"A Light That Never Comes" is a song written and recorded by American

rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wale ...

band

Linkin Park Linkin Park is an American Rock music, rock band formed in Agoura Hills, California, in 1996. The band's current lineup consists of vocalist/rhythm guitarist/keyboardist Mike Shinoda, lead guitarist Brad Delson, DJ/turntablist Joe Hahn, bass ...

, and is their first collaboration with American DJ and record producer

Steve Aoki Steven Hiroyuki Aoki ( , ; born November 30, 1977) is an American DJ and record producer. In 2012, Pollstar designated Aoki as the highest-grossing electronic dance music artist in North America from tours. In 2024, Gold House recognized him as ...

. It was included on the band's second

remix album A remix album is an album consisting of remixes or rerecorded versions of an artist's earlier released material. The first act who employed the format was American singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson ('' Aerial Pandemonium Ballet'', 1971). As of 200 ...

, '' Recharged''. It is the twenty-sixth single by the band. The song appears as the opening track on the album while a reboot version produced by

Rick Rubin Frederick Jay Rubin (, ; born March 10, 1963) is an American record producer. He is a co-founder of Def Jam Recordings, founder of American Recordings, and former co-president of Columbia Records. Rubin helped popularize hip hop by produci ...

serves as the closing track. In addition to the song being released in advance when ''Recharged'' was partially released early on September 16, 2013, "A Light That Never Comes" was released to radio and made available to stream as a

promotional single A promotional recording, promo, or plug copy is an audio or video recording distributed free, usually in order to promote a recording that is or soon will be commercially available. Promos are normally sent directly to broadcasters, such as mu ...

on digital music service

Xbox Music Groove Music (formerly Xbox Music and Zune Marketplace) is a discontinued Audio player (software), audio player software application included with Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 and Windows 11. The app is also associated with a now-disco ...

on the same day. The

CD single A CD single is a single (music), music single in the form of a compact disc (CD). Originally the ''CD single'' standard (as defined in the Rainbow Books, Red Book) was an 8 cm (3-inch) "mini CD" (''CD3''); later on the term referred to any si ...

was released on October 11, 2013.

Background and promotion

According to

Mike Shinoda Michael Kenji Shinoda ( ; born February 11, 1977) is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and graphic designer. He co-founded the rock band Linkin Park in 1996 and is the band's co-lead vocalist, as well as rhythm guitarist, ...

, "The coolest part about the song is it was really organic in how it came together ... Steve Aoki and I first talked on

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

, and then we were emailing, and then we started throwing music back and forth." In an interview on August 30, 2013, with Shinoda and Aoki, Shinoda said that they began working on the song "no less than a half a year ago". He said they did not constantly work on it, but "the ideas would flow whenever...something new came up".

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television service, which is the flagship property of namesake parent-subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is based a ...

featured the song in their 2013 fall preview advertisement. The band released the song's official lyric video on September 16 when players from across the world unlocked the track on '' LP Recharge'', their first

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

game. The song was heavily contributed in the 2014 documentary film '' The Distortion of Sound'', which features Mike and Steve, as well as the background music for the introduction video of '' Grid Autosport''. The Rick Rubin Reboot of the song was also featured in the soundtrack of 2014 American ensemble

action film The action film is a film genre that predominantly features chase sequences, fights, shootouts, explosions, and stunt work. The specifics of what constitutes an action film has been in scholarly debate since the 1980s. While some scholars such as D ...

'' The Expendables 3''.

Live performances

Shinoda, Bennington, and Aoki performed the song together for the first time at the

Summer Sonic Festival is an annual music festival held on one weekend in August simultaneously in both Chiba and Osaka, Japan. The festival features revolving lineups performing one day in Osaka then performing the next day in Chiba and vice-versa. The lineup often ...

on August 10, 2013, in

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. Aoki said, "we just kind of threw this show together like...it was very just raw." At the time, Shinoda said that there were no plans to perform the song again with Aoki, however, he said "I imagine it will happen," but he did not know if it would be the same set up as the Summer Sonic show, or if it would be the full band and Steve. He said he could see both happening. On November 15, 2013, Mike Shinoda, Chester Bennington, and Steve Aoki performed the song with

Blink-182 Blink-182 is an American Rock music, rock band formed in Poway, California, in 1992. Its current and best-known line-up consists of bassist and vocalist Mark Hoppus, guitarist and vocalist Tom DeLonge, and drummer Travis Barker. Though its so ...

drummer

Travis Barker Travis Landon Barker (born November 14, 1975) is an American musician, songwriter, and music producer who is the drummer for the rock band Blink-182. He has collaborated with hip hop artists, is a member of the rap rock group Transplants ...

at the

Shrine Auditorium The Shrine Auditorium is a landmark large-event venue in Los Angeles, California. It is also the headquarters of the Al Malaikah Temple, a division of the Shriners. It was designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument (No. 139) in 1975, an ...

and Expo Hall. On November 26, Shinoda, Bennington, and Aoki performed the song on ''

Jimmy Kimmel Live! ''Jimmy Kimmel Live!'', sometimes shortened to ''JKL'', is an American late-night talk show, created and hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, and broadcast on ABC. The nightly hour-long show tapes and is based out of the Hollywood Masonic Temple in Hollywo ...

''. On January 9, 2014, at The Joint in

Las Vegas Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...

, Linkin Park performed the song for the first time as a full band without Aoki. On Celebrate Life concert, the song was performed with pop singer

Bebe Rexha Bleta "Bebe" Rexha ( , ; born August 30, 1989) is an American singer and songwriter. She signed with Warner Records in 2013, and was credited with co-writing releases of other artists—such as Eminem's Grammy Award-winning single " The Monster" ...

on vocals.

Critical reception

Stupid Dope gave the song a positive review, saying "The track is packed full of dope energy, heavy melodic elements, and of course, the patented sound of Linkin Park, as they mesh together nicely with Mr. Aoki."

Commercial performance

In its first week of release, the single sold 55,000 downloads in the US.

Music video

On October 6, 2013,

Joe Hahn Joseph Hahn (born March 15, 1977) is an American musician, DJ, director, and visual artist best known as the DJ and creative director of the rock band Linkin Park, doing the scratching, turntables, sampling, and programming for all eight of ...

confirmed a video for "A Light That Never Comes" is in production, by posting two behind the scenes pictures, and a short video preview on his

Instagram Instagram is an American photo sharing, photo and Short-form content, short-form video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with Social media camera filter, filters, be ...

account. The video was released a couple of days later, albeit on several sites across the world appealing to their respective regions only. The music video was then officially released worldwide on YouTube on October 17, 2013. A behind-the-scenes feature of the video is on

Dell Dell Inc. is an American technology company that develops, sells, repairs, and supports personal computers (PCs), Server (computing), servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals including printers and webcam ...

's official website. It features the band and a statue of Steve Aoki in a cyber world along with an unnamed actress. As of November 2023, the music video for "A Light That Never Comes" has over 40 million views on

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

Track listing

Remixes

''A Light That Never Comes (Remixes)'' is the third extended play released to the public by American rock band Linkin Park and the second released EP by American electro house musician

. It features seven remixes by seven various artists for the collaborated single, "A Light That Never Comes". This is one of their few extended plays that were not released by Machine Shop, which was founded by the band's co-vocalist

. The whole album was available on Aoki's and

Dim Mak The touch of death (or death-point striking) is any martial arts technique reputed to kill using seemingly less than lethal force targeted at specific areas of the body. The concept known as ''dim mak'' (), alternatively () traces its history ...

's official YouTube channel."EP on YouTube"
''

'' Retrieved July 2, 2014.

Background

''A Light That Never Comes (Remixes)'' features EDM remixes of the single. The EP was confirmed by the band on their Facebook page. The EP included artists like

Angger Dimas Raden Angger Dimas Riyanto (born 1 March 1988) professionally known as Angger Dimas, is an Indonesian electronic musician, DJ and music producer from Jakarta, Indonesia. Angger Dimas student of 34 Senior High School, Jakarta & 68 Junior High Sc ...

Coone Koen Bauweraerts (born 30 May 1983), better known by his stage name Coone, is a Belgian hardstyle producer and DJ. Career Coone first started producing in 1998 at age 15. He released his first EP in 2002, ''Protect the Innocent''. Under th ...

and various others. The Vicetone remix was originally available for digital download when people Shazamed Linkin Park and Steve Aoki's performance on ''Jimmy Kimmel Live!'' straight to their own mobile phones or other electronic communication uses, which was recorded and aired on TV on November 26, 2013. The remix was actually a winner of the A LIGHT THAT NEVER COMES remix contest. The reboot by Rick Rubin for the song was also included in the band's second remix album, ''Recharged''. It served as the closing track of the album.

Promotion

The EP was not promoted well but still it was commercially a success by the online shopping websites. For the promotion of the EP, there were two music videos for the Coone remix and the Vicetone remix, which were available on their YouTube channels. The video of the Coone remix is a live performance and also includes some lyrics of the song, but it was not declared as a lyric video. The video was directed by Editz. The video for the Vicetone remix was a remix of the official video of the single, which was an animated video, taken from the official video of the song by the band and Steve Aoki.

Track listing

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Release history

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Light That Never Comes Steve Aoki songs Linkin Park songs 2013 singles 2013 songs Songs written by Mike Shinoda Songs written by Steve Aoki Warner Records singles Warner Records EPs Song recordings produced by Mike Shinoda