Linkin Park made a return to London in order to give a special live performance of their single and the 2024 Worlds anthem "Heavy Is the Crown" earlier tonight, as part of Riot Games' 2024 Worlds Opening Ceremony. The Opening Ceremony preceded the absolutely massive League of Legends 2024 World Finals event, which was streamed live from London's O2 Arena, and which saw two finalist professional e-sports teams going head-to-head to be crowned world champion. The official League of Legends YouTube channel has an official upload featuring the musical performances from the ceremony here - Linkin Park's segment begins at approximately 7:30 into the runtime - but there's also an official edit of the "Heavy Is the Crown" performance just on its own: For this special event, Linkin Park delivered a new arrangement of "Heavy Is the Crown", outfitting the song with a slightly-longer intro and an extended instrumental bridge section - the latter was used to introduce members of finalist teams T1 and BLG, and highlight the trophy they came to compete for. Linkin Park's performance was preceded by other performances by Ashnikko, coming with her Arcane Season 2 track "Paint The Town Blue", and Mars Atlas (of Forts) and Tiffany Aris, who dueted their collaboration "Still Here" that featured in a League cinematic earlier this year. Speaking on "Heavy Is the Crown" during a special band Q&A yesterday, Mike Shinoda explained that Linkin Park's partnership with Riot Games began with him connecting with key figures within the League of Legends team, including Riot Games' Global Head of Music Maria Egan, and Arcane showrunner Christian Linke. The band also spoke briefly on the alternate version of "Heavy Is the Crown" due to appear on the Arcane Season 2 soundtrack album. The main version of the song, of course, comes off Linkin Park's eighth studio album From Zero, which drops later this year on November 15. Watch Linkin Park's 2024 Worlds live performance here and tell us what you think! Source: LoL Esports on YouTube
Performance was neat. Emily is pretty consistent in how close she sounds to the studio version, and I really dig the harmonies with Mike at the end.
Nice performance and a great introduction for the final teams. Right now the song definitely hypes up the games of the final because BLG and T1 are showing some good stuff.
It was so cool staged. Nice show and performance, shows high respect in the production for the teams and the audience.
I would not complain if they throw an extended intro/outro onto this bad boy next year. It has big set/encore opener written all over it.
I’m happy to see the comments on the live performance are much warmer. A lot of people really appreciated their raw energy as a change from their usual pop/k-pop line-ups. Goosebumps all around the building. It definitely would have felt different without T1 making it all the way again, though. Really cool stuff to see.
This was at an interview. Yesterday, I think? I might be reading too far into it, but I really wonder what T1’s feelings are on the type of recognition they’ve gotten over the years. And HITC.
Damn, the reactions seems super positive this time around, pretty cool. Lots of "I didn't like the music video but this was an awesome live performance" type of comments. Well done LP, well done.
Intro looked great and I thought it looked really cool when the trophy popped up during the scream. Loved the performance!
Love hearing LP using baritone guitars in what I presume is seven string Drop A tuning. Awesome performance.
Riot's Creative Director Elie Fielding shared some behind-the-scenes footage from the event preparation on TikTok, including a glimpse of some Linkin Park stand-ins during rehearsals