One Step Closer (Linkin Park song)

"One Step Closer" was inspired by the band members', particularly the lead singer Chester Bennington's, frustration with their producer Don Gilmore during the recording sessions for their debut album, Hybrid Theory. Gilmore consistently demanded lyric revisions for the song (which had a working title of "Plaster") and other tracks, pushing the band to perfect the sound and structure for a radio release. This creative tension led to intense frustration, which Bennington channeled directly into the lyrics and vocal performance.^[9]

In 2001, Linkin Park performed "One Step Closer" on Late Night with Conan O'Brien.^[10]

On October 27, 2017, during the Linkin Park and Friends: Celebrate Life in Honor of Chester Bennington, Jonathan Davis performed the song again with the remaining Linkin Park members alongside Ryan Shuck and Amir Derakh of Julien-K and Dead by Sunrise.

Joe Hahn of Linkin Park and director Gregory Dark came up with the concept for the video.

Directed by Dark^[11] and shot in Los Angeles, sixty-three feet underground in the abandoned Hollywood Subway underneath Bunker Hill, the video begins with a group of teenage friends hanging out around a dark alley. Two of them follow a strange man wearing a black hooded robe into a door which leads them to a dark, misty room where the band is playing. Monk-like men are performing martial arts moves throughout the video. Midway through the song, they knock over a crate, startling the monk-like men, and then flee the tunnel. Eventually, the strange man appears at the end of the video. While Bennington screams the song's bridge, he is also upside-down.^[12]

In 2018, the staff of Metal Hammer included the video in the site's list of "the 13 best nu metal videos".^[13]

Billboard and Kerrang both named "One Step Closer" as the fourth-greatest Linkin Park song.^[14][15]

Credits adapted from AllMusic for original release only.^[16]