Linkin Park's struggle is your struggle too

The trouble of being free from self-imposed expectations

How much of your life has been spent so far trying to meet the mark of someone else’s expectations? We all know someone who has lived in the shadow of a parent’s demands for them or in a sense of self-imposed obligation to a certain legacy. 

I’ve been there at one point or another, but no one can apply pressure quite like the person in the mirror. Me.

Imagined expectations are so much more crippling than overt demands of you.

From The Top To The Bottom

This week, my favorite band emerged from exile and reintroduced themselves to the world. Linkin Park was (is) the biggest rock/metal band in the world, ever since their debut album, Hybrid Theory (2000), brought “In The End”, “Crawling” and “One Step Closer” into the ears of the world’s millions of teenagers at the turn of the century. I was one of them. For the next 17 years, Linkin Park’s relevance ebbed and flowed, in the sense that their signature sound was no longer being shamelessly ripped off by others and their critical acclaim lessened, but Linkin Park never put out an album that was met with commercial failure.

Then Chester Bennington, their prolific frontman and vocalist, my musical hero, died by suicide.

Chester Bennington was gone. I had tickets to see him sing and the band perform within 24 hours of when news broke that he was dead; leaving behind a wife, four children, tens of millions of fans, and also….5 dear friends who shared with him the blessing of a career in music…no, the blessing of a life on top of the music industry.

The other members of Linkin Park woke up to learn their lives as rockstars were now over. 

Do fans ever stop to think about this? How confusing it must be. Chester Bennington was one of two voices that defined Linkin Park, giving the world “Numb”, “Faint”, “What I’ve Done” and “Heavy”, but was Chester the only way now that they could continue to create, tour, perform the songs they collectively wrote, and stay in community with their fans around the world? 

Linkin Park has finally, after seven years, introduced a new lead singer to the world, ending their exile and stepping back out into the light — Emily Armstrong. They’ve also brought on a new drummer, as founding drummer Rob Bourdon expressed a desire to have distance and go his own way. 

Even as a superfan, I feel conflicted. What do I want from them? 

I know what I want. I want Chester Bennington back. The voice of my angst and my hopes alike.  But that can’t happen. So in place of a supernatural event, do I want Linkin Park with a new voice? 

On Choosing Life

This is what Linkin Park’s members have been toiling over for almost a decade. The internal battle for many of them has been whether or not their choice to live on is an attack on the legacy of a lost friend. Is it a dishonor to Chester Bennington to replace him and give the mic over….or is it a dishonor to him for the songs he sang to more rapidly fade into obscurity?

I say “more rapidly” because this is inevitable, one way or another. It’s just a question of how quickly a band is forgotten.

When I think of Linkin Park’s most weighty lyric from a popular song, it has to be from “Numb”.

I’m tired of being what you want me to be, feeling so faithless, lost under the surface. Tired of being what you want me to be, but under the pressure of walking in your shoes….” 

It evokes a young person in the war against all to not become like their parent or inauthentically become someone they’re not (in hopes of appeasing others). 

Linkin Park has found itself in that very same war as a multi-million dollar band with scores of fans and crushing guilt about wanting to still be a band….about wanting to sing their songs with people around the world who love them. 

What a bizarre situation that must be. What a painful sensation. 

Mike Shinoda, Brad Delson, Joe Hahn, Dave Farrell, and now their new singer, Emily, have fought with a ghost over whether or not they can live life to the fullest. 

You Can Relate To This

Watching Emily Armstrong on stage in her first public show with the band and in subsequent interviews, you can see her fear and discomfort with the situation. The millions of eyes on her are full of pain, suspicion, scorn, and immense hope. Can you imagine? 

A lot of us can, actually.

The step-father who has entered a family with children who miss the regular presence of their birth father….the widow who chooses to remarry but isn’t sure what to do with the photos and keepsakes of her deceased husband still scattered about the house they now share…

The teenager who survived the car wreck which killed their friends in the backseat, even though they sat behind the wheel and somehow lived….

The parent whose child took the lives of other kids in their community, who must face their parents at the grocery store and on the street almost daily…. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I’m alive and they are not.” “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that your father/mother is gone but I can’t bear to live the rest of my life alone.”

 

Linkin Park is not alone. They aren’t the first band to suffer through the identity crisis of losing a member, and they aren’t the first artists to wonder if they’re being selfish for wanting to still make art so much it hurts. 

There are some cases in which you have to break the mirror and cut off the person on the other side who wants you to remain in total stasis. You’ve probably heard this bore, but total stasis is no different than death. 

Linkin Park has chosen to live. 

“Gave up who I am for who you wanted me to be. The emptiness machine.“

The saddest and most twisted part of grief is how it becomes a kind of prison for those who encounter it. They become trapped in it out of a sense of duty to the one they lost, and feel shame over every happy day they have without that person in the world. 

For Linkin Park, they’ve opted after 7 years to be free, not from Chester Bennington, but of the expectations they’ve created in their own minds about who they have to be in his absence. 

What could be more true to the spirit of “Numb”? The experience of deadening expectation, both real and imagined.

When I think back to who I was when that song debuted (about 14 years old), I had real problems….but most of them were illusions created by my own fears and anger. No one’s expectations of me were as crushing as the ones I invented for myself and ascribed to others.  

Know that you’re not alone in this. Trust your instincts. Be yourself. Live.

Linkin Park’s new album will be called From Zero. It’s more than a reference to their original band name, Xero, it’s also a reminder that if they can survive being knocked down….we can too.