Linkin Park’s “One More Light” has received a Platinum certification in the UK. The BPI recorded the award on October 9, 2026, recognizing 600,000 units under its singles certification scheme.
The award follows the song’s Gold certification on March 29, 2024, and Silver certification on March 27, 2020. Qualifying sales and streams contribute to those totals, with UK singles reaching Gold at 400,000 units and Silver at 200,000. The Platinum award applies to the individual recording, which shares its title with Linkin Park’s seventh studio album.
That album arrived on May 19, 2017, with a writing process that put personal experiences at the beginning of each song. In a February 2017 iHeart interview, Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington explained that they had started sessions by discussing what was on their minds. Lyrics and subject matter guided the arrangements, reversing their familiar practice of developing music before deciding what to say over it.
For Shinoda, “One More Light” grew directly from a loss he was struggling to process. Speaking to Music Week in May 2017, he recalled working with British songwriter Eg White after a friend had died. He initially questioned whether anyone would want to hear such a sad song, but found he could not write about anything else. Their work on the chorus gave the song its emotional direction, affirming that an individual life mattered. When they sent the demo to the other members, bassist Dave Farrell was moved to tears. Bennington described the recording as something that could be difficult to hear precisely because it connected so closely with someone’s own experience of grief.
The vocal recording received similarly careful attention. In a July 2017 interview with Waves, Shinoda explained that the band compared microphones through blind listening tests. For “One More Light,” a Flea 47 was selected over several Neumann U47 microphones. The decision followed the band’s practice of reassessing which equipment suited their voices and the material they were recording.
After Bennington’s death, listeners gave the song another role. Warner Bros. Records’ September 2017 announcement explained that it had not initially been scheduled as a single, but fans’ response placed it at the center of the band’s remembrance of their singer. Joe Hahn and longtime videographer Mark Fiore directed the official video, which premiered on September 18, 2017.
In the accompanying statement, Shinoda described a song originally intended to comfort people who had lost someone becoming a source of support for the musicians themselves. “We now find ourselves on the receiving end,” he said, acknowledging the memorial events, artwork and videos fans had created for Bennington and the band.
“One More Light” was subsequently included on Papercuts (Singles Collection 2000–2023), released April 12, 2024. It appeared as the collection’s eleventh track, between “Castle of Glass” and “Burn It Down.”
