SONG #24: Linkin Park - In the End

Inducted on August 2, 2014

My good friend and former college roommate Miah has been a huge influence on me musically. He's thrown out many recommendations over the years. I remember specifically giving me a heads up on this new band called "Linkin Park". Well, he nailed that one. Their album Hybrid Theory was the best selling debut album of the 2000s, and in my book one of the best albums I've heard from top to bottom.

"One Step Closer" and "Crawling" we're the other songs I truly loved from this album, but "In the End" had everything I liked in a song during my college years. A little piano hook at the beginning, a cool beat, great vocals, and lyrics that kind of fed into the "coming of age" experiences I had at college. I was a junior at the time, coming off my summer experience at Focus on the Family. My first ever relationship had officially ended for good that summer, and I was struggling to move onto whatever was "next" for my life. I started my junior field work, which was another challenge in my life.

Long story short:
All of my life I have HATED making phone calls. Lol. In hindsight maybe that's why I didn't cultivate many friendships in junior high/high school. I even hated it when my parents would ask me to do things like call the pizza place and order a pizza (you'd think I would have enjoyed that more since I'm obsessed with pizza). Well, for my first semester junior year project, I was supposed to call up local churches and rally support for my internship site. I would spend an hour before each phone call. My hands would shake, and I would practice each call over and over and over again. The funny thing is, when I actually would dial the digits, I'd usually get a voicemail. I don't know how I passed that internship... I was terrible. You could definitely say God used the experience to stretch me, but I probably could have used more stretching in that area.

What does that have to do with this song? HA! I trolled you. Nothing. When I was initially recalling this story I was pretty sure that I'd come back to campus and listen to this song, but the timeline doesn't matchup. That's the crazy thing about memories. Anyway, this is the type of song I'd listen to when I felt pretty much like a failure at that internship site. Lol. Oh well. At least the entry is nice and long.

So yeah, the song.. It's one of my faves. I'll just leave it at that.
You'll see a few more Linkin Park songs on the list as we move along. Thanks Miah.

Do you remember this song? Do you like it? Any Linkin Park fans out there?