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An unreleased song that Linkin Park fans have called on the band to share for the past two decades is finally getting a release.
Fans knew that ‘Pictureboard’ existed but, apart from some suspecting to have heard it as an interval track during a live performance, none have been able to hear it on record.
Now, the band’s guitarist, rapper and singer Mike Shinoda has confirmed that the song will feature on the band’s 20th anniversary reissue of their breakthrough debut album.
During a Linkin Park virtual press junket, Shinoda addressed the track’s background. “Fans have known about ‘Pictureboard’ for about 19 or 20 years. They’ve known of the existence of it, but didn’t know at all what it sounded like” [quotes via LoudWire].
He added that after much pestering by fans, the band considered making it an LPU fan club song, however, a sampling clearance hurdle prevented them doing so easily.
Shinoda said they he found the fan’s fixation on the track fascinating. “There’s so many songs…why is there so much focus on this one? You’ve never even heard it.” He explained that he eventually clearing the sample (a Barry White drum sample), and from then fans were able to piece together that the clip of audio was from an interlude the band had played at a rock festival in 2000 or 2001.
Shinoda recalled: “The fans had even come up with a name for that performance. They made up their own name for that interlude and they were asking me about that interlude, and I was like, ‘You don’t understand. You guys made up the name. I don’t even know what song it is you guys are referring to. You literally named that thing something else. I didn’t come up with that.'”
Additionally, guitarist Brad Delson revealed that he believes ‘Pictureboard’ as the first song he heard late frontman Chester Bennington‘s voice on. “Unless my memory is super wrong, which is very possible, but not likely…I remember getting that and saying, ‘Hey, what do you think of this guy? He just sent us this recording.’ I wasn’t like crying with joy, but almost. I was like, ‘Wow, I don’t even know what that is,'” he said.
“He’s so tiny and vulnerable on the verse and you can hear all those timbres and harmonics and then all the overtones on the heavy part. To me, it just blew my hat off my head. And then we were like, ‘We gotta meet this guy.’”
Shinoda said that the band are “very excited for [fans] to hear” ‘Pictureboard’, adding: “It was almost that the occasion had to be of big enough significance that it was worth doing all those things. This was that occasion.”
Pre-orders for the ‘Linkin Park Hybrid Theory: 20th Anniversary Edition Super Deluxe Box Set’ are currently available here ahead of its October 9 release. It includes a box set spanning five CDs, three LPs (including ‘Reanimation’ and the ‘Hybrid Theory’ EP), and three DVDs.
The reissue of the band’s 2000 debut will include 12 previously unreleased tracks from the album’s era, including the 1999 demo ‘She Couldn’t’ (listen here), as well as an 80-page book, a cassette reproduction of a two-track street team sampler, lithographs, a replica tour laminate, and a poster of Bennington.
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