Music / Meteora

I'm tired of being what you want me to be
Feeling so faithless, lost under the surface...

I can't feel the way I did before
Don't turn your back on me
I won't be ignored
Time won't heal this damage anymore
Don't turn your back on me
I won't be ignored
—"Faint"

Meteora is the second studio album by Linkin Park, released on March 25, 2003. The album continued the nu metal style established by their wildly successful debut Hybrid Theory, but also saw the exploration of other genres, most notably a blend of electronic music and alternative rock that they would explore later on in their career.

The album was a monster hit, producing five singles: "Somewhere I Belong", "Faint", "Breaking the Habit", "From the Inside", and "Numb". It is tied with Red Hot Chili Peppers' Californication for the most weeks an album's singles have peaked at #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks. Critics praised the more melodic aspects of the songs and noted that the band straddled the Lighter and Softer themes with their characteristic angst very well.

However, it still wasn't quite the massive success that Hybrid Theory was, likely due to nu metal falling out of style. As a result, this would be their last album to feature nu metal, with its follow-up Minutes to Midnight going more for a U2-esque, arena-ready sound, while A Thousand Suns and Living Things continued their experimentation with electronics. They wouldn't fully return to their metal sound until The Hunting Party, 11 years later.

Nonetheless, Meteora is widely considered a classic by Linkin Park fans who view it as a worthy successor to Hybrid Theory. Since its release, it has sold over 7 million copies in the United States, giving it a 7x platinum certification, and it has sold over 27 million copies worldwide.

Doesn't have anything to do with a half-human-half-monster and rightful Princess of Mewni.

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Tracklist:

1. "Foreword" (0:13)
2. "Don't Stay" (3:07)
3. "Somewhere I Belong" (3:33)
4. "Lying From You" (2:55)
5. "Hit the Floor" (2:44)
6. "Easier to Run" (3:24)
7. "Faint" (2:42)
8. "Figure.09" (3:17)
9. "Breaking the Habit" (3:16)
10. "From the Inside" (2:53)
11. "Nobody's Listening" (2:58)
12. "Session" (2:23)
13. "Numb" (3:07)

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Principal Members:

• Chester Bennington - lead vocals
• Mike Shinoda - lead vocals, rhythm guitar, keyboard, piano, strings arrangement on "Faint" and "Breaking the Habit"
• Brad Delson - lead guitar, backing vocals
• Dave "Phoenix" Farrell - bass guitar, backing vocals
• "Mr." Joe Hahn - turntables, sampling, programming
• Rob Bourdon - drums, percussion, backing vocals

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Troping From You:

• Album Intro Track: "Foreword", which sets up the urban, digital atmosphere of the album and directly transitions into "Don't Stay".
• Angst: The album is full of it.
• Animal Motifs: The weird hybrid mammoth animal in the video for "Somewhere I Belong" shows up as a symbolic representation of majesty and loneliness in the video.
• Animated Music Video: Done for "Breaking the Habit".
• The Atoner:
  • "Somewhere I Belong", which is about realizing your mistakes and moving back to where you belong.
  • Also "Easier to Run", about a person who is too weak to face the consequences of his actions, but must do so anyways.
• Author Appeal: Referenced in "Nobody's Listening", where Mike says he's grateful for the struggles he faced because they gave him inspiration for his lyrics:
  I'm riding on the back of this pressure
  Guessing that it's better I can't keep myself together
  Because all of this stress gave me something to write on
  The pain gave me something I could set my sights on
• Back to Front: The video for "Breaking the Habit" is largely told in reverse, beginning with the sad culmination of each character's fate, before reversing time and showing how each character got there. It ends with The Reveal that the dead guy who jumped off the building is in fact Chester, and it shows his impulse to have committed suicide at numerous times in his life.
• Be Yourself: "Numb" is from the perspective of someone pretending to be someone else to fit in, and wanting to be their true self.
  I've become so numb, I can't feel you there
  Become so tired, so much more aware
  I'm becoming this, all I want to do
  Is be more like me, and be less like you
• Break-Up Song: "Don't Stay":
  Don't stay
  Forget our memories, forget our possibilities
  What you were changing me into
  (Just give me myself back and)
  Don't stay
  Forget our memories, forget our possibilities
  Take all your faithlessness with you
• Broken Ace: "Numb" could refer to a person who is collapsing under the weight of their own ambition or expectations:
  I'm tired of being what you want me to be
  Feeling so faithless, lost under the surface
  I don't know what you're expecting of me
  Put under the pressure of walking in your shoes
• Bully Hunter: "Hit the Floor" is about fighting against one's bully, knocking them off their pedestal:
  One minute you're on top
  Next you're not, watch it drop
  Making your heart stop
  Just before you hit the floor
• Calling the Old Man Out: Undertones of this in "Numb."
• The Cassandra: Mike Shinoda's part in "Faint".
  It's like no matter what I do, I can't convince you
  to just believe this is real.
• Creepy Child: The kid with Psychic Powers in the music video for "From the Inside".
• Dark and Troubled Past: "Easier to Run" is about doing anything and everything to forget one's unfortunate memories. It also has shades of I Hate Past Me.
• Design Student's Orgasm: The booklet features a ton of graphic art and anime-inspired collages largely crated by Mike Shinoda. The man on the album's cover is Boris "Delta" Tellegen, a street artist who helped Mike create the album's art.
• Downer Ending: At the end of the "Numb" music video, the girl who fails at everything rushes to the church to find the band, only to find that they have disappeared. Could overlap with Have You Seen My God?
• Drugs Are Bad: "Breaking the Habit" is about overcoming personal addiction. Interesting to note, while it may seem like a confession relating to Chester's Dark and Troubled Past, it was actually written entirely by Shinoda about the addiction of a close friend with no input from Chester, who broke down when he read Shinoda's lyrics.
• Fading into the Next Song: The entire album is entirely gapless, save for the lack of segue between "Session" and "Numb", with most transitions either being almost split-second or very conspicuous.
  • The most notable transitions are:
    • "Foreword" to "Don't Stay" to "Somewhere I Belong"
    • "Easier to Run" to "Faint"
    • "Figure.09" to "Breaking the Habit" to "From the Inside"
• False Utopia: The music video for "From the Inside" features one where everyone pretends to be non-confrontational, when in reality they do so because they are masking their feelings in fear of police brutality.
• The Four Chords of Pop: "Numb."
• Genre Mashup: Mixes nu-metal, rap, and rock in a mainstream-friendly package, all while experimenting with other genres along the way.
• Genre Roulette: While mostly nu-metal mixed with rap and rock, the album features three different songs that stand out from the rest: "Breaking the Habit", an electronic rock song with no nu metal influences, "Nobody's Listening", a hip-hop based track that combines rap with doom metal and a Japanese flute, and "Session", a trip hop instrumental.
• Gratuitous Rap: Inverted for "Figure.09", where the band decided to keep the rapping verses over the singing since it sounded better.
• Instrumentals: "Session", a trip hop instrumental based around Joe Hahn's sampling and scratching similar to Hybrid Theory's "Cure for the Itch", which received a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Instrumental.
• "I Want" Song: Overlaps with "Somewhere" Song; "Somewhere I Belong", which is about someone longing for a namesake place of belonging to escape from their emotional pain.
• Lyric Swap: "Figure.09" changes "I let myself become you" to "I let myself become lost inside these thoughts of you" for one iteration.
• Manipulative Bitch: "Lying From You" is about being in a horrible relationship to a girlfriend who manipulated him into being there.
  When I pretend
  Everything is what I want it to be
  I look exactly like what you had always wanted to see
• Metal Scream: Chester delivers a good one in "Lying from You" while Shinoda raps over it.
• Mission-Pack Sequel: Apart from a little experimentation here and there, it's the only Linkin Park album that's not a New Sound Album.
• Non-Appearing Title: "Faint", "Figure.09", and (obviously) "Session".
• Nu Metal: The last Linkin Park album to be in this genre, at least until The Hunting Party was released over a decade later.
• One-Word Title: "Meteora", "Session", "Numb", "Faint".
• Playing the Victim Card: The 20th Anniversary Edition has "More the Victim", which refers to people in real life who victimize themselves.
• Rap Metal: All the songs minus "Breaking the Habit", "Don't Stay", "Session", and "Numb" involve raps by Shinoda.
• Rhyming with Itself:
  • The very opening of "Nobody's Listening".
    Yo, peep the style and the kids checking for it
    The number one question is how could you ignore it
  • Also, from "Easier to Run":
    If I could change, I would
    Take back the pain, I would
    Retrace every wrong move that I made, I would
    If I could stand up and take the blame, I would
    If I could take all the shame to the grave, I would
• Speedy Techno Remake: "Faint" was originally an acoustic, slower song with a different hook. Mike remixed it, used sampled sounds, and sped up the riff to turn it into the faster version that became a hit.
• Step Up to the Microphone: While it doesn't feature any singing, "Session" features Joe Hahn's turntablism more prominently than any other track on the record.
• Stock Sound Effects: "Foreword" has the sound of falling rain, hammering, and breaking glass recreated in a studio. Mike stated in a blog post that it was actually him destroying a CD burner that kept malfunctioning during recording.
• Three Chords and the Truth: The accompanying booklet lists sophisticated production measures the band took for most of the songs; however, for "Numb", the band admitted that the song was largely based around the hook, and that there weren't many difficulties with putting it together.
• Vocal Tag Team: Bennington and Shinoda in every song minus "Breaking the Habit" (sung entirely by Chester) and "Session" (an instrumental).
• You Are What You Hate: "Figure.09" is about hating someone so much that you gradually become similar to that person and only realizing it when it's already too late:
  'Cause, from the infinite words, I could say
  I put all the pain you gave to me on display
  But didn't realise–instead of setting it free
  I took what I hated and made it a part of me

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I wanna heal, I wanna feel what I thought was never real
I wanna let go of the pain I've felt so long
(Erase all the pain 'til it's gone)
I wanna heal, I wanna feel like I'm close to something real
I wanna find something I've wanted all along
Somewhere I belong