Linkin Park Curates a Prime Selection of “Papercuts”
One of the 21st century’s best-selling groups releases its first singles collection
Collaborations by Aerosmith/Run DMC and Anthrax/Public Enemy bridged the gap between rock and rap. By the early 2000s, Linkin Park became the poster boys of the nu-metal movement. The muscle of Chester Bennington’s passionate vocals and Brad Delson’s crunchy guitar riffs juxtaposed Mike Shinoda’s rapping and Joe Hahn’s sampling/scratching, with bassist Dave Farrell and drummer Rob Bourdon gluing it all together. To say this fusion was a mild success is an understatement; it forged ahead a career with worldwide sales of 100 million.
With a professional career just shy of 20 years, Linkin Park were chameleons of their craft. Their first two albums, the diamond-certified Hybrid Theory and its follow-up Meteora, exemplify the band’s original rock/rap sound and are typically the album’s most old-school fans swear by. Minutes to Midnight marked a sign of maturity, deviating from their nu-metal roots for a more streamlined, accessible alternative rock sound. Linkin Park felt the electronica itch and explored the genre further on A Thousand Suns and Living Things. After getting acquainted with this newly established style, fans must’ve questioned Linkin Park’s work ethic when they returned to their nu-metal roots on The Hunting Party, then ventured into modern pop stylings with One More Light. The creative streak came to a halt in 2017 with Chester Bennington’s suicide, ceasing Linkin Park to exist.
Recent anniversary box sets devoted to Hybrid Theory and Meteora were excellent excursions in rediscovering what made Linkin Park such a unique entity for the time. However, a younger generation of fans embracing the Y2K era of music and fashion are devouring the group’s back catalog; nostalgia truly does work in 20-year cycles. To give fans a wider scope of Linkin Park’s legacy, Warner Records has provided Papercuts, a 20-track primer of the band’s best-selling singles.
Papercuts isn’t your typical “playlist on shuffle” compilation. There is a flow to this collection that enables the listener to hear Linkin Park’s evolution in an ebb-and-flow style. Their original rap/rock foundation is heard on Side 1, with memorable highlights such as “Crawling” and “Faint.” A prime example of the group’s transition into more electronic/melodic territory is the inclusion of “Waiting For The End” and “Castle of Glass” on Side 2. Some of Linkin Park’s poignant and lyrically heavyweight songs, such as “One More Light” and “What I’ve Done,” find themselves on Side 3, but “One Step Closer” picks up the pace. Side 4 is Papercuts’ melodramatic climax, with “Leave Out All The Rest” and “Numb” shifting between moments of subtlety and intensity.
Papercuts isn’t a bonafide copy-and-paste job for fans suspicious of buying what they own all over again. Aside from main album singles, the mashup of Linkin Park’s “Numb” and rapper Jay-Z’s “Encore” (aptly titled “Numb/Encore” from the Collison Course album) is a notable highlight. “Qwerty,” a Minutes to Midnight outtake only released through the band’s LP Underground fan club, gets a proper commercial release. The band’s contribution to the soundtrack for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, “New Divide,” finally finds a home on an album instead of being a standalone single. “Lost” was a long-lost gem from the Meteora period, finally seeing the light of day on the 20th-anniversary edition of the album. Papercuts provides even more exclusivity with “Friendly Fire,” an unreleased track from the One More Light sessions.
The fluorescent green gatefold jacket and printed inner sleeves feature Linkin Park’s logo emblem, compilation title, and tracklist in various degrees of distortion and reflection. What’s striking about the intent of this singles collection is the failure to show any sleeves of the singles featured. Between this and no band photos shown, the cutting-edge nature of the artwork of Papercuts shows that Linkin Park still set out to leave an artistic statement, albeit by music or design. The indie exclusive pressing is pressed on clear vinyl with red, white, and black splatter; a gorgeous sight when it spins on the turntable!
Regarding the sound quality of compilations on vinyl, they are tough to gauge with various tracks utilizing different production styles and engineers. Linkin Park’s recording output over the years always maintained a level of strong consistency. Chris Bellman manages to make all these tracks from different albums sound bold together, with plenty of warm bass and no EQ setting to make one track sound dull from another. Stellar sound quality aside, Papercuts is a firm assessment for fans to get rekindled with this music. Being an adolescent when these tracks first came out, I couldn’t help but smile as they reminded me of a simpler time in life. This compilation 100% serves its purpose for any Linkin Park fan, old and new.
While Papercuts provides everything fans could ask for and more, it is far-fetched to deem it perfect. The compilation is marketed as a “singles collection,” a reach given the amount of singles missing. Tracks from Linkin Park’s remix albums, Reanimation and Recharged, were glaring omissions, and one would think The Hunting Party never existed because of its lack of representation; using the term “best of” would’ve been more appropriate. Do the exclusions lend themselves to be found on a hypothetical Papercuts II to come down the line with other deep cuts for the more curious fan to dive into? Time can only tell. This minor gripe doesn’t draw back from the enjoyment of Papercuts. Its song selection is concise enough not to bleed into multi-disc/box set territory.
