Pop music could never have the lyricism and unconventional song structure that A Thousand Suns has. Simple as that.
The long intros and all the steady building are exactly the reason why they aren't really radio-friendly. You answered your own question.
Hahaha I love the responses to my thing in here. This album isn't Dark Side Of The Moon. Half of the opening instrumentals are looped with very little addition. It's like if you loop the intro to Given Up (guitar riff) for another 16 chords and have a faint new sound in the background, and the song ends up being around 3:30-3:40 as opposed to what you are really getting. Stretching out the opening of songs isn't "oh it's progressive and you like pop" it's cheating the fans with the track lengths. I love this album so much, don't get me wrong, but if you are going to back up a statement, do it right. Another example, what if I had Leave Out All The Rest, looped the intro before the guitars into another 16 chords and had humming or a choir, and the song was 4:00. It isn't building up alot, it's stretching out a song. In addition to this, Waiting For The End has a short intro and works just fine. It's also really proggy too. Edit : If stretching and looping songs is really make tracks look more progressive than they are, than call me stupid. I know these songs are progressive, but, that dosen't mean outstretched intros which could be shortned by 30 seconds add on to the concept.
The band never said the album was progressive. I would agree that it is a "Bit proggy" in a few instances (such as Blackout). And who cares how long the track lengths are? You say you love the album, so why complain? About the pop thing, Minus nailed it. Although I do think Mike's rapping in WFTE sounds "poppish" which is fine with me.
Alright, alright! So it's not meant a "concept album", well that changes everything, the music is great and all. Well there seem to be some very basic things to clear up here but I gonna open a new thread for that.
My complaint was everyone is like "zomgz each track is liek 4 minutes haha hybird theory you is 12 tracks 36 minutes get pwned" like seriously? Half of the music is build-up, and the interludes should serve that purpose. And if the album isn't progressive, that debunks the statements made by people above. Minus did nail the other part though.
Dude, basically every song that is longer than 4 minutes has stretching in it somewhere. I don't get why you're even bringing this up. No song on A Thousand Suns felt like it was dragging out any particular part, so it obv wasn't stretching just for stretching's sake. There are a number of great rock bands that do the same thing, though their songs tend to be 6+ minutes.
I hate to say it, but all things considered, this album is still pretty pop. It's more on the outer fringe of pop, really. I mean shit, even the White Album was more experimental than this, and it came out more than 40 years ago. On that note, I'd like to back up that claim by defining pop as the repertoire of music considered "accessible" by the mainstream cultural canon. So while albums such as Dark Side of the Moon, Magical Mystery Tour, and A Thousand Suns may be characterized by music that knowingly deviates from popular music form, they are a part of pop because they have been (or in the case of ATS, may or may not be) accepted into the fold of accessible mainstream culture. Also, how is this album at all proggy? I can see it in the sense of more extensive use of keyboard-based instruments, but beyond that there's nothing prog about anything LP has ever done and likely will ever do.
Heh, it's funny, 'cause not a whole lot was out 40 years ago. Great argument. So of course it's more experimental in that context. Who are you to define pop as simply just what gets out into the mainstream? Give me a break. Pop is a genre, not a popularity contest.
If I were you and have your way of thinking. I would say that HT and M are both POP, yeah MTM and ATS are included so LP is a pop band.
Even today The Wihite Album would be more experimental than ATS. It's true, they use more synthesizer that makes it sound more floating what some people like to refer to as more proggy. Tell me when I overestimate Linkin Park but several songs on ATS seem evened out to a mainstream accessible form. Although other songs are not radio-friendly they still feel pushed into that direction as far as possible.
ATS isn't a step forward like MTM; its more of a leap forward to me. Nothing revolutionary, but certainly much more than a subtle, uncomfortable movement that was MTM (can't really blame them for that, it was a uncertain album after a long hiatus).
I never said it wasn't revolutionary. And yes, Linkin Park is in some sense a pop band. If the claim sounds weird, read the magazine Popular Music or some of Peter Manuel's work.