Minutes to Midnight (Linkin Park album)

Did You Know?

• Minutes to Midnight – Live Around the World is a live album featuring live versions of all 12 songs from the original studio album, recorded in various cities from 2007 to 2010.
• The album's title takes its name from the Doomsday Clock symbol.
• It is Linkin Park's first full-length album to carry a Parental Advisory label.

Background

Chester Bennington described the album as a mix of punk, classic rock, and hip-hop standards, noting that Rick Rubin brought a stripped-down, classic-rock and hip-hop feel. Bennington also stated that Mike Shinoda sang more on this record, handling many harmonies and a couple of songs alone. Guitarist Brad Delson experimented with an EBow while piecing together "The Little Things Give You Away"; the band did not use the effect for that song's solo but instead created "No More Sorrow" from it.

On "Given Up", Delson jingled keys and added multiple tracks of claps in the intro. Shinoda and Delson collaborated with David Campbell to add string elements to six songs: "Leave Out All the Rest", "Shadow of the Day", "Hands Held High", "The Little Things Give You Away", and the b-sides "No Roads Left" and "Blackbirds" (the latter later used in the iPhone game 8-Bit Rebellion! and as a bonus track for A Thousand Suns). Joe Hahn's scratching elements are largely absent due to low mixing, except on "What I've Done", "Wake", "The Little Things Give You Away", "Valentine's Day", and "In Pieces"; Hahn contributed more with programming and electronics.

The church organ and military drumbeat on "Hands Held High" were originally intended for melodic vocals, but Rubin recommended the opposite approach. The band recorded fifty to sixty songs in August 2006, spending 14 months on the album compared to three to six months for previous albums, and composing over 100 songs versus an average of 40. "Shadow of the Day" and "No Roads Left" are the only songs where Bennington plays guitar; during live performances, Shinoda typically plays keyboard for "Shadow of the Day" while Bennington plays rhythm guitar.

Critical reception

Rolling Stone gave Minutes to Midnight 4 out of 5 stars, calling it "honed, metallic pop with a hip hop stride and a wake-up kick" and ranking it number 25 on its list of the Top 50 Albums of 2007. IGN described it as "definitely a step in the right direction and a stepping stone for things to come." Karen Tye of the Herald Sun awarded 3½ out of 4 stars, praising the band's new sound. Caroline Sullivan of The Guardian gave 3 out of 5 stars, commending the band's ambition but viewing their decision to stay within their genre's boundaries as a weakness.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic gave 3½ out of 5 stars, describing the sound as "passé" and a "muddled, colorless murk." Johan Wippsson from Melodic felt the album was "weak" and "too shattered." NME's Dan Silver rated it 2/10, calling it "the sound of a band trying and failing to forge a new identity" and referring to "Hands Held High" as "far and away the funniest thing you will hear all year." In 2024, Loudwire staff elected it the best hard rock album of 2007.

Commercial performance

Minutes to Midnight faced a series of release date shifts before it finally arrived. Originally planned for the summer of 2006, it was pushed back to the fall of that year, then to early 2007, and ultimately landed on May 14, 2007, with a Canadian release the following day. Both the standard and special editions of the album were issued in versions without a Parental Advisory label, with the tracks "Given Up", "Bleed It Out", and "Hands Held High" being censored.

In Malaysia, the clean version came in a digipak, while the explicit Tour Edition used a white slipcase cardboard cover with a standard jewel case inside. The album posted the biggest first-week sales in the United States for 2007 at that point, moving 623,000 copies. In Canada, it sold over 50,000 units in its debut week and entered the Canadian Albums Chart at number one. Globally, more than 3.3 million copies were shipped within the first four weeks.

Five singles were pulled from the album: "What I've Done", "Bleed It Out", "Shadow of the Day", "Given Up", and "Leave Out All the Rest". Even though "Given Up" and "Leave Out All the Rest" weren't officially released as singles until early March 2008, both had already appeared on the Billboard Hot 100 and Pop 100 charts in 2007. "Hands Held High" and "No More Sorrow" also made the Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart that same year. The album has sold 3.3 million copies in the United States alone.

Although its overall sales fell short of Linkin Park's first two studio albums, it performed better on the singles charts, with all five singles reaching the Billboard Hot 100.