Talking To Myself - Linkinpedia (2024)

"Talking To Myself" is the third track on One More Light. The band decided to release the song as a single because of the good reception it had at live shows. The planned radio impact was July 25, 2017^[1][2] but all promotion was canceled following Chester Bennington's death.

"Talking To Myself" is described as featuring a chiming guitar line and groovy bass reminiscent of The Killers.^[3]

Talking to Kerrang! about the song, Chester Bennington said, "It's about relating to how my wife must have felt when I was battling my demons. Seeing it going down and not being able to do something must have sucked."^[3]

The song features additional guitars by London-based songwriter Andrew Jackson,^[4] who first met Linkin Park in the studio on March 16, 2016^[5] and was seen in the studio again in June.^[6][7] On Twitter, he wrote, "These @linkinpark lot are true gentlemen. So proud to have played a small part"^[8]

During the One More Light Global Album Listening Party on May 19, 2017, Brad said, "I just watched the video of this song from Chile. And the whole crowd is jumping up and down. It was only the second time we had played the song, we hadn't released it yet. That was bananas to me. And in fact, it was so crazy I actually forgot how to play the song. I literally got so overwhelmed by that crowd response I forgot how to play the song." Mike added that it was a really fun song to play live.^[9] It is rumored that this performance of the song from Chile is a big reason the song got released as a single.

Before One More Light was released, Mike Shinoda gave Waves a song-by-song glimpse into the album's production and mixing. For "Talking To Myself", he said, "That was a very delicate blend of live and sampled sounds on the kick and snare. It’s mostly in the recording, but there were samples added under the kick and snare that give it that punch. My original drum sound was a little bit grimier and raw on the first few mixes with [mixing engineer] Manny Marroquin. But as we mixed the rest of the album, that song seemed too dirty. Manny went back in and added another sample underneath the kick and snare, and dried up the overall shape, which helped it cut through and feel more defined."^[10]

Lyric Video

The official lyric video for "Talking To Myself" was directed by Pavel Suslov and planned for release a week after the music video. Because of vocalist Chester Bennington's death, the lyric video wasn't published on the band's official YouTube channel, but made its way to Vevo on August 2nd, 2017. It features footage from the One More Light tour in 2017 mixed with footage from the Living Things tour in Australia, New Zealand and Asia in 2013 as well as footage from The Hunting Party tour in 2014 and 2015.

Pavel Suslov wrote on VK, "The first song, which was uploaded to the brand new Nokia 5510 back in 2002, is Linkin Park - In the End weighing 500kb, ripped from a disk that it took from a classmate to drive for the evening. Then there was just the space album Meteora, which was also the only music in "its radio station" in GTA3. Then there were the expectations of new albums, concerts, videos. And after some 15 years I could not even think that I would work closely with this group. I made a lot of content for them, and even made their new music video, which was due out in a couple of weeks ... It is terribly painful to see your childhood idol go away .. Nobody believed until the last, but unfortunately, this is true. Rest in peace, Chester! "^[11]

The video was removed from Vevo on August 15th after fans started sharing news about it^[12] and officially released on December 21st.

Music Video

The official music video of "Talking To Myself" was directed and edited by Linkin Park's videographer, Mark Fiore, and is a compilation of a variety of things, from the photoshoot and making of One More Light to live performances, rehearsals and meet & greets. It was released on July 20th, 2017. The version initially uploaded to the band's YouTube channel would cut off at 3 minutes and 43 seconds, before the song was finished, while the version released on digital platforms such as iTunes and Tidal had the full length song. This was eventually fixed.

Fan Footage Video

Linkin Park asked fans who went to their June 20 show at the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam to film all of "Talking To Myself" in landscape on their phones or cameras and then upload the videos to FanFootage.com after the show. The videos were used in the creation of a live fan footage music video of the song similar to what they had previously done with "Waiting For The End" and "Until It's Gone".

Fans who uploaded their video before midnight of Wednesday June 21st were entered in a draw to win a signed copy of One More Light.^[13]

After being postponed following Chester Bennington's death, the video was released on December 20, 2017. While the footage was filmed in Amsterdam, the audio was recorded in Sopron, Hungary on June 27th, taken from One More Light Live.^[14] The "Roads Untraveled Fallout Intro" was removed from the track.

Note: Only the date of the very first release of each version is listed.

Studio

Live

"Talking To Myself" was played live for the first time at a private event held at the Warner Bros Records building in a stripped down form, with Chester on vocals, Mike on piano, and Brad on guitar. The studio version was debuted at the first official show of the One More Light World Tour. In the headlining set for the tour, the song opened the show along with "Fallout". The song remained in its opening position throughout the One More Light European Tour. Co-writer and backing vocalist on the track, Ilsey Juber and Jon Green joined the band for the song at the memorial show for Chester Bennington, where the song was played mid-set for the first time and was performed 3 steps higher than the studio track to accommodate the guest vocalist. Interestingly, Brad played his guitar part 3 steps lower instead of higher like the rest of the track.

Variations

Last Updated: October 30, 2017

Live Guests

• Ilsey Juber
• Jon Green (The Bonfires)

Linkin Park

• Chester Bennington - Vocals
• Rob Bourdon - Drums, Background Vocals
• Brad Delson - Guitar, Background Vocals
• Joseph Hahn - Programming, Background Vocals
• Phoenix - Bass, Background Vocals
• Mike Shinoda - Keyboards, Programming, Vocals

Additional Musicians

• Background vocals by Ilsey Juber
• Additional guitar by Andrew Jackson

Production

• Written by Mike Shinoda, Brad Delson, Ilsey Juber and JR Rotem
• Produced by Mike Shinoda and Brad Delson
• Co-produced by JR Rotem
• Additional production by Andrew Jackson
• Vocal production by Andrew Bolooki
• Music performed by Linkin Park
• Vocals by Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda
• Chester's vocals recorded at The Pool Recording Studio, London, UK
• Mike's vocals recorded at The Warehouse Studio, Vancouver, CA
• Music recorded at Larrabee Studios, North Hollywood, CA and Sphere Studios, North Hollywood, CA
• Engineered by Ethan Mates, Mike Shinoda and Josh Newell
• Assistant engineer: Alejandro Baima
• Studio B assistant engineer: Warren Willis
• Studio drum tech: Jerry Johnson
• Mixed by Manny Marooquin at Larrabee Studios, North Hollywood, CA
• Mix engineer: Chris Galland assisted by Jeff Jackson and Robin Florent

• Finnish promo CD

• YouTube background image

Stream

• Talking To Myself (Official Audio): LPTV

Music Video

• Talking To Myself (Official Video): LPTV | Vevo
• Talking To Myself (Official Lyric Video): LPTV | Vevo
• Talking To Myself (Live Fan Footage): LPTV