Meteora (album)

Did You Know?

• Lyrically, the album contains elements including depressing emotions, anger, and recovery.
• Meteora – Live Around the World is a live album featuring live versions of seven songs from Meteora, recorded in various cities from 2007 to 2011.

Writing and recording

Linkin Park started sketching ideas for their follow-up to Hybrid Theory in early 2001, while they were still on the road. Over eight months of touring, they produced roughly eighty demo tracks. Some of those rough concepts, like the opening of "Somewhere I Belong," ended up on the finished record. Chester Bennington had recorded a guitar part for that intro but thought it sounded too much like folk rock.

Mike Shinoda and Joe Hahn then flipped it: they added effects, played the recording backward, sliced it into four sections, and rearranged those pieces in a new order. That gave the intro its distinctive sweeping feel. Instead of jumping straight to a second album, the band put out a remix project called Reanimation in 2002, which Shinoda produced. That experience pushed the group to co-produce their next album alongside Don Gilmore, aiming to push Hybrid Theory’s sound into more experimental territory.

In early 2002, after the tour wrapped, writing continued at Shinoda’s home studio, where pre-production took place. The band split into pairs for writing, though Shinoda worked on every song. Recording relied heavily on Pro Tools, but the band stuck with traditional writing methods in the main studio. Pre-production wrapped in June, and Gilmore was confirmed as producer. By August, the band moved into NRG Studios, and Bennington started writing with the rest of the group.

Promotion

Before the album even came out, the band was already getting buzz, with photos of them in the studio sent to the press. In late October 2002, they paused recording for two days at the Ambassador Hotel to do photo shoots and work on the album cover. Artists called "The Flem" and "Delta" helped design the artwork for both the album and its singles. A TV ad for the record first aired on New Year's Day 2003.

The first single, "Somewhere I Belong," hit US radio in late February, a month ahead of the album, which helped sales around the world. The second single, "Faint," dropped before the band headed out on a global tour. "Numb" came out after a live performance in Madrid. "From the Inside" was the fourth single, released just before the North American tour dates.

"Breaking the Habit" came out while the band was in Indonesia. The album had several special versions. One special edition came with a DVD documentary about making the record, inside a blue-tinted case. An Indian version swapped in a different DVD and cover.

The Tour Edition was a two-disc set, with a Video CD holding music videos for four singles, all in a standard CD case instead of the usual digipak. A very small vinyl pressing on two LPs came out through Warner Brothers, and those records are now rare collector items that sell for high prices. In 2014, a demo of Shinoda singing one song appeared on the fan club CD LPU XIV.

Critical reception

Critics were divided on Linkin Park's Meteora. E! Online gave it an A, predicting it would be a massive success. Entertainment Weekly awarded a B+, praising its thunderous hooks and seamless blend of sounds into radio-friendly pop.

Dot Music saw it as a guaranteed source of ubiquitous hits. Rolling Stone, however, felt the band had exhausted a dying formula. Billboard called it a ready-made crowdpleaser, while NME noted its commercial appeal but left the reviewer underwhelmed. AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine deemed it essentially Hybrid Theory part two, but commended the band's discipline and tight 36-minute runtime, which made it more listenable than similar nu-metal efforts.

Sputnikmusic's Damrod criticized the similarity to Hybrid Theory yet praised the production and catchiness, saying the songs invade the brain. Blender found it harder, denser, and uglier, while Q dismissed it as target marketing rather than art. The instrumental "Session" earned a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Instrumental Performance in 2004. The single "Somewhere I Belong" won Best Rock Video at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, and "Breaking the Habit" won the Viewer's Choice award at the 2004 ceremony.

20th anniversary edition

In early 2023, Linkin Park started hinting at a 20th anniversary celebration for Meteora by changing their site to show a countdown ending February 1. Once that finished, the site turned into a daily interactive game that led up to the February 6 announcement of "Lost." This unreleased song dropped on February 10 as the lead single, along with the official word on the anniversary reissue. Another unreleased track, "Fighting Myself," came out on March 24.

The full reissue arrived on April 7. The super deluxe set, called Meteora20, holds the original album, an expanded Live in Texas, a never-before-released 2003 Nottingham show, previously issued LPU demos, older live recordings, unreleased demos, and three DVDs. The Deluxe CD adds a 14th track: the original Andy Wallace mix of "Lost," labeled "Lost (2002 Mix)." The Lost Demos collection later got a vinyl release for Record Store Day Black Friday 2023.