The Daily Epic Earworm For November 29, 2025
Everyone gets songs stuck in their heads that just won’t go away. They sneak into your subconscious. They are epic earworms that you find yourself humming uncontrollably, singing in the shower, or tapping the beat to with your foot or ballpoint pen when you should be working. Sometimes they even keep you awake at night. Whether they are current hits, one-hit wonders, movie soundtrack gems, holiday favorites, or songs from your youth, their catchy vocals, riffs, hooks, and choruses seem to linger for days.
Here, those songs find a home, no matter the genre. Here, those epic earworms are revisited, explained, and celebrated. Here, you may find the song that haunts you tomorrow. Here is today’s unescapable song of the day…and the story behind it.
Today’s Epic Earworm: Linkin Park — “Shadow of the Day”
California-based nu metal pioneers Linkin Park took a new approach with their 2007 hit “Shadow of the Day.” The song samples live string ensemble recordings by Mike Shinoda and was one of the first songs the band recorded in a major key. The single, the third off the band’s album Minutes to Midnight, was certified double-platinum. It peaked at Number Six on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart and landed in the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart.
Countdown to Extinction
The epic earworm, and its music video, depict a world descended into chaos. The album title Minutes to Midnight is a reference to the Doomsday Clock, an indicator of how close the planet is to a human-made global catastrophe. If you notice, early in the video, Linkin Park lead singer Chester Bennington wakes up, and his alarm clock reads 11:55. That is where the Doomsday Clock sat at that time.
“Shadow of the Day,” and its video, were a little over four minutes long, which would leave the clock at 11:59, one minute from a global catastrophe. The band was very intentional about the symbolism in the video, even if they did not broadcast it to their fans.
You can see Bennington walking through a war zone in the video. Protestors are screaming for freedom and throwing Molotov cocktails while riot police open fire on them. Sadly, Linkin Park‘s dystopian view of life in the video has hit a little too close to home for many parts of the globe in recent years. Between wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, and protests and riots all over the world, the band seems almost prophetic in retrospect. If you are wondering, the Doomsday Clock currently sits at 89 seconds to midnight as of the writing of this article.
