LOST IN THE ECHO

Linkin Park open their fifth studio album, Living Things, with this track, which finds Chester Bennington singing about broken promises. He exhorts the listener to get up again and find their own strength after someone they trusted has betrayed them. Bennington told Spin magazine that the record's lyrics were personal rather than political, and majored on relationships. "Once we start hitting lyrical themes that can whack you from all these different perspectives, we know we're onto something special," he said. "That's when the hair starts standing up. We don't sit down and go, 'People are uneasy about the economy. Let's write about that.' We got a little more poetic, a little more colorful this time. A lot of the songs revolve around people - a drifter, or a soldier returning home, or a child finding his or her place in the family."

The interactive music video was co-directed by music video and film director Jason Zada, and developer Jason Nickel. It creates the storyline by asking permission for temporary access to the user's Facebook photos and incorporating them in the visual. Mike Shinoda told the O Music Awards Blog about the clip: "The idea of the song and the video at its core, really, has to do with finding the issues or the baggage that is weighing you down and letting go of it. So in the context of just that storyline - even if it wasn't an interactive video - that would be really what it's all about. The addition of the Facebook Connect part of it - I thought that really took things to another level. It really becomes personalized in that respect - when somebody connects their images and their own personal stories into the story of the song or the video."

For their fifth album, Linkin Park found themselves bringing together the signature nu-metal sound of their first two albums with the experimental rock vibe of their second two albums. According to co-vocalist Mike Shinoda, it took a while for his bandmates to embrace their roots and they typically turned down any idea that sounded too close to their Hybrid Theory days. "Lost In The Echo" helped bridge the gap. He told The Huffington Post: "When the guys heard it, I kind of said to them, 'What do you think about that?' and their responses, for the first time in a few years, were pretty good. They were like, 'Yeah, we hear the merit. Let's develop that idea. Let's see what we want to do.' I said to them, 'You know, this is like a real moment for us, now, on this album.' On the last two albums, if I brought in something like this, not everyone would've given it the green light; they would've said, 'Oh, this sounds too predictable.' But clearly, we're at a moment where we're bridging a gap between what we've been doing and the future of the band, so that was one of those songs that kind of set the bar."