About One Step Closer

"One Step Closer" is the debut single by the American rock band Linkin Park. It was released as the first single and second track of their debut album, Hybrid Theory. The song was featured in the 2008 music video games Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades, and the soundtrack to the 2000 film Dracula 2000 in the end credits. A remixed version of the song entitled "1Stp Klosr" was featured on Linkin Park's remix album, Reanimation. The remix features Jonathan Davis, the lead singer of American nu metal band Korn. In 2021, Linkin Park released a new remix of the song by electronic duo 100 gecs. This song was mashed up with another song by the band from Hybrid Theory, "Points of Authority", and a collaboration of the song 99 Problems from "The Black Album" by Jay-Z on the EP Collision Course.

Joe Hahn of Linkin Park and director Gregory Dark came up with the concept for the video. The original version of the video was supposedly meant to be live footage of the band with fans (similar to their music video for "Faint"). The video was directed by Dark and shot in Los Angeles, sixty-three feet underground in an abandoned LA Subway tunnel, that is adjacent to an abandoned V.A. hospital. The video starts out with a group of teenage friends hanging out around a dark alley. Two of them (the male is played by local LA artist Tony Acosta who goes by the moniker "TonyMech") 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, drawing the attention of the monk-like men, causing them to 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 as if gravity is inverted for him. Stand-in bassist Scott Koziol can be seen in several shots in the video. "One Step Closer" is the only Linkin Park music video to be filmed with SD cameras, which can be seen in 480p and is available in the US exclusively on the Warner Bros. Records YouTube channel. As of September 2021, the song has over 130 million views on YouTube.