The fourth and final single released off their smash debut, Hybrid Theory, "In the End" is one of Linkin Park's biggest singles, and arguably the band's signature song. Yet, according to Wikipedia, the late, great Chester Bennington didn't like it. "I was never a fan of 'In The End' and I didn't even want it to be on the record, honestly," the singer notably said in 2013 interview, adding: "How wrong could I have possibly been?"
Celebrating the impending 20th anniversary of Hybrid Theory's follow-up, Meteora, Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda recently guested on SiriusXM's The Howard Stern Show, and when asked of the rumor that Bennington didn't care for "In the End," the rapper-producer insisted that it's a misconception. "He didn't hate it," Shinoda told Stern. "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."
According to Shinoda, he didn't see the song's commercial potential, either. "It didn't feel big to me. It didn't feel like a hit song," he admitted. "I wouldn't know what a hit song felt like — I was too young."
In the Stern interview, Shinoda also looked back on the creation of the song, which was written in a single night. "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," he recalled. "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."
As it turns out, the one band member who immediately recognized the song as a future hit was drummer Rob Bourdon, who first heard it the following day. "[He] was like, 'Dude, this is the song that we've been waiting for — like, this is best song we've got," Shinoda remembered.
Watch him tell the tale below.
