Linkin Park to Drop "Meteora"

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Linkin Park will release Meteora, the long awaited follow-up to their 2000 debut, Hybrid Theory, on March 25th. The first single will be "Somewhere I Belong."

The band -- rapper Mike Shinoda, guitarist Brad Delson, drummer Rob Bourdon, DJ Joseph Hahn, bassist Phoenix and singer Chester Bennington -- began sessions for this album with more than fifty songs, paring them down to fifteen.

One of those songs, "Breaking the Habit," features samples, live guitar, a ten-piece orchestra, live piano and digital manipulation. "For the last five years, I've been wanting to write this song," Shinoda told Rolling Stone. "It's about some friend of mine that had some really awful events happen to his family. It's kind of dark. It's not something people will hear on the radio, but it's important to us."

While the success of Hybrid Theory, the best-selling record of 2001, left Linkin Park with plenty of wiggle room to experiment with their sound, don't expect radical changes. "I'm sure we could do some crazy stuff now," Shinoda said. "But we like what we like. We know what kind of music we want to make, and we just go after it."

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Song Stories

“Everyday People”

Sly and the Family Stone | 1968

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.

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