Mike Shinoda Explains How This 'Crawling' Lyric Was Written By Accident

For the next week, Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda, Brad Delson and Joe Hahn are taking over Kerrang's Instagram to give commentary on each of Hybrid Theory's tracks as a celebration of its 20th anniversary. Yesterday (October 5), Shinoda divulged why he regrets making the "Papercut" music video, and today (October 6) he revealed that one of the most iconic lyrics in "Crawling" was written by accident.

“I always wrote my own raps,” he explained, “but when it came to all the singing parts, some songs I would write it, some songs [Chester Bennington] would write, some songs we wrote together – but it was usually together. Even if I wrote a thing, which was pretty often, when I gave it to him we’d go over it because I always wanted him to tweak words and make it his own, so that when he sang it, his personality was in there. Now, Crawling was the opposite, where he wrote a lot of those lyrics.”

While in the writing stages, the band shared the track with producer Don Gilmore, who misheard a crucial lyric. “[Chester] had written the line, ‘Fear is powerful’ in the chorus,” Shinoda said. “We were like, ‘How do you like the new lyrics, how do you like the song so far,’ and Don said, ‘It’s good, I really like that line ‘Fear is how I fall’,’ and we were both like, ‘Oh yeah, that line!’ [laughs]. Dude, he just heard it wrong! And he heard a great line by accident."

“Later on we learned to always listen to a song and – even if we were doing a scat vocal that didn’t have real words – you could listen to someone singing jibber-jabber and you could hear real words in it and find good gems,” he added.

See Shinoda's full "Crawling" commentary below.

To commemorate the anniversary, Linkin Park is dropping a collectibleHybrid Theory box set this week and is celebrating the release with a special listening party hosted by iHeartRadio. Fans can listen and tune in free for a stream of the exclusive iHeartRadio Album Listening Party with Linkin Park on October 9 at 7pm EST/4pm PST via iHeartRadio's Alternative Radio station on the iHeartRadio app.

Photo: Getty Images