Linkin Park will released their first career-spanning greatest hits album, Papercuts (Singles Collection 2000-2023), on April 12 via Warner Records. The band previewed the released with a previously-unheard single, “Friendly Fire,” recorded during the 2017 sessions for their seventh LP, One More Light.
“Friendly Fire” features vocals from Chester Bennington, who died in 2017. The music video for the track was directed and edited by long-time collaborator Mark Fiore and features never-before-seen studio and live footage.
“‘Friendly Fire’ was always one of our favorite songs from the One More Light sessions,” lead guitarist Brad Delson said in a statement. “Something about it wasn’t quite right so as close as it got to the finish line, we chose to set it aside for later. When we started looking for an unreleased track to include on our greatest hits collection, I was blown away by the power of the song, the power of the storytelling, the power of the vocal, the sonic landscape and I actually thought that it was closer than maybe we had realized at the time.”
He continued, “We got together to work on it and connect some of the missing pieces that for whatever reason hadn’t revealed themselves during the recording of One More Light. I can’t wait for people to hear it. It’s such a beautiful, compelling, heartbreaking, hopeful story and it really resonates with me today.”
Papercuts (Singles Collection 2000-2023) features 20 tracks and was inspired by the fan enthusiasm for 2020’s Hybrid Theory (20th Anniversary Edition) and last year’s Meteora (20th Anniversary Edition). It includes hits like “In the End” and “Crawling,” as well as rarities like “QWERTY.”
“In the making of each Linkin Park album, I want to love and believe in each individual song completely,” frontman Mike Shinoda said. “I hope that if any one track is heard on its own in the world, it is something I can feel proud of, and something that takes root inside the listener and becomes part of the energy that connects us.”
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Shinoda added, “Curating the tracks for Papercuts was a joy. Each song in this collection is both a singular moment on our timeline and an evolving story that is as much ours as it is yours. From our first release ‘One Step Closer’ to the brand-new ‘Friendly Fire,’ this tracklist spans all our chapters so far. Thank you for being a part of our journey. We hope you enjoy Papercuts.”
The album will be available on streaming as well as CD, cassette, and double vinyl. There are several limited edition color vinyl variants, a Zoetrope picture disc, and black vinyl. Papercuts (Singles Collection 2000-2023) is available for pre-order here.
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Papercuts (Singles Collection 2000-2023) Tracklisting:
1. Crawling
2. Faint
3. Numb/Encore
4. Papercut
5. Breaking The Habit
6. In The End
7. Bleed It Out
8. Somewhere I Belong
9. Waiting For The End
10. Castle Of Glass
11. One More Light
12. Burn It Down
13. What I’ve Done
14. QWERTY
15. One Step Closer
16. New Divide
17. Leave Out All The Rest
18. Lost
19. Numb
20. Friendly Fire