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Linkin Park Meteora Song Info

These notes were written during the recording preocess for Meteora, for inclusion in the 40 page booklet that came with it. All notes are copied directly from the Meteora booklet.

01 - "Foreword" (Intro)
This album was written in four places over the past year and a half: The bands tour bus, at Mike's house, at NRG Studios, CA, and at Soundtrack Studios, NY. This intro was recorded at Mike's house, after the rest of the album was finished.

02 - "Don't Stay"
Mike and Brad's original guitar parts for this song had a Reggae-Style vide. After numerous transformations (Probably 5 or 6 different guitar variations), Brad developed the final recorded version. Under the working title "Sick," this song was one of the first tracks finished for this album... Notably, Joe recorded the opening scratch solo on the first take.

03 - "Somewhere I Belong"
Originally, this started out as a sample of Chester playing acoustic guitar. Mike took the sample, replayed it, effected it, flipped it backwards, and cut it up into four pieces, creating the main sample of the song. By the time it was finished, almost a year later, the band had rewritten most of the music around the sample. On another note, Mike and Chester wrote over 30 finished choruses for this song, each time scrapping the last one in search of something better. They ended up recording the final version one week after the rest of the album was finished, in the studio where they were mixing.

04 - "Lying From You"
Mike and Joe's studio equipment was installed in the back of a tour bus during the summer of 2001, and they put it to good use. Mike came up with the intro sample and chorus music for the song during an overnight bus drive during Ozzfest (Trying to record guitar in a moving bus can be very sloppy). But months later, in the studio at NRG, everything got cleaned up, replayed, and put together right.

05 - "Hit The Floor"
The band wanted to make a heavy song with a hip hop bounce - this is what came out. Mike and Chester tried numerous singing-style choruses, but when Chester brought the screaming hook into the studio, everyone knew it was going to work. the hardest work in creating this song was in the minor details. Tightening the lyrics and capturing the performances took days to finish.

06 - "Easier To Run"
Rob's playing on this song is extraordinary. He found a way to make this complex drum pattern sound easy and tasteful. Plus, he recorded it in only a few takes. On another note, the verse lyrics emerged from a free-writing exercise performed by Chester: He wrote them to no music, no beat. Mike and Don liked them a lot, and the three guys decided that this was the song to work them into.

07 - "Faint"
Brad came into the studio bus, where Mike was working, to record a new idea. Brad recorded scratch guitar tracks for "Faint" over a click track (no drums, no music), expecting the tempo to be about 70 BPM (beats per minute). He returned to the bus a couple of days later, and Mike had put together the beat at 135 BPM - Almost twice as fast. After careful deliberation, Brad and Mike decided the faster beat was more fun.

08 - "Figure.09"
This song originally had rapping in the verses, then was rewritten with singing verses during the process at NRG, the singing parts remained until the recording was finished. Then, while mixing the album, Brad, Mike, Chester and Don swapped the rap verses back in, deciding that the rapping made the song more interesting. the rest of the band didn't her the final version of the song until the album was complete.

09 - "Breaking The Habit"
Mike had been trying to write a song around this lyrical idea for over five years. He tried this theme a number of times, but nothing seemed to do the song justice. Meanwhile, during the process of putting together this album, Mike began working on an interlude, crossing a digitally manipulated beat with strings and piano. Unexpectedly, Brad and Joe suggested that Mike turn the two-minute interlude into a full song. Tentatively titled "Drawing," this piece was extended to three minutes and 16 seconds when Mike took it home to write lyrics, in less than two hours, the lyrics that he had been trying to put together for years fell into place. With some finishing touches, live piano and live strings, the song was finally complete - six years in the making.

10 - "From The Inside"
Phoenix came up with the original guitar idea for this song while recording with Mike in the back of the tour bus during the summer of 2002. The song's 6/8 time signature created an opportunity to juxtapose seemingly disparate rhythms, most apparent in the verses. When it came time to complete the song, the band ran into a challenge: Chester got sick. Unable to sing during his last week of scheduled recording, Chester was forced to finish his parts in New York, during the start of the mixing process. Down to the wire, the band was left with little margin for error. Fortunately, this song and "Somewhere I Belong" were written successfully on the third floor of Soundtrack Studios, NYC.

11 - "Nobody's Listening"
One of the band's many goals in writing Meteora was to take their sampled sounds to the next level. However, in creating more interesting samples, a new challenge arose: To make the wide variety of sample-based elements feel like they belonged together. At first, this song's Japanese flute loop created a mood that was far different from any other song on which the band was working, and made the track feel too distant from the rest of the album. Mike and Chester decided that the singing vocals would have to somehow connect the song to the rest of the recordings. The following day, Chester's performance gave this seemingly incongruent song balance, transforming it into an essential track on the album.

12 - "Session"
Mike created the majority of this instrumental song in the back of the bus in Pro Tools recording software. It felt unfinished for over a year...Until Brad, Phoenix and Joe put their finishing touches on it while in the studio at NRG, months later, the band and mixer Andy Wallace added a new dynamic to the song with quick panning accents in the turntable solo, most noticeable when listening in headphones.

13 - "Numb"
Just one week before the band entered NRG Studios to begin recording, this song was conceived. Built around the intro hook, the song came together quickly and almost effortlessly.