I'm telling him his band needs another singer. @Andreina: Sorry if it came across that way, but it seemed like a point. ''All For Nothing'' and ''Wastelands'' were my two choices of Linkin Park trying to sound like the old days, in a more modern way, so I just used those two. My question was ''would you prefer more songs like the 50 we've gotten through the years or the two to try to achieve the interplay in different ways?''.
Well I don't see how LP doing a SOAD song(even with Daron on Guitar) makes it MUCH more unique than the other songs you just mentioned. I mean AFN has a Guitar solo - Which none of their old rap rock songs had. It also has guest vocals + call - respond vocals. Wastelands has some of the best rap verses Mike has written in ages(IMO of cause) and it actually isn't about "the pain he feels inside" + it has an instrumental breakdown(unlike most of their old rap rock material) + It has a change in chord progression in the last chorus. It's stupid putting other songs down - when you so easily can argue the opposite. With that said I really think Rebellion is a better song - but calling it more unique is debatable.
I think, it's not the question, if Mike should rap or sing, but rather how much he try to vary his style. I found his rap style on "Wastlands" or "Burn It Down" for example pretty unspectacular, so i would not be THAT excited of his output in the future. But when he would rap like in "Papercut", which is still his absolute best performance - imo - until now, then i would be always be excited of his future rap output. Besides of that, when he would stop rapping at the following records and would just sing 50 times in the same way, wouldn't you say the same thing about his singing like you did now about his raps? Like you've said, it's about to achieve the interplay in different ways. But this can also happen while he is rapping, when he would try more to vary his flow, speed etc. and try new things.
That's it. You think Papercut is his best performance. 14 years ago. The opening track of the debut album. So many that came after that didn't surpass it for you. Do you even feel he should keep trying when he can sing Godly?
Well, I'm glad I was able to spark more conversation than just everybody barrelling down on me with "Your opinion is dumb I hate you Blah~!". I admit I could have written the OP a lot better, and I was entirely expecting the fire-storm it initially got xD But this is a public forum, and I'm glad to see that you guys handled it better than some I've seen. On topic: I want to quickly jump back and try to make what I said earlier a little more clear. This album suffers from some terrible (See: Opinion) lyrics, and some fantastic ones! But it seems that the fantastic ones are in line with the songs that are more singing dominant, and the songs that incorporate more rapping seem to diverge into a cheesy, cocky, self-righteous mess. And while they have many interpretations, and I don't mean to dishonour any that you may have, but it seems that these songs are trying their absolute hardest to push that Xero attitude. What do I mean?... Err, I'm talking the Reading My Eyes / Stick N' Move sort of tone, that sort of generic Hip-Hop setup, self-praising and opponent bashing attitude that really makes me cringe, step back and say... "Wow, what a douchebag!". I'm not writing them off as inherently bad, as this is entirely my opinion. For what they are, they are written well enough, somewhat clever... I just can't groove with them. I know it seems that I place too much importance into lyrics, especially since this is Linkin Park we are talking about, but I feel like the latter half of the album shows that they are more than capable still, and I would have liked to see more rapping in the context of Rebellion and MTG, rather than the context of Wastelands or AFN. I also have to say, I miss the journey, and by that I mean the mental and emotional adventure Mike would take you through in some of his earlier material like With You and Forgotten. Those songs have always painted amazing moving pictures in my head, and I have been waiting forever to see him return to this sort of writing, but I don't remember an instance of it I've had from this band since.
I'm not gonna talk about opinions or how songs should be judged/what lyrics should be etc. I agree with most of the OP though. I don't like Mike's lyrics in KTTK, they basically sound like "this is the first song on the album, and btw the album is really heavy and I'm a good rapper". I think the song could be a lot more with different lyrics. All for Nothing is kinda annoying since it's about the same thing as KTTK, but the delivery is so powerful I don't mind it at all. I appreciated UIG a lot more when I found out the meaning of letting children go and such, I think that's pretty cool.
This is something which, while it was fine at the time, I'm glad the band have moved away from. Shinoda's rapping on "Midnight", "A Thousand Suns" and "Living Things" were always relevant to the songs as a whole from my perspective and the band were more obviously far more picky on those albums when it came to which songs should have rapping and which songs should not (though, with "Living Things", this is debateable). Over time, this has lead to Shinoda's rapping having a different role in terms of the band's songwriting and arrangements than it did a decade ago. On "The Hunting Party", it seems to have been used exclusively to add a new dimension of aggression to a song, even if that dimension sometimes makes zero sense. My own problem with this is that, again, most of the rap verses, while arguably passable in and of themselves, don't seem to have any thematic link to the hooks that they lead into, and this is especially notable on "Keys To The Kingdom".
Eh, if the melody and delivery are great but the lyrics are dog shit then I'm pressing the skip button. It's all important to me. If I don't want to hear lyrics I listen to instrumental bands (Scale the Summit, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Joe Satriani, Apocalyptica, Russian Circles, etc). I used to understand that attitude to music, but I don't anymore. 10 or 12 years back, when LP were my favourite thing I didn't care about lyrics, and I didn't relate to them. I just loved the sound. But growing up, listening to more and more bands, quality lyricism has become a large part of enjoying music [And to be clear, I'm not saying I need to relate to lyrics personally to think they're great (actually, I think that notion is absurd)], and that's the main reason LP are no longer my favourite band. For any steps forward they have just as many back-steps. To reiterate my point from above; you can have great music, but if the lyrics are terrible then it damages the entire song. These days I'm much more interested in lyrics that tell stories or explore ideas. That's a very defeatist way of looking at it. "Eh, why put any effort in, it'll only be criticised either way". Is it unreasonable to expect them to actually improve at their craft over time? I don't think it is. I mean, it's not like everything they write is absolute garbage or anything. They actually show moments of greatness here and there. Why can't the question of why they are so inconsistent be asked? Why is it, in a band that has TWO lyricists, the average of their combined output is just "average"? Why doesn't the "needle" push towards great more often? "Incredible", "Godly"? Really? I mean he has a really nice tone to his singing voice, but he's pretty weak on a technical level. Absolutely. As I mentioned earlier, back in the day I wasn't in it for the lyrics, but looking back it's why Hybrid Theory stands the test of time far better than Meteora. Along with being more varied structurally, HT's lyrics just painted more interesting pictures/stories. Meteora took something that was already fairly simple and streamlined & polished it to the point of it being simple-minded. HT stays fresher, while Meteora becomes rote. I'm the opposite. I already thought they were awful lyrics, but after finding out what it's about I see it as even more of a failure. That's because absolutely nothing of what it's about actually shows up in the lyrics, I never would have guessed it was about that. It's just a beaten-to-death cliché dusted off and delivered bluntly, barely dressed up in some vague-as-hell verses, no interesting spin put on it, no exploration of it, nothing, just slapped down cold in front of you.
Not just your problem. It's not just about "Keys". AFN, Wastelands & ALITS suffer from this too. Pepole can complain about how bad UIG lyrics are, but at least it have a purpose, while for example Wastelands dosen't. Also the most annoying thing about THP lyrics is that most of tracks have just 2 verses and instrumental bridge. The only exceptions are GATS & Rebellion. ALITS has 3 verses but, there is no chorus between V1 & V2, what makes it a bit diffrent from rest.
I didn't say that in the perspective of the band. I'm saying it because the band literally gets bashed for everything.
A million times, this. THP is almost devoid of Bridge lyrics (Which almost always become my favourite in a song), devoid of Ad Libs... The song structure is ridiculously boring. There's two verses and a chorus that gets screamed out into the ending of the song. That along with the bland song-writing makes the songs get bland really quickly.
How can you honestly think the MS parts in ALITS have nothing to do with the overall theme of the song/hook.....?
Normally I would agree but the instrumentals in The Hunting Party are finally compelling enough to stand on their own ground. In my opinion the album finally allowed the band to rely on an element other than vocals to lead a song. Not to mention most of the 'bridges' open into guitar solos where a vocal line would just drown the solo out.
I think that even if some songs have the same structure, they have different things that make them unique, like KTTK and ALITS. Also, I don't know what is the problem with having the same song structure, but I guess that is your opinion.
Am I the only one that doesn't complain about anything Linkin Park does? I have said I don't like The Messenger before, but I'm not complaining about it existing, I'm just stating that I don't like it. The same as WTCFM's outro. And I used to hate War, but I find it can actually be fun to listen to as it is obviously the heaviest song on the album. I could compare it to Given Up and I'd say Given Up was way better, but that would be going off topic, and we don't want to do that do we?
From memory, you were basically wishing for sweet, sweet death so that you wouldn't have to live in a world where the "When They Come For Me" outro exists. You can't take the higher ground by claiming to be someone who "doesn't complain about anything Linkin Park does".
Plus most of the members here write something that could be considered constructive criticism, not complaining.
Besides songs like Hands Held High, you have to realize that when Mike raps, it's pretty much always about stuff like how cool he is. That's just what he does. If you ignored his lyrics and focused on the rest, you would have a more accurate picture of what a song is about.
But, then songs like Step Up or When They Come For Me have a point other than just "I'm so cool". Honestly, I think the raps are connected with Chester's parts but since the songs have two people working on them with different ideas, who also make it vague so it is relatable, its impossible on certain songs to figure out.