In September, Linkin Park’s comeback single The Emptiness Machine entered the UK singles chart at No 4. You could see that as an extraordinary state of affairs: an august metal band whose lead singer died seven years ago – recently replaced with the largely unknown Emily Armstrong – gatecrashing a Top 5 that spent most of 2024 as the exclusive domain of a handful of pop and pop-dance artists, most of them too young to remember the 2000 release of Linkin Park’s debut album Hybrid Theory first-hand.
Then again, perhaps not. For one thing, the nu-metal scene that birthed them has been enjoying a resurgence in interest: quite aside from a wave of early 00s nostalgia, there’s an intriguing correlation between the genre’s feel-my-pain angst and the emotional tenor of latter-day pop. Perhaps more importantly, Linkin Park always stood slightly apart from their rap-rock peers. One popular line is that they were to nu-metal what Def Leppard were to glam metal, not just because of their vast sales figures or the expensive, radio-friendly sheen to Hybrid Theory’s sound, but because, like Def Leppard, they never bothered to conceal their pop leanings.
