For My Sunday Song #84, I am going with “Numb” by Linkin Park.  The song is the third single and the final track on their second album ‘Meteora’. The song only reached #31 on the Top 40 charts which is okay because it reached #1 on the Alternative Songs chart where it stayed for a mere 12 weeks.

This song to me was one of the band’s most powerful songs they had ever done up to that point.  It was a very dark song and I love dark songs.  The subject matter was about kids having to live up to their parent’s expectations and failing. Living as outcasts from their parents and from the world around them.  They are smothered and aren’t allowed to be themselves.  I have a feeling that more people feel that way then don’t.  With Chester Bennington’s death last year, it makes me think how personal this song might have been for him as he sang it with such emotion and feeling.

The video for the song was amazing in that it depicted that very theme with a girl struggling to fit in and having issues with her peers at school and her parents.  She ends up cutting herself and the marks spell out Numb on her arm.  A real tragic story.  The video also intersperses shots of the band performing in a church and I wonder what they were wanting to conveying with that imagery.

The song was later remixed as “Numb/Encore” with Jay-Z and included on their album ‘Collision Course’.  That song was okay, but this is the only one I listen to as it made you feel the song more.

Give it a listen and help remember that people are struggling with issues every day and you don’t know what is going on in someone’s life.  A kind smile or a simple hello can do more than you could ever imagine.  I hope you enjoy!  Happy Sunday!

“Numb”