Linkin Park singles poll

yeah that was the one that caused me to go from disliking the band to "well, maybe they have some good ideas"

I remember hearing singles from Minutes to Midnight and 1000 Suns later on and thinking they were really quite good, though I imagine many of their fans must've felt let down. always meant to get those albums eventually....

Part of the genius of Linkin Park is that, through their accessibility, they ended up speaking to people who may have been put off by relatively less accessible Korn and Slipknot, and may even have acted as a gateway to those bands.

The slickness of their productions were derided by some, particularly by the "keep it real" brigade... but it's kinda like Def Leppard's Hysteria... the slickness is part of the point!

They also, unusually for a metal band, had really great pop instincts and understood the craft of pop - look at their first two records, everything is short and snappy! One could say that Hybrid Theory was an incredibly calculated record... and of course it was! But those Michael Jackson blockbusters like Thriller were calculated in the same way, and the reason they work is because they knew what they were doing. If everyone could do it, everyone would be doing it.

I remember Bennington getting a lot of stick from metal purists back in the day, but looking back what was he meant to do? Pretend he couldn't sing?

I also remember people saying it was all fake anger/fake depression etc. etc. and, well...

Turrican otm

otm

I'm listening to Meteora now and you can pretty much hear the effort that went into its production - and I'd be willing to bet they threw out far more material than what features on the record, and the album is the absolute best of everything they could have come up with at the time.

I've always liked the big Linkin Park singles; I've also always liked Chester's voice. RIP

Wait, what? Wow. I saw them perform once or twice, were always solid.

I never had any time for LP either, but I saw Chester singing a version of Mountain Song (on Youtube) with the celeb covers band Camp Freddy and he sang it as perfectly as a shiny new penny, and it's not a very easy song, but he did it with pretty much every nuance laid out, and I realised that he probably had exceptional range and tonality. So I looked a couple of interviews and was heartened to see he was a genuinely nice man too. So sad.

boy Faint is a great song.

Seeing way too many people couch their posts or thoughts with "not that I care about their music anymore" or "before I knew what 'good music' was..." Linkin Park were good. There is no such thing as a guilty pleasure.

Petty squabbles over sad news...

I cared about them when I was 12 and yes, I moved on to other stuff only to remember right now that they had some pretty good songs here and there.

but yeah anyone taking this opportunity to remind the world they are above nu-metal can go to hell.

yeah I mean the "I wasn't into their music" or "although I hated their music" lead-ins today are gross and unnecessary. Nobody cares if you did or didn't like their music. Do you have to add that stupid caveat to offer condolences? Are people that fragile that they have to make sure, that people are also clear that they don't like "weak-assed music" and aren't a "poser"?

especially considering how the music resonated with some people who suffered of depression and abuse...

i have just listened to 1000 suns
such a wonderful album.
i cried a lot.

man I decided to listen to his bit on Slow Ya Roll again and man, the lyrics "this can't be life we're livin/cos I don't wanna live no more", eerie af. powerful vocal on the track tho

https://youtu.be/Dgn3hUwFVHM?t=2m5s

huh never knew they covered this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl0bSmoZynk

it's quite good!

yeah I mean the "I wasn't into their music" or "although I hated their music" lead-ins today are gross and unnecessary. Nobody cares if you did or didn't like their music. Do you have to add that stupid caveat to offer condolences? Are people that fragile that they have to make sure, that people are also clear that they don't like "weak-assed music" and aren't a "poser"?

I just had a guy come into the store and my coworker and I were talking about it and this guy hadn't heard. Reaction:

"WHAAAAAAT???!!! ...not that I cared AT ALL about Linkin Park's music................. you know what's interesting though?..." and then he went on this monologue about how he watched a 1000 suns documentary and was really into it and everything. Fuck off dude

a friend of one of my besties posted a snarky "ehh they sucked but I guess it's sad" post and my friend exploded on him cos he apparently has done nothing but "woe is me" post every day and did a GoFundMe recently for people to give him money so he can live in Germany full-time....

I always liked "Papercut"

Yeah, pretty much everyone OTM regarding people trying to score cool points right now. It's disgusting.

Papercut bangs. Great album opener.

Having said that, I haven't forgotten about flappy bird's comments when George Michael passed away, so...

Think yeve done enough of what ye think of other people's wrong reactions now.

RIP. Great vocalist. Good at what he did, seemed a decent guy.

'Breaking the Habit' sounds so fucking good to me right now.

Nobody cares if you did or didn't like their music.

so people who are gushing about how much Linkin Park's music meant to them are equally in the wrong, do I have this right?

guys

no, what I meant was "hey if you didn't like their music, fine, but why do you need to bring that up?" - should have just said "nobody cares if you didn't like their music"

i think its ok to express your honest reaction about their music lol

would argue its much better than fake performative grieving

this exact conversation happens on ilm every time a musician dies lol

fake performative grieving?

like nobody says you have to have an opinion at all, just sayin if you're going to share one, what is the benefit of saying "WELL Y'KNOW I DIDN'T *REALLY* LIKE DUDE'S MUSIC, but REST IN PEACE Chester" vs "Rest in peace, Chester"

this exact conversation happens on ilm every time a musician dies lol

and your point ?

gotta love the lol

so anyway....

fake performative grieving?

― Neanderthal, Thursday, July 20, 2017 5:28 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

theres a total nostalgia buzz effect not so much on ilx per se but def in the wider social media world. i'd rather someone say, "you know I wasn't that big a fan of the group at the time, i was slightly too old to take it seriously but I did love 'faint' and i think their stuff has aged well" (fwiw this is me) than the aimless 'linkin park basically invented music for me' kind of shit that we know wasn't true ... i remember how "thoughtful ppl" at the time perceived this band, they were getting big when i was like 19-20 years old. It was seen as suburban trash culture by older ppl and theres a level of disingenuousness to ppl's performed fandom

it also just annoys me bc of the blatant hypocrisy of it w/r/t/ parallel artists today, like this whole tweet thread could as easily be about xxxtentacion but ppl bandwagon these kinds of things

for 'social lift'

for a broader/more obviously cynical example of what i'm talking about look at how this publication tweeted about it despite...never having covered the band previously. on the level of 'personal brands' ppl replicate this dynamic, its pretty widespread

i saw linkin park support deftones (the acceptable face of nu-metal) in one of those real mismatched things where between the booking of the tour and the show the support band eclipses the headliner in popularity. the linkin park performance was good and very polished (and i didn't enjoy it at all), though it was clear there were pre-recorded elements being used, including vocals. contrasted quite a bit with deftones who i enjoyed but who were in full chino coke-bloat stage and chino's pants fell down during a song where he was playing guitar and he didn't pick them up for about 30 seconds

a 41 year old person with 6 kids killing themselves is really sad

i'd rather someone say, "you know I wasn't that big a fan of the group at the time, i was slightly too old to take it seriously but I did love 'faint' and i think their stuff has aged well" (fwiw this is me) than the aimless 'linkin park basically invented music for me' kind of shit that we know wasn't true ...

Otm. And to take it a step further: I'm so tired of the mourning police demanding cred to back up grief or denouncing a spontaneous reaction to something as fucked up as a suicide. My sole encounter with Linkin Park can be summed up as being wasted on bennies at a huge festival hearing them soundtrack a personal nightmare in the background, face down in fresh mowed grass. How I wished they'd stopped playing... Never bought a record of theirs and avoided them like the plague after that. Hardly a loving memory. But fuck those who imply one can't express sadness about a life ending the way his did, and fuck those 'measuring' a response by supposed fandom. I think we can all agree this is a tragedy.

Tl;dr: Fuck the internet and fuck people.

Yep

I don't think outsiders are hoping on this particular bandwagon because of Linkin Park - which are a massively popular band with a huge fanbase either way - but because of the suicide angle. Every time a celebrity offs him/herself it automatically awakens some sort of empathy and disbelief on the media.

And while several people here are sticking to the time-honoured ILM tradition of trying their hardest to make this thread go south as quickly as possible, I'll get back to the music... I gave both Hybrid Theory and Meteora a good listen earlier and they still hold up incredibly well. These guys put a hell of a lot of thought into the presentation of everything.

i was listening to hybrid theory in the car when i picked up D from camp and first she said she didn't like the music and wanted me to turn it off and when i refused she decided that she didn't like music at all so i guess linkin park ruined music for her. (don't worry it's probably more that she was annoyed i was listening to the music and not her opinions of her bunkmates.)

xpost:

Like, sonically these albums still sound great... I'll confess to finding myself paying more attention to the lyrics this go-round than I've ever done before. But, the thing is, in the early '00s there was so much nu-metal around that it was all too easy to tune out the lyrics after a while.

Credit to whoever handles LP's social media -- the photo posts were all they needed, and they're good choices.