Maps of Music

Minutes to Midnight (2007)

Where the lyrics of Minutes to Midnight take you, and where it was really made.

The title comes from the Doomsday Clock symbol, and this was the first full-length Linkin Park album to carry a Parental Advisory label.

Key places

Recorded at The Mansion (2007)

Recording site The Mansion — The Mansion is listed among the studios used for this album. The dot marks the candidate's building coordinates. Google Maps · Apple Maps

How to get there: See the map for directions.

Cover shot at North Shore Beach and Yacht Club (2007)

Album cover North Shore Beach and Yacht Club — The front and back cover were photographed around the ruins of this North Shore beach club. The dot marks the site's coordinates, not the exact spot of each photo. Google Maps · Apple Maps

How to get there: See the map for directions.

Album story

Overview

• Minutes to Midnight: third studio album by American rock band Linkin Park
• Released May 14, 2007 through Warner Bros. Records
• Produced by Mike Shinoda and Rick Rubin
• Follow-up to Meteora (2003), with a shift in the group's musical direction
• Marked the band's start of moving away from its signature nu metal sound
• Title taken from the Doomsday Clock symbol
• First full-length album by the band to carry a Parental Advisory label

Background

• Work on the third album began in 2003; a 2004 tour for Meteora paused it
• Side projects: Shinoda's Fort Minor and Chester Bennington's Dead by Sunrise, which shelved the album temporarily
• Completion delayed several times for unknown reasons
• Lead single "What I've Done" released April 2, 2007
• First Linkin Park album produced without Don Gilmore, who produced the band's previous two albums

Recording

• Fifty to sixty songs recorded in August 2006
• Took 14 months to complete, against three to six months for earlier albums
• Over 100 songs composed, compared with an average of 40 on earlier albums
• Strings added to six songs with David Campbell
• First Linkin Park album to feature guitar solos

Cover

• Front and back cover recorded around the ruins of North Shore Beach and Yacht Club in North Shore, California
• The band later released ten alternative covers for fans to use as album art on iTunes

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Tracklist

Sources: musicbrainz.org

Artist

Formation

• Linkin Park was formed in Agoura Hills, California, in 1996 by high school friends Mike Shinoda, Rob Bourdon, and Brad Delson.
• The band began as Xero, recorded a four-track demo in 1997, and changed its name to Hybrid Theory after Chester Bennington joined in 1999.
• Warner Bros. Records advised another name change, and the band chose Linkin Park.

Members

• The original lineup included vocalist Chester Bennington and drummer Rob Bourdon.
• Bennington died by suicide in July 2017, and the band went on hiatus.
• In September 2024 the reformed lineup was announced, with Emily Armstrong and Colin Brittain added to Shinoda, Delson, Joe Hahn, and Dave Farrell.

Career

• Debut album Hybrid Theory (2000) was certified Diamond by the RIAA and sold more than 4.8 million copies in its first year.
• Meteora (2003) followed, and Minutes to Midnight (2007) marked a change in sound.
• A Thousand Suns (2010), Living Things (2012), The Hunting Party (2014), and One More Light (2017) explored electronic, rock, and pop directions.
• The band has sold more than 100 million records worldwide.
• Eighth album From Zero (2024) returned to a heavier sound.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Reception

At release

• Rolling Stone: 4 out of 5 stars, describing most of the album as honed, metallic pop with a hip hop stride
• IGN: called it a step in the right direction and a stepping stone for things to come
• Herald Sun (Karen Tye): 3½ out of 4 stars, praising the band's new sound
• The Guardian (Caroline Sullivan): 3 out of 5 stars, praising ambition but seeing the decision to stay within the genre's boundaries as a weakness
• AllMusic (Stephen Thomas Erlewine): 3½ out of 5 stars, describing the sound as passé
• Melodic (Johan Wippsson): acknowledged the progression but called the album weak and too shattered
• NME (Dan Silver): 2/10, calling it the sound of a band trying and failing to forge a new identity
• Metacritic: mixed or average reviews, weighted average score of 56 out of 100 from 15 critics

Reappraisal

• Loudwire staff elected it the best hard rock album of 2007 in 2024

Records

• Debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 and in 15 other countries, including the UK and Canada
• US first-week sales of 623,000, the biggest first week of 2007 at the time
• Certified five times platinum in the US; more than four million copies sold in the US
• Ranked number 154 on Billboard's Hot 200 Albums of the Decade
• Rolling Stone ranked it the 25th best album of 2007
• Canada: over 50,000 copies in the first week, number one on the Canadian Albums Chart
• Worldwide shipments over 3.3 million in the first four weeks

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Trivia

• In Malaysia, the edited version was released in a digipak cover, while the explicit Tour Edition came in a white slipcase cardboard cover.
• Shinoda raps on only two tracks, "Bleed It Out" and "Hands Held High", a significant decrease from previous albums.
• Bennington plays the guitar on "Shadow of the Day", one of two songs with him on guitar.
• Brad Delson's EBow experiment during "The Little Things Give You Away" led to the creation of "No More Sorrow".
• The live album Minutes to Midnight – Live Around the World features live versions of all 12 songs from the studio album, recorded from 2007 to 2010.
• A year after release, the band released ten different covers that had been considered for the final cover.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

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