Papercuts - Singles Collection 2000-2023 is a collection of the most popular Linkin Park songs, being composed of 16 out of the 18 top streamed Linkin Park songs on Spotify at the time of its release, with "Given Up" (17th most played) and "Heavy" (15th most played) being replaced with "Lost" (24th most played) and "Waiting For The End" (27th most played). The order of the songs was changed to give a better flow to the tracklist.
Because of the method used to pick the songs, the compilation omits Platinum-certified (RIAA) singles "Shadow Of The Day" (23rd most played), "Given Up" and "Heavy".
Papercuts includes songs from every studio album released by Linkin Park with the exception of The Hunting Party. In total, there are four songs from Hybrid Theory, four songs from Meteora, three songs from Minutes To Midnight, one song from A Thousand Suns, two songs from Living Things and one song from One More Light.
Two versions of "Numb" are present on the album, one being the original studio version from Meteora and the other being "Numb/Encore", a mash-up recorded with Jay-Z for the collaborative EP Collision Course.
Other songs in the compilation are "QWERTY", a song recorded during the Minutes To Midnight sessions and originally released on the fan club exclusive EP LP Underground 6.0; "New Divide", a song created during the A Thousand Suns sessions exclusively for the Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen soundtrack; "Lost", a song from the Meteora sessions released as a single in 2023 to promote the 20th anniversary edition of the album; and "Friendly Fire", a previously unreleased song from the One More Light sessions, during which Linkin Park recorded their last songs with original singer Chester Bennington.
Although "QWERTY", one of the most popular LPU tracks, was previously released in other compilation albums, Papercuts marks the first time the song received a widespread release in digital music platforms. The track was edited especially for the compilation, being similar to the version first included on Songs From The Underground but without the silence at end, making the duration of the track shorter.
Despite being a singles collection, the album versions were used for the majority of the songs included in the compilation instead of their respective single edits. All songs were edited to remove their album transitions and some tracks were made to segue into the next one in order to create a gapless compilation. This process resulted in songs that are different from their album and single counterparts.
The release of the instrumental version of the compilation marked the first time that Linkin Park released official instrumental versions of songs from Hybrid Theory, Meteora, Minutes To Midnight and A Thousand Suns as well as the songs "One More Light" and "Lost".
In the past Mike Shinoda had stated he was against the idea of doing a greatest hits compilation. In an interview to NME, he explained, “I don’t love putting out Greatest Hits stuff or putting out re-masters of things we’ve done, [so] if we were to do a re-reissue of one of our Linkin Park albums, we want it to be a big deal. If we can’t make it that quality then we won’t do it. If it’s not great then I don’t think we should do it.”[1]
On the press release of the album, he said:
“In the making of each Linkin Park album, I want to love and believe in each individual song completely. 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.
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.”
[2]
When questioned why The Hunting Party isn't represented in the compilation, Mike answered, "ask brad why certain songs aren't on it. i voted for more songs"[3]
For the Papercuts compilation, the band did a track-by-track commentary of each song on the album. The videos were posted on Instagram, Facebook Reels, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube Reels from March 5th to May 1st.
{{Tabs
|Title1=01. Crawling (March 5)
|Tab1={{Poem|
BRAD: "The chorus of Crawling is basically just Chester screaming. He had this way of doing this melodic scream. That chorus is a really a core of a song. It's just so, so powerful."
JOE: "Crawling was a very powerful emotional song allowing people to dive into emotion, in different ways, a lot of people were feeling at the time."
DAVE: "I remember very vividly the video, very blue. It's very icy."
MIKE: "Crawling was a song i always loved because of Chester's performance. The power which he sang the chorus was insane. Even when we captured in the studio, i was just like 'how is that even coming ou of his mouth?'"
</poem>
|Title2=02. Faint (March 7)
|Tab2={{Poem|
BRAD: "Faint, one of my favorites song to play live. So much energy. The video is so iconic. Mark Romanek did such a great job. And all the backlighting was so powerful. I think one of the pieces of equipment broke, and the fans that were there giving so much energy, they did that for like 12 hours. It was like one of the longest shoots. I also love in the video when Chester goes down to the end of the catwalk. The overhead shot of him screaming that just created like and iconic moment. That every time we played it live that would happen. It was almost like life imitating art."
</poem>
|Title3=03. Numb/Encore (March 12)
|Tab3={{Poem|
MIKE: "Doing a mash up of it with Jay-Z was a such a next level thing to do with the song. When we were doing it at the time it just felt like natural and fun. Clearly in retrospect, it took the song and both project to the next level."
</poem>
|Title4=04. Papercut (March 14)
|Tab4={{Poem|
BRAD: "Papercut, it's a great song. Also, a super crowd favorite when that bounce beat comes in at the beginning. I love the interplay between Mike and Chester on that song. It weaves so naturally between the rap and the singing, and the way it climaxes at the end, I think that's what makes that song so classic."
MIKE: "Papercut was one of my personal favorite songs off the first album. As soon as we made it, i was like, we got to start the album with this song."
JOE: "When we wrote Papercut, we were just trying to write the coolest songs that we could write. That song really defined a sound that we were trying to go for at the time."
DAVE: "A big memory for me in thins song, was the video we did for it. Which actually kind of turned out to be creepier that the original intention. Creepy because of the combination of special effects, and some of our wardrobe choices that we made."
</poem>
|Title5=05. Breaking The Habit (March 18)
|Tab5={{Poem|
MIKE: "I don't think anybody would've expected our band to do a song completely devoid of heavy guitars, that focused more on electronic elements. Breaking The Habit was always a really special song, and a set a tone for the music that came after it."
JOE: "We meet different people around the world that have different problems going on. One of the things that inspired me for the video is those people coming up to us and telling us our songs help them in their daily lives. In a way, this song is a testimony about our fans."
</poem>
|Title6=06. In The End (March 21)
|Tab6={{Poem|
JOE: "Mike camped out in our rehearsal space just trying to write this song. And he came out the next morning with this piano riff, and this beat. And we all heard it, and we're like 'oh wow, that's amazing!'"
MIKE: "In The End was maybe most important song for us to put out at the time. We were going to come out with so many more agressive songs that it would be important to show a song that really showcased things that we can do melody, and screaming, and rapping, and beats. The song that kind of brought all of this stuff that we did together in one song."
BRAD: "In The End in one of my favorite songs. Such a powerful chorus. The bridge really, just puts that song over the top. That's always the moment that Chester would put the mic out and the crowd would just scream their heads off. We played for some really loud crowds, and that song is classic."
</poem>
|Title7=07. Bleed It Out (March 23)
|Tab7={{Poem|
MIKE: "Bleed It Out was one of my favorite tracks off of Minutes To Midnight. Really fun track to make. Really fun track to play. It was always such a loud, yelly, gong vocal, kind of track. Our joke was that you couldn't screw it up. It was easy for us to inprovise on. It was just a party every time."
BRAD: "Rick had this idea of like 'what if we make it a party song?', so we actually had like a party, and just stomps, and claps, and hanging out. We recorded it and then put that into the song."
DAVE: "Bleed It Out's four on the floor, stomping feel to it, another live track that is never going to be low energy. You can completely just stop the song and have just the guitar riff going. You can cut out just have the vocal going. You can mess whit it in any way you want, and you can make it work."
</poem>
|Title8=08. Somewhere I Belong (March 25)
|Tab8={{Poem|
BRAD: "We had such a rocket ship ride on Hybrid Theory, and there was a lot of pressure. Meteora really lived up to the opportunity, and Somewhere I Belong was the first single off that album, and just kind of took off."
DAVE: "The original start of this song, felt pretty flat. There was something off with the guitar, and Mike ended up reversing it. It inmediately peaked my interest in a different way, and laid the groundwork for a where we could go with song moving forward."
MIKE: "Somewhere I Belong was a kind of infamous song because we rewrote the chorus over thirty times. But it was a labor of love. We really, had a vision for how the song was supposed to be, and we kept changing it."
</poem>
|Title9=09. Waiting For The End (March 28)
|Tab9={{Poem|
MIKE: "Waiting For The End is probably one of my favorite songs we've ever made. Chester came into the studio i was working on it, and i knew i wanted to add something melodic. He pulled out his phone, and he was just flicking through stuff that he had made. And he played the beginning of the vocal 'waiting for the end to come'. I was like 'that's incredible!'. It's so classic. It's so different than the song we've got. It fell into place inmediately that day. It went from being a confused song to this incredible accident that just sounded so good."
</poem>
|Title10=10. Castle Of Glass (March 30)
|Tab10={{Poem|
BRAD: "I love how small the song starts. That simple rhythmic sound the instrumental hook. Mike's vocal in the verse really draws the listener in. It's so soulful and intimate. I love how you start to hear harmony. And then a baton gets passed from Mike to Chester in the last chorus, and then the whole song just blossoms with different instruments taking turns, playing that hook."
MIKE: "We were actually finishing writing and getting ready to mix A Thousand Suns, and i came up with the demo for Castle Of Glass. We knew it was a special song, but we were so close to finishing A Thousand Suns, and the sound of that album was so different from Castle Of Glass, that we set it aside for the next album. When we did eventually start Living Things, Castle Of Glass was already written. It was in really good shape and it kind of set the tone for the next album."
</poem>
|Title11=11. One More Light (April 4)
|Tab11={{Poem|
BRAD: "One More Light is definitely one of the most beautiful, heartbreaking, poignant songs we've written. Mike and Eg White wrote this song about someone we knew, who we had lost. It was just a really emotional, painful song about loss. We love this song, which is one of the reasons why we named the album the same. I'm sure it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And i'm really grateful for this song."
MIKE: "We felt like the right thing to do was to write a song kind of about that feeling and that story. It was a somber session, but a really cathartic session. And we felt like we had written something really special."
</poem>
|Title12=12. Burn It Down (April 7)
|Tab12={{Poem|
DAVE: "We chose Burn It Down as our first single off of Living Things, because it really pointed at what we're trying to do with our introduction of a lot electronic elements that came into that record. Hearing the way Chester is delivering his vocals, was different fo us, ans exciting to me. It kind of opened up a new lane of his voice. His voice always had so many different textures, or different ways that he was able to use his vocals. Him and Mike together would figure out a new way to present Chester's voice. It was always so fun to hear those new ideas. And this song was an example of that for us."
</poem>
|Title13=13. What I've Done (April 13)
|Tab13={{Poem|
JOE: "What l've Done was more of and extroverted mentality. The first couple of albums, it was very introspective. We're looking at ourselves, our feelings. And Minutes To Midnight was more, how we look at the world. That song manifested into a music video that related on many levels to things we're doing as a world community. Just a reminder of the responsibility we have."
BRAD: "We needed an iconic song to, lead the charge. Minutes To Midnight is such a cool album, and really signaled like a transition to something more experimental, and sonically andventurous."
</poem>
|Title14=14. QWERTY (April 17)
|Tab14={{Poem|
BRAD: "This song was written, apparently en route to japan, as a break in the middle of the Minutes To Midnight recording sessions. Surprises me that we would've picked up in the middle of recording and gone to play shows, because it's such a dynamic gear change. It must have just been chaos. And i think the song embodies that chaos in a great way."
</poem>
|Title15=15. One Step Closer (April 19)
|Tab15={{Poem|
BRAD: "Think we were writing songs for what we hoped to be our first album, and i came up with this riff. And man, did it stick! Probably our favorite song to play live. It has so much energy. We usually close the show with it. That's one of my favorite riffs to play and probably the one i'm the most proud of."
DAVE: "One Step Closer, our first single off of Hybrid Theory. This was a song what we knew would kind of be an introduction to the band, and we were hoping for it to be something that kinda grabs your attention, smacks you across the side of the face, and introduces to your first look at Linkin Park."
JOE: "I think at was the climax of how heavy our music was at the time. It kind of defined what the band was, and set the expectations for a lot of people."
</poem>
|Title16=16. New Divide (April 21)
|Tab16={{Poem|
MIKE: "We had been approached by the transformers film organization, and they were really excited to do another song for the transformers movies. I remember just having this light bulb go off and I was like; 'I know what kind of song you guys need'. And I left that meeting, and i came back the next day with New Divide. New Divide was more electronic and more danceable than anything we put out to that point. Was such a fun song to make."
DAVE: "This was kind of an in-between track for us. It was not on an album. A chance for us do to something a little different as far as how we release it. It turned out to be a lot bigger than i thought it would ever be, just having a song come out with the movie."
</poem>
|Title17=17. Leave Out All The Rest (April 23)
|Tab17={{Poem|
BRAD: "Leave Out All The Rest, I think we went to space for that video. It was a really beautiful video that Joe directed, and a really beautiful song, and just so poignant about loss and legacy and what we leave behind. Feels like a classic song that could have been written at any time."
MIKE: "Leave Out All The Rest, I loved the video. Joe directed that and was one of my favorite ones that he's done. I was really proud of that song. Chester and I collaborated a lot on the words and the music came effortlessly. And all around, I think it's and underrated Linkin Park single."
</poem>
|Title18=18. Lost (April 27)
|Tab18={{Poem|
DAVE: "Lost is a track that we recorded with the entire album. It went through the same sessions in NRG. It was mastered with all the same songs. So it really obviously has that same sound and feel that all of Meteora does. But at the end of the process, we felt like Lost was sitting a little too close to the other songs on the record. It didn't fit the track listing. It didn't quite fit coming after Numb. We figured this would be a great thing for us to have in our back pocket. It just got set aside and forgotten about. When it came time to make the 20th anniversary package celebrating Meteora, we realized at that point; 'holy crap, we have thins song Chester's singing on it, that nobody’s ever heard'. What a cool thing to come back to."
</poem>
|Title19=19. Numb (April 29)
|Tab19={{Poem|
BRAD: "Numb, what a great song. It's basically a ballad, and because the guitars are so big, it feels like a really heavy song."
JOE: "Numb is one of those songs that struck a chord with so many people. That song really reflects this universal feeling of being alone and I think people can relate to it because they feel like they're being heard when no one else is listening. It's definitely therapeutic for so many people, whether it be coming of age or trying to get throught difficulty in life."
</poem>
|Title20=20. Friendly Fire (May 1)
|Tab20=
MIKE: "When we writing songs for the One More Light album, Friendly Fire was always a band favorite. But the song never quite made it over the finish line at that time. When we decided to do a greatets hits album, we felt like this was the perfect opportunity to revisit Friendly Fire. Brad and I got together to finish the song, and it was so nice to revisit it with fresh ears. I felt like being away from the song, we cracked the code on it. Friendly Fire is about looking into the distant past and realizing that best intentions can sometimes be hurtful."
</poem>
Pre-orders for the Papercuts - Singles Collection 2000-2023 launched on February 22, 2024 at 12:15 EST globally. It was released on April 12, 2024 in digital, softpack CD, vinyl 2LP and fluorescent green cassette formats. The latter was marketed as having an extremely limited production.[4]
Several different variations of vinyls were released, with a Black vinyl being the only one widely available. A Clear, Black & Red Splatter vinyl[5] and a Bone vinyl were exclusive to DACH countries (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) in Europe - the Bone vinyl also being exclusive to JPC[6] - and a Yellow & Black Splatter Vinyl was available exclusively to Linkin Park’s top listeners on Spotify.[7] The Bone vinyl was exclusive to Target in the United States and exclusive to JB Hi-Fi in Australia.[8][9] The official Linkin Park store also had two exclusive limited edition vinyl variations with a grayscale version of the cover art, one of them being a Zoetrope designed by Drew Tetz featuring animation that can be viewed with a phone camera and the other one being a Sky Blue & Tangerine Splatter vinyl.[10][11] The Zoetrope Picture Disc was limited to 7,000 units. Other store exclusive variations were a Milky Clear vinyl exclusive to Barnes & Noble[12] and a Dark Grey Recycled Color vinyl exclusive to Walmart.[13] This was the first time that "QWERTY" was made available on vinyl.
Besides standalone items, four bundles were available on the Linkin Park store:
- Papercuts Choice of Album and T-Shirt: includes a Papercuts Reflection Black T-Shirt and a choice between one of five Papercuts album formats.[14]
- Papercuts Vinyl Collectors Bundle: includes Black Vinyl 2LP and Papercuts Zoetrope Picture Disc Vinyl 2LP.[15]
- All Music Bundle: includes Sky Blue & Tangerine Splatter Vinyl 2LP, Zoetrope Picture Disc Vinyl 2LP, Fluorescent Green Cassette, Standard CD, Standard Black Vinyl 2LP.[16]
- Splatter Vinyl & Limited Edition Print (UK Exclusive): This bundle contains the Papercuts Sky Blue & Tangerine Splatter Vinyl 2LP limited pressing featuring special edition gatefold packaging and Papercuts Limited Edition Print - exclusive to UK store customers only. Limited to 300 copies and shipping from Tuesday 16th April this exclusive 12" x 12" print is printed on 300gsm stock with a satin coat.[17]
Pressing Errors
Fans have reported that some CD and vinyl pressings of Papercuts have versions of the songs with their original album transitions while others have the songs without transitions.[18][19]
The center label of vinyls have a length of 4:24 for "Friendly Fire" instead of 2:56. Other songs have the length of their respective album versions.[20][21]
Some fans who ordered the Zoetrope Picture Disc received only one Zoetrope disc, with the second disc being from the Dark Grey Recycled Color vinyl.[22]
Digital Release
On digital editions of Papercuts, the unedited album versions of the songs were included in the compilation. As a result, "Leave Out All The Rest" has the transition to "Bleed It Out" at the end of the song and "Papercut" has the transition to "One Step Closer" at the end despite the songs not being in sequence in the compilation. In addition to that, a few songs include transitions to songs not present in the compilation such as "Breaking The Habit", which includes the transition to "From The Inside", and "Waiting For The End", which includes the transition to "Blackout". Songs like "Somewhere I Belong", "Faint", "Breaking The Habit", "Bleed It Out" and "What I've Done" which originally transitioned from other tracks have the transition start.
Sometime in 2012, HDTracks started selling Linkin Park albums in audiophile 48kHz/24bit format.[23] On January 15th of the following year, iTunes used the same masters for their Mastered For iTunes versions of Linkin Park albums.[24] The master of A Thousand Suns featured a slightly different version of "Waiting For The End" with different effects on Chester's vocals and on the guitar loop at the beginning.[25] This master of the song is also present on Papercuts.
On May 6th, 2024, a new digital edition of the album under the identifier "093624841845" was released with different versions of "Faint", "Papercut", "Breaking The Habit", "Waiting For The End", "What I've Done" and "Leave Out All The Rest". "Faint" and "Breaking The Habit" were replaced with their respective single edits, which have longer intros. This version of "Breaking The Habit" doesn't have the transition to "From The Inside" at the end. "Papercut" is also the single edit, which doesn't segue into "Breaking The Habit". "Waiting For The End" was replaced with the 2010 master and a small fade out was added at the end, right before the transition to "Blackout". About 500 milliseconds was cut after the fade out. This was the first time that the 2010 master was released without the transition to "Blackout". For "What I've Done", a small portion of the ending transition of "Shadow Of The Day" was added to the intro and made to fade in. This intro is slightly longer than the single edit. This was the first release of this version of "What I've Done". The transition to "Bleed It Out" was removed from the end of "Leave Out All The Rest".
