On the night of July 19, 2017, Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington committed suicide. One of the first comments I saw online under the announcement was, “Now that we know it was all real and not just teen angst, Linkin Park is a masterpiece.” Many seemed to agree. The emission struck me on two accounts: first, it fed into society’s wont to lionize newly departed musicians; second, it acknowledges the dirty secret that will be buried behind every eulogy published over the next few days – Linkin Park, for most of its existence, wasn’t considered to be very good.

This type of tragedy seems to becoming more prevalent as of late, as just earlier this year Chris Cornell of Soundgarden fame also took his own life in a similar fashion. I can never begin to understand, rationalize, or justify why someone would choose to take this drastic action; depression, drug addiction, personal turmoil, and mental illness are all possible factors. While such an event is always horrific, the fallout reaches an entirely new tragic level when the victim is a public figure, especially a musician. Music has a special impact on us; we grow to identify with the song, the lyrics, and how the combination of the two inspires us to feel and think. It can be a comfort and an outlet. Through experiencing art, we feel that we come to know the artist, and through our interpretation of their work, we come to better know ourselves. When a musician dies, we lose what we see as a friend and companion, someone who has shaped our lives and our experience from afar. This is magnified when it’s the singer – humans still connect to to natural voice above all else for the emotion, communication, and image. So when a singer commits suicide, how does that leave us to interpret their past work? Is there some clue as to what was to come, some hint as to a motive? Is there anything we could have done? From Joy Division to Nirvana, from Nick Drake to Elliot Smith, this has been so.

Which brings us back to Linkin Park. The band was omnipresent during my adolescence. Their songs soundtracked trips to the mall. “In the End” played so much on the radio to and from school that even my mother came to know the words. It is safe to say that at one point, if even for a brief moment, Linkin Park was the biggest band in the country. They were the latest to purvey a style of rock known as nu-metal, a combination of metal and hip-hop that features chunky riffs, rapping and singing, electronic flourishes, some programmed beats, and turntables. Usually the lyrical subject matter is angry and psychologically dark. Other well known nu-metal bands are Korn and Limp Bizkit. Unlike these other, slightly older groups, Linkin Park specialized in a more “modern” sound, a little more mainstream while still retaining their edge. Their aesthetic became synonymous with the early-2000’s: skateboarding, urban graffiti typeface, and anime artwork.

Their popularity faded over time, as do all bands’. I for one appreciated their expanded sonic and emotional palate on Minutes to Midnight, their third album. Other fans saw it as them going soft. Nonetheless, they continued to record and tour, to varying degrees of success. Yet outside of their core fanbase, Linkin Park never seemed to garner much respect. They were never as lauded as contemporaries like the more complex Deftones or Queens of the Stone Age, and their mainstream success barred them from the hipster adoration of more “artistic” groups like Radiohead or Modest Mouse. Maybe it was because they were far removed from the blues and thus deemed less authentic. Perhaps it was cultural bias against the use of hip-hop elements, or Bennington’s intensely volatile and straightforward lyricism made people scoff at them as naive. I think it was a little bit of all of these – as my generation aged, Linkin Park became like a friend who never grew up. As our taste grew and evolved, we felt embarrassed to have ever bought into Linkin Park’s brand of angstsy maximalism.

The thing is, even though I never remotely counted them as one of my favorite bands, I always…kind of liked them. And the thing is, I think most everyone kind of liked them too. Hybrid Theory and Meteora, if just through sheer ubiquity, became foundational musical moments for our generation, and, for many, one of the first introductions to the broader realm of rock and roll. Whether we were having fun with friends or angry in our room, his voice seemed to be there. Those adolescent moments stick with us, and even if we don’t identify with them at whatever point of life we are in now, we identify with our past selves that found solace in the music of the time.

Now with Chester Bennington gone, Linkin Park is gone as well. Immediately, people and publications and celebrities came out of the woodwork to heap praise on him and his songs, just like happened with Chris Cornell. I don’t think anyone will put Linkin Park on the same level as Soundgarden (or even Audioslave), but it seems that everyone has found a new appreciation for decade old nu-metal.

We can’t let ourselves get carried away though. (I’m still an opponent of poptimism – the idea that all music should be celebrated just because it’s an artist’s expression). I saw an article from a lifestyle blog that laments that fans didn’t stick behind Chester after the release of their last album, One More Light. It is significantly more pop-oriented, and understandably many “old-school” fans didn’t warm to it right away. The article lamented that this troubled man wasn’t supported by his fans, and now that he was dead, we should feel bad for not “being better.” This is asinine. A fan is not obligated in the slightest to like something that an artist puts out; one of the aspects of being a public performer is that not everyone will understand what you do. There will be criticism, and often that criticism is valid. That being said, nonconformity within a fanbase creates diversity and depth; those who do appreciate a less popular work give it value. Artistic worth isn’t quantifiable. I’d like to think that negative reaction to an album is not the reason Bennington took his own life, but if it is, it is not the fans fault for not appreciating him.

The day after his death, I went out with a few friends, and the conversation naturally turned toward him at some point. One friend lamented that he truly felt upset, as the first CD he purchased with his own money was a Linkin Park album. Someone next to us at the bar chimed in that we should feel ashamed to openly express admiration for a lame band. I shot back that no one should apologize for liking music for whatever reason was important to them. For example, I’m a huge fan of Jethro Tull, but also know that many see them as cheesy in a British swords-and-sandals ’70s rock way. It’s possible to appreciate Chester Bennington and mourn his death while acknowledging that Linkin Park isn’t the greatest band of all time.

Black Nerb Problems published a piece positing that the use of Linkin Park music in anime videos on YouTube led him to appreciate rock. Certainly, their collaborative mixtape with Jay-Z helped turn many rock kids onto rap. This brings us to a perfect analogy. Linkin Park is like Dragon Ball Z. DBZ is perhaps THE foundational, introductory anime for most Americans in their twenties. Most will also tell you that it isn’t the best anime ever, especially compared to more mature fare such as Cowboy Bebop or the Gundam series. But they’d be lying to themselves if they said that Dragon Ball wasn’t a fun, cool series with great action and comedy. It’s fitting, then, that both DBZ and Linkin Park came to prominence at the same time: they will always be intertwined in the memory of my middle school afternoons.

Let’s hear it for Linkin Park, a pretty good band. And that’s cool.