“Breaking the Habit” by Linkin Park

"Breaking the Habit" sits ninth on Linkin Park's second album, Meteora, and it was the last of the record's singles, the fifth one pulled from it. It stands apart for its strings: a swarm of violins, violas and cellos played by a small orchestra's worth of session players, including Charlie Bisharat, Alyssa Park, Bob Becker and Larry Corbett.

Don Gilmore produced and recorded it with the band, Andy Wallace mixed it, and the writing credit is split six ways: Chester Bennington, Mike Shinoda, Brad Delson, Rob Bourdon, Dave Farrell and Joe Hahn. Bennington carries the lead vocal alone, and he sings it with a jittery, wounded urgency, building from nervous murmur to full-bore cry, while Delson's guitar and Bourdon's drums stay tucked in around the strings instead of flattening them.

The single capped a remarkable run. It was the fifth Meteora single in a row to reach number one on Billboard's Modern Rock chart, something no other act has managed, and the third from the album to top the Mainstream Rock chart. It climbed to number 20 on the Hot 100 and went gold, though the UK held out: there it stalled outside the top 30. Years later, in 2012, it turned up as downloadable content for Rock Band 3.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.