During a recent conversation on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show, Linkin Park member Mike Shinoda debunked a rumor involving the late Chester Bennington; said rumor pertains to Bennington allegedly hating the band’s mega-hit song “In The End.”
While talking to Stern, Shinoda reflected on the creation of “In The End,” which at the time of this writing, currently has a little under 1.5 billion streams on Spotify. Reflecting on how much work he did on the song in one night, and the conditions taking place outside his studio, Shinoda shared the following:
“One thing that is like hard to wrap your head around is that …. I wrote that piano line, the chords to the chorus, I wrote some raps, I did all of the programming for all the beats sitting in a rehearsal space on Hollywood and Vine overnight. Outside it was like, you know, junkies and prostitutes … it was bad. We locked the doors to the whole unit because we didn’t want anybody getting in.”
He then talked about how he knew that he wanted to do a “back and forth” presentation of singing and rapping involving Bennington and himself:
“I knew I wanted to do the back and forth. Like he would sing a line and then I would rap [but] my lyrics in the first version were different.”
Shinoda also mentioned how band drummer Rob Bourdon was blown away by the track upon hearing it:
“[He] was like, ‘Dude, this is the song that we’ve been waiting for – like, this is best song we’ve got.”
Shinoda said that he had no clue that he and the band had a hit song on their hands and that initially, the song “didn’t feel big” to him:
“It didn’t feel big to me. It didn’t feel like a hit song. I wouldn’t know what a hit song felt like — I was too young.”
Eventually, Shinoda got around to addressing the big rumor surrounding “In The End” – that rumor of Bennington allegedly hating the song. He revealed that Bennington in fact did not hate the song, but did share why the late Linkin Park singer was somewhat not super into the idea of it being a single:
“He didn’t hate it. He liked the song, he just loved really heavy stuff and so when … people were like ‘This should be a single’ …it’s not the one he would have chosen.”
There you have it, folks, the rumor has been debunked. For you Linkin Park fans, where does “In The End” rank for you among your favorite songs from the band?
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