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Linkin Park's In The End is the first nu-metal song to pass one billion Spotify streams

Linkin Park's mega Hybrid Theory single In The End has "now surpassed one billion streams on Spotify" according to Chart Data.

Linkin Park's In The End is the first nu-metal song to pass one billion Spotify streams
Words:
Emily Carter

After the video hit one billion views on YouTube last summer (following Numb in 2018), Linkin Park's classic hit In The End has now reached the same incredible milestone on Spotify.

According to Chart Data, the Hybrid Theory single "has now surpassed one billion streams on Spotify. It's the first nu-metal song to reach this milestone." Wooooah! We wonder what's going to be next?

Speaking to Kerrang! last year, Mike Shinoda revealed that most of the band knew that In The End was a "special" song right from the off – though he didn't expect quite the level of success it has since reached.

"The moment I played that demo for the other guys, they knew that song was special," he recalled. "Chester [Bennington] always said that he didn’t get it, he didn’t love that song, but… I think he forgot there were moments where he did really understand it. He always said, 'I never got it, the guys should never let me pick singles because I never understood that song, I never thought it would be as big as it was.’ But like he said, the rest of us always felt like that was a huge song. But there were times when we were completely aligned like, 'There’s something special about this song and we gotta get it right.’”

Read this: The secret history of Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory: In their own words

Mike continued of its creation: "I played them In The End and Rob [Bourdon, drums] said, 'Knowing you were in here writing last night, I was thinking we needed a melodic song that was more timeless and universal that would be bigger – in a songwriting style – than anything we’ve done so far, and you did it.’

"I don’t think we knew it would be this big, but we knew at the time that it was the most accessible thing that we had done.”

Guitarist Brad Delson also reflected, "I think it’s a perfectly beautiful song. It’s honest, the emotional sentiment is just so visceral and compelling. The interplay between Chester and Mike is just so elegant and understated. To think that you’d sing one word and then turn it into a vowel and hold it over whatever Mike continues to say. It’s beautiful.

"When we’d play In The End live, when we got to the bridge, it was always so loud that you couldn’t hear the band play. Naturally, at some point, we just stopped playing at that moment. Chester and Mike would just hold out the microphones and turn the lights on. The incredible outpouring of personal emotion; it’s a crowd singing together, but each individual person is in love with the song because they’re investing their own life story into it.”

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