Inside Linkin Park’s ‘Meteora’ Return & How It Spawned the Year’s Most Unlikely Rock Smash

As unearthed single “Lost” continues topping charts and connecting with fans, the band members discuss their pivotal second album, recent studio work and the gratitude they feel for all of it.

For a while, Mike Shinoda had known that longtime Linkin Park fans would have an emotional experience listening to “Lost” for the first time, from the moment they heard Chester Bennington’s tidal wave of a voice crash down onto the previously unreleased headbanger. Recorded during the sessions for the band’s 2003 sophomore album Meteora, the haunting hard-rock anthem represents the rare demo featuring Bennington’s completed, mixed lead vocals – a long-standing request from the band’s active online community for new music featuring the late lead singer, which Shinoda and his bandmates were thrilled to finally meet.

More surprising to Shinoda: the many, many other listeners who connected with “Lost.” Upon its February release, the single blew up on social media, provoked several YouTube reaction clips, racked up millions of streams and became Linkin Park’s biggest Hot 100 hit in over a decade.

“I felt like it would connect well with fans that were around back then,” the Linkin Park co-frontman tells Billboard in early March. “I didn’t expect it to, like, trend on TikTok!”

“Lost” streaked to a No. 38 debut on the Hot 100 chart in February, marking the band’s best showing since 2012 and first top 40 hit since Bennington passed away in 2017. Its success not only speaks to Linkin Park’s enduring cross-generational appeal, but the continued interest in one of the band’s most fruitful album eras. Following the group’s mega-selling 2000 debut album Hybrid Theory, Meteora also moved millions of copies and spun off more hit singles – “Numb,” “Somewhere I Belong,” “Faint” and “Breaking the Habit” all became Hot 100 hits and long-running alt-rock radio staples – while expanding Linkin Park’s hard-rock palette to incorporate more incisive lyricism and adventurous production choices.

The Meteora 20th Anniversary Edition, due out on Friday (Apr. 7) through Warner Records, is designed to offer a comprehensive exploration of that period. Linkin Park released a 20th anniversary edition of Hybrid Theory in 2020, but this box set is “a different animal,” says Shinoda – mostly due to how much more material had been archived during the creation of the band’s sophomore album compared to their debut, when they were still winding their way towards a rap-rock breakthrough.