Linkin Park Ready to Rise Again, Releases Greatest Hits Album:
Papercuts (Singles Collection 2000–2023)
Is Linkin Park returning with a female vocalist?
4 min readApr 17, 2024
The American rock band effectively disbanded after the tragic death of legendary vocalist Chester Bennington in July 2017. It was unthinkable to imagine Linkin Park would ever continue without Chester. However, 2024 could see the potential return of the band with rumours of the addition of a female singer…The innovative Linkin Park are considered to be pioneers of nu-metal music with their distinctive fusion of rap and metal. They exploded on the scene almost 24 years ago with the biggest-selling debut album of the twenty-first century, Hybrid Theory. The title of the album came from the band’s previous name and reflected their progressive musical style with the mixture of different genres and music theory.The sound of their discordant styles of music was also encapsulated on the artwork cover of Hybrid Theory, with the portrayal of a strong soldier with delicate dragonfly wings. Memorable hits from this album include “One Step Closer”, “Papercut” and “In The End”.The band’s success continued with the release of their sophomore album Meteora in 2003. The innovative musicality continued with their third experimental offering Minutes to Midnight in 2007. A more electronic sound featured on their fourth album, A Thousand Suns in 2010 and combined their musical sounds from former records in their fifth album from 2012, Living Things. In 2014 their sixth album release of The Hunting Party saw a return to a heavier sound to their music. Their seventh and final album in 2017 with the late great Chester Bennington, saw them sample a more pop sound which was met with criticism by some fans expecting another Hybrid Theory.The band was formed in 1996 by Mike Shinoda (rapper/singer), Rob Bourdon (drummer) and Brad Delson (lead guitarist), who were high school friends. They were later joined in their band called Xero by Joe Hahn (DJ/creative director), Dave “Phoenix” Farrell (bassist) and Mark Wakefield (lead vocalist). Lacking success in landing a record deal led to the departure of Wakefield and Farrell.In 1999 Chester Bennington, former singer of a post-grunge band, Grey Daze, joined the reformed band as Hybrid Theory, additionally with temporary bassist Kyle Christner.After finally securing a record deal with Warner Bros. Records, the band was advised by the label to change their name. They eventually settled on “Linkin Park”, a play on Santa Monica's (former name) Lincoln Park.
Papercuts (Singles Collection 2000-2023) features the following tracks:
01. Crawling
02. Faint
03. Numb/Encore
04. Papercut
05. Breaking The Habit
06. In The End
07. Bleed It Out
08. Somewhere I Belong
09. Waiting For The End
10. Castle Of Glass
11. One More Light
12. Burn It Down
13. What I've Done
14. QWERTY
15. One Step Closer
16. New Divide
17. Leave Out All The Rest
18. Lost
19. Numb
20. Friendly Fire
Finally, Mike Shinoda formerly addressed the future of Linkin Park two years ago on a Twitch livestream:
“there’s no tours, there’s no music, there’s no albums in the pipeline. Okay, so let me just tell you that. So just keep in your minds that that is not happening.”Also in 2019, Shinoda wrote on X (formerly Twitter):
“Lemme clarify a rumor: we are not looking for a new singer, and if it were to happen organically, I’d be open. Seems pretty clear, yet I guess some folks have a hard time understanding.”However, recently lead singer of Orgy, Jay Gordon, sparked rumours of a female vocalist joining Linkin Park in an interview with Wired In The Empire. He commented:
“It’s going to be tough without Chester, but we’ll see. I hear they got a girl singer now.”However, he backtracked a little by stating:
“Don’t quote me on that. I’m not sure who the singer is going to be, but I heard it was gonna be female. They might just try to move on like that. That ought to be interesting.”
