This is probably the most ridiculous thing Mike has ever said to promote/defend one of his albums. "This super commercial sounding, formulaic, generic sounding, all out pop album, that we wrote (with about 20 other people), is actually super risky" Up is down, left is right, commercial is risky, Trump is President of the US. The band sitting down to write music and a pop album genuinely being the end result would be one thing. But do you really think they just accidentally happened on (by my count) 17 different pop writers & producers? Writers for many of todays most financially successful pop artists (Rihanna, Beiber, Katy Perry, One Direction, Selena Gomez, Britney Spears, among many others) That isn't "6 guys in a room just writing music". I think the intent here is blindingly obvious. The mental gymnsatics by some in here trying to paint that as a risky move is astounding. It's the safest, and most commercial thing LP have ever done, and that's saying something given their catalogue. And no, I don't respect that. Is it? To never have a core sound, or to never be pigeonholed in a particular genre? The latter I understand, the former is what I think they have ended up doing, and I would question the wisdom of that. What is a band with no identity? Exactly. It comes across as "you just don't like it because you're a closed-minded nu metal fan", which is a paper thin defense. Particularly, as you said, they've been doing that for 10 years now.
I've liked the songs so far. My least favorite is probably Heavy but I really enjoy Kiiara's part and the chorus so it's still listenable to me. I just think it's funny that when The Hunting Party was coming out, Mike was talking shit about the music on the radio saying that it was something like Disney Commercial music and now they're essentially releasing an album to reach that audience.
I think the thing that really created all this tension within the fanbase is the fact that they released Heavy as the very first song. Out of all the songs I've heard so far from the album, it definitely sounds like the most ''Disney'', mostly because of the Kiiara feature. I think if they came out with a different song first, like Nobody Can Save Me, Talking To Myself, Battle Symphony, maybe even Invisible, they wouldn't have got as much hate as they did. When Linkin Park released BURN IT DOWN as the first song back in 2012, the fanbase didn't go as ape shit as they did with Heavy, and BURN IT DOWN is a pretty damn poppy sounding song. So isn't stuff like What I've Done, Leave Out All The Rest, Shadow Of The Day, Until It's Gone, etc. And those are all singles the band has released. You have to remember that most people who aren't fans of the band will only listen primarily to the singles. It just so happens that Heavy was probably the most Disney song on the album, so I think that turned off a lot of fans, especially since the last thing we had heard from the band at that point was The Hunting Party, and everyone can also remember what Mike said about Disney music and pop at the time. Maybe this was the band's intention all along, to get rid of those nu-metal and rock fans right off the bat coming out with Heavy, but I don't think they expected as big of a backlash as they got with Heavy, which is why the band has been defending it so much on social media and elsewhere, they never did that with any of their other big risks. Like I said before, I'm not one of those nu-metal or rock die-hards. I enjoy Linkin Park's other albums a lot more - Minutes To Midnight, A Thousand Suns, Living Things - as opposed to just the ''heavy'' shit. The only song I really don't like so far is Heavy anyways. Nothing else that I've heard from this album rubs me the wrong way.
Ya know @Derek you sure made an impactful review. We're on, what, like almost 10 pages of discussing risk now (I didn't actually count lol)?
To be fair, the band has been about learning new ways to approach music for what, 4 albums now? Why are you acting like this is some new thing? Didn't the band bring in Rick Rubin to learn how regular rock groups write songs? Didn't they bring in Tom Morello and Daron Malakian to pick their brain as to how they approach songwriting? Didn't they bring in Dave Campbell to see how he writes string parts (despite the fact that all the string parts were more or less already written by Mike per the demo of Breaking The Habit)? And as I recall, the vast majority of the writers being brought in weren't there for the music, they were there for lyrics. And more specifically, how these writers approach writing lyrics. Which we all know LP are horrible with. That's what is risky. Starting the process off by focusing on what the band sucks at, the words. When, as we all know, the band has always been about writing the music first, then the vocals later. Also risky? Alienating their core fanbase. Because God knows they've been doing that in spades the past few months and it has been the most fascinating and hilarious trainwreck to watch.
The biggest risk here is to my own mental sanity reading through some of these comments Also, great write-up, @Derek
@Derek thank you for your review. I hate when I read reviews akin to that AP one linked earlier where it shows that they spent no time with the album. It doesn't matter if people agree with the review or not, it matters if you spend the time on it. It makes no sense to write a review if you can't take any time investing in the product. Sadly, there are some that can't appreciate that either.
Wow, I am genuinely confused about some of the comments in this thread. What is with the prevailing notion that LP is "horrible" at writing lyrics, so awful that they needed outside help from pop producers/songwriters? Maybe I've been listening to a parallel universe version of LP, but I've heard consistently strong, emotional, touching, and yes, profound, lyrics from HT through THP. Seriously, what is with the Debbie Downers in this thread suggesting that lyrics are the absolute greatest weakness of this band? I really don't get it, seeing how LP has reached out to 10s of millions of people around the world with meaningful music that has enriched their lives, especially through spot-on relatable lyrics, metaphors, and concepts that define humanity.
For what it's worth, while I've been a fan since 01 I've never found their lyrics anything particularly worth writing home about. They're not like, Papa Roach bad. But I've never been particularly moved by anything they've ever said. There's always Don Gilmore to blame, but even after dropping him I don't really think they broke away from that kind of "Let's make sure the largest amount of people can relate to this and it doesn't get corny after the 90th listen" style of song writing. Which there's merit too, for sure. But I've never fancied them particularly strong song writers. A few highlights here and there, that's about it.
Then why are you still a fan? If you never thought they wrote good lyrics or are good song writers. Just curious.
Because there are several parts to music. If I wanted to hear them do spoken word poetry, I wouldn't be around any more. That's not the only aspect of songs.