Somewhere We Belong

Everyone had a Linkin Park phase. Black hoodies, silent bus rides, “you don’t understand me mom!” and “One Step Closer” bursting out of an Ipod Nano. This was Junior High, the wasteland of adolescence. And Linkin Park was both the soundtrack and guiding hand through it.
It’s hard to overstate just how much that portion of life sucks — what with the raging hormones mixing with claustrophobic environments. And how many of us were helped by Linkin Park in that time?
This is what I dwell on after the passing of Linkin Park’s frontman, Chester Bennington. Their music was rage and sadness mixed to a perfect dosage, thanks, largely, to Bennington’s exceptional vocal talents. From the screamed breakdown on “One Step Closer,” the light cooing of “Shadow of the Day” and the melodic soaring of “Breaking the Habit,” Bennington visited depression, anger and hope with flexibility and power. As Linkin Park moved into Pop and EDM territories, his voice and lyrics held true. One of the last songs Bennington performed was “One More Light,” a song that, tragically, became a tribute to Bennington’s long time friend Chris Cornell. Watching him on the edge of crying during that song is a reminder of the strength and steel that ran through his work.
LP’s music is often trashed on. It can be chalked up to sheer popularity, with tens of millions of copies of Hybrid Theory flooding the market in the early 2000s, but I’ve certainly felt in the past (once I survived Jr. High) that LP’s music was juvenile. Now, I think the condescending attitude toward the band has less to do with them and more with us. Do you remember what you were like in 8th grade? If you were anything like me, it wasn’t pretty. Every break up (as much as you could call them that) was the end of the world, teachers weren’t helping hands, but antagonists, and bullies roamed the halls to torment me, rather than realizing all of us were simply confused and scared. LP is linked with that time. We look back on it without fondness, less because the music is embarrassing, but because we were embarrassing.

These are the sort of comments on LP’s music that just make me fume. And I’ve seen plenty of them from folks who have decided that disinterest in emotions is a musical taste. The cynical, Daria without the nuance look on rock music did as much damage to modern rock as any Nu-Metal band.
Of course, part of internet culture takes a perverse joy in tearing childhood memories to shreds. “See this thing you liked? You were so stupid to like that!” I’ve seen plenty of pieces defending liking Linkin Park that start by reflexively saying they weren’t cool. You know what? Fuck being cool. Linkin Park’s soul-laid-bare through nu-metal hooks still hit me harder than about 1,000 deadpanned indie snarkers.
I love this quote from Amanda Petrusich in the New Yorker on Bennington: “His lyrics were frequently doused with fatalism, yet he never seemed like a nihilist.” Bennington’s passing reminds me that we should celebrate healthy catharsis and never look down on folks for indulging in it. How many of us had the lyrics to “In the End” ingrained into our brains because we cried them to ourselves after long, terrible days at school? And how many people are still comforted by Bennington’s voice, screaming out the day to day pains we all face? Few musicians ever give gifts like that. And we should, with out caveats, without irony, with the power of shouting fans, cherish it.
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: Call 1–800–273–8255
