitude to Chester's band is very well-documented here in the form of negative reviews which are more revealing of one's need - especially in adolescence - to define themselves by hating things as much as liking things, than anything particularly noteworthy of the music. I don't really plan on deleting or re-writing them, since I barely come here anymore, and this website's hardly well-known so there's little chance of any embarrassing post haunting my years as an adult, thankfully.

But back to Chester, the outpouring of grief from so many fans was important in bringing out a perspective on popular music that had rarely gotten itself heard - that Linkin Park were a band loved by millions, and Chester was a huge icon for those fans, and has been rightfully mourned by so many. My opinion on them beforehand, had always been the 'right' opinion as far as Good Taste Signifiers goes - that they were formulaic mainstream rock part of the most widely loathed subgenre in rock history, making whiny self-pity odes to self-hate and all that. That last part - the mockery of Linkin Park as the poster boys of teen angst - is one I've been feeling particularly remorseful about, since we know now that his depression and pain was infact incredibly real and awful, and all of us here would know someone, or even ourselves who have come close to what he did. I also feel like that's been a huge problem in creating stigmas for mental health, along with things like the mockery of 'emo' culture in the late 00s, and I've came to find a virtue in believing that no matter what you think of the music, to shame someone - especially a teenager - for finding solace in such music to be a shameful act itself. The irony of course is that the cool kids making fun of Linkin Park end up finding their own music to help them deal with depression, just in the form of more 'respectable' records like Arcade Fire's Funeral or Car Seat Headrest's Teens of Denial or even Weezer's Pinkerton, whose emotional appeal isn't actually miles off from what an 'emo/scene/tumblr/etc. kid' gets from listening to Hybrid Theory, or Blurryface for a more recent example.

So, while I'm not by any means a fan of the band's music as a whole, I can recognise now there were good qualities to their music and moments when they absolutely got it right, few moreso than this song. None of the complaints of Linkin Park being a self-pitying band really hold up here, as it's actually a really restrained, mature performance. This is helped in great part because of Chester - his backing lines in the verses behind Mike Shinoda's raps, (of which basically every line is a hook) to the chorus who's hook is undeniable and - again, despite being used as a meme - has the right amount of power behind it without going unintentionally hammy in a way a song like 'Last Resort' or 'Bring Me To Life' does. His delivery in the bridge - singing one line twice, once softly, once angrily - is perfectly judged, too. Beyond the vocals, there's plenty of other stuff to dig into: the accents on the drums lining up with the rapping in the second verse as Shinoda raps "to remind myself how I tried. so. hard.", the iconic piano riff which, although programmed, slows down gracefully at the end as if it were played organically, the bed of synth strings in the verses that put it more in-line with the work of Depeche Mode than the murky swamps of Korn. It's one of those moments when all the hallmarks of a band's sound are put to their best and converge on a perfect pop song that will soundtrack parties for 2000s kids forever.
Zuletzt editiert: 02.08.2017 14:14