Top 5 Worst Decisions In LP's career

[JZLP-Benningstrong]

Not in particular order

 

1) Live In Texas

WHY NOT A DVD OF THEIR OWN SUPER SUCCESSFUL P:R TOUR? Specially the 2004 edition. 

 

2) Not releasing APFMH as a single

 

3) Hiring producers and songwriters to work on OML, honestly it sounds as a Brad & Mike side project. 

 

4)  Stopping the DSP releases 

 

5) Not working with Jay Z once again after their very successful team up 

 

[Astat]

In no particular order:

 

1. Releasing Live in Texas as a DVD instead of any of their headlining tours during the Meteora era. Yeah it was the first time they played stadiums, but that really didn't mean much when they were only half full when LP (the third band out of five on the bill) took the stage.

 

*BONUS: The "cutting 5 songs from the Live in Texas CD tracklisting and releasing them as the LPU 3 CD" debacle was downright insulting to their fan club.

 

2. Doing Hybrid Theory in its entirety as a one-off at Download Festival instead of the originally-planned Hybrid Theory-themed club tour (and by extension, not playing several songs from HT more than once on the THP cycle, even though they spent significant time rehearsing them).

 

3. Cutting the Living Things touring cycle so short.

 

4. Discontinuing the DSP program/not bothering to go back and release shows that they had previously recorded (stuff like Wantagh 2007 when they worked things out to release the show from the same venue in 2008, for example).

 

*BONUS: Running a "what was your favorite song from Projekt Revolution" poll on LP.com without telling anyone what they intended to use that information for, and then using the top 10 results for the LPU 7 CD, which consisted entirely of material pulled from DSPs that everyone already exchanged online at a time when the band encouraged it...that was an even bigger insult to the LPU than the LPU 3 situation. BTW, I correctly predicted what the poll was being used for the same day it went up, and nobody believed me...

 

5. Rebooting the LP.com/LPU community every few years with different hosting companies after bailing on Sparkart in 2009. Even to this day, their online community has never recovered to being anything close to what it was during the pre-2009 era.

Edited April 26, 2020 by Astat

[RYG4R]

1. No Meteora Remixes

 

2. Not bringing David Campbell post-MTM era for strings.

 

3. the 2 step backwards mentality in LIVING THINGS especially coming after from their best album, A Thousand Suns. 

 

4. Putting UIG in The Hunting Party.

 

5. not releasing CASTLE OF GLASS (LINKIN PARK REMIX). - the version that appeared in Australia /NZ Tour 2013 LPTV.

 

6. By releasing only 10 songs for OML.

[hahninator]

I feel like the Live in Texas idea wasn't bad. They didn't know in summer 2003 they were going to do a summer 2004 tour probably. They knew they were going to an arena tour that winter, though. Those shows were epic but I do like the SS03 sets a lot. That's the only stadium tour they've ever done in the USA. The thing is just so popular I'd have a hard time imagining them not doing it lol

 

Astat has some good ones.

 

Hybrid Theory in full only one time - at Download 2014 - when Chester went on to say directly afterward how he hates playing when the sun is still up, etc... ouch lol. The songs didn't stick around afterward (or get warmed up on tour beforehand). The club tour idea was a much, much better idea. However, who knows, maybe they were thinking about doing that in 2020 at one point. But the 2014 thing was a big missed opportunity to celebrate Hybrid Theory in a bigger way. I remember Chester saying he wanted some of the HT rarer songs to get played on the Carnivores Tour... I guess he got overruled by the band.

 

DSP thing definitely sucks since it got cut in 2013 and I felt like it was never marketed correctly or strongly. At least give one show a year to the LPU or something. Or a "best of THP Tour" to the LPU. Lots of missed opportunities. I wouldn't call it a top 5 mistake the band has ever done, though. The LPU CD doesn't bother me much either because we have gotten so many demos and songs through the LPU that we wouldn't have gotten otherwise. They release way more than any other band I've seen except Metallica (but Met is doing the album box sets).

 

The LPU/LP community being disbanded several times was disappointing, sure. Not a top 5 mistake to me either though. Well hell, it could be lol

 

It's hard for me to think of the biggest mistakes they've ever done if I don't know the other side of it and what could have happened / what ideas were proposed at certain times that weren't used.

 

How about this for one? Linkin Park didn't go out on the Eminem and 50 Cent stadium tour in summer 2005 that was proposed. Could have had Jay-Z sit in at some of the shows for more Collision Course performances. https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/64383/eminem-50-linkin-park-eyeing-tour Maybe if the LP vs WBR problem didn't happen which pretty much helped influence Mike to do Fort Minor... we could have seen something like that. But Rising Tied is pretty great.

 

Whatever happened with Michael Bay and Transformers with Until It's Gone was a mess. But one song doesn't make it a top 5 bad decision to me, it's just one really bad song lol

 

Living Things tour being so short was baffling to me too. They got to South Africa but Europe missed out big time and the USA needed a second run.

 

[Zangief]

1. Using guest song writers on One More Light. I liked when the entire band wrote an album together, without any outside influence aside from a producer (Don Gilmore, Rick Rubin). I feel like Mike is already such a great song writer that they don’t need other song writers to help them. It made the album feel almost not like Linkin Park for me and I feel like it kind of felt more like a Mike and Brad solo effort like it’s been said above. There are some good songs on the album such as Nobody Can Save Me, but still. I can’t help but feel that they kind of lost their identity with this album because of it and I don’t think any of them obviously could have ever known things would fall apart for the time being after it.

 

2. Not making up any shows from the cancelled 2015 U.S. Tour. Fans still talk about this to this day on social media for the band. They were going to play a ton of places that they hadn’t played in forever or ever before in the U.S. A lot of fans didn’t think that Carnivores was the best tour and this tour had some great opening acts, not to mention a very good sounding show from the band judging by the first 2 shows of the tour, especially Orlando. I know that Chester’s broken ankle forced them to cancel, which is understandable, but they could have made an effort to at least make up a handful of shows, if not the whole tour. They had time off in between in 2015 and later in 2015, not to mention all of 2016, I know they started writing a new album but they could have made up a few shows in 2015 at least. I’m sure fans would have attended. Chester doing that STP tour a few months after the cancellation while not healed yet kind of added fuel to the fire too. When Dave Grohl broke his leg once, he told the fans he would make it up immediately, all the cancelled dates, and he did. I’m not going to say Chester could have even sang from a chair on stage for some of the tour after the surgery because obviously he was in severe pain and it wouldn’t be ideal to travel like that either but I feel like they could have figured something out after. They didn’t have too hectic of a schedule in 2015.

 

3. Putting UIG on THP. The song was rejected by Michael Bay for Transformers 4 and the band threw it on THP afterwards. I am not a fan of this song and I don’t think it fit the THP album at all. I think a different song could have been added instead, I’m sure they had a few at least. It ruins the flow of the album and the sound and lyrical content just don’t fit with the other songs for me. Mike even at one point said that they used a drop in the song, something they learned from Steve Aoki. The song feels very much like Living Things or Recharged era to me, which is maybe why it doesn’t fit in terms of sound for me. Makes sense. 
 

4. I’ll get some flack for this one but I’m gonna say it. LPU8. Mmm...Cookies. Fans nowadays love the thing. In 2008, many people hated it. Some even considered it a slap in the face, Mike even addressed it. I just don’t think it was the right idea for them to release that and only that for the LPU8 CD. As much as fans hated the old 6 song format of a few live tracks, a few rare tracks, I think if they did it smart they could have made some cool stuff still. Some rare live tracks from 2008 such as RME, etc. We Made It. Hunger Strike, The Outsider, I know those aren’t LP and it would be hard to get licensing but idk. Maybe a MTM demo or two, complete ones. They shot themselves in the foot because with LPU9 they felt bad and gave us demos finally. And I think they felt obligated to give us demos every time after even if maybe they didn’t want to, 10 or more for each. The old format was fine to me. I think the fanbase kind of selfishly forced them into giving us demos every time because of it. And after the DSP’s stopped, it would have been nice to get some live stuff if they had continued the old format.

 

5. Stopping the DSP’s and/or not releasing old shows. I always found it strange that they stopped the DSP’s in the middle of a touring cycle. Why not wait until after the LT touring cycle was done in 2013 at least? Fans have pined over this for years after. And 2013-2017 shows would have been amazing to have as DSP’s. Surely it couldn’t have costed that much to have Pooch mix them and host them. Just because Warner didn’t make tons off of it anymore doesn’t mean some fans didn’t still buy them. Maybe it’s because fans just downloaded and shared them only but idk. Old shows that they had in the vault would have been great to release too for a price. They’re old shows so it’s not like demos the band can revisit or something. They have to have at least some judging by the live tracks released on singles pre 2007. Those would even be fine. Also the first half of 2007 I think was recorded and so wasn’t the European summer tour in 2008, they could have found a way to give us those years later.

Edited April 26, 2020 by Zangief

[michalangelo]

14 hours ago, Astat said:

In no particular order:

 

1. Releasing Live in Texas as a DVD instead of any of their headlining tours during the Meteora era. Yeah it was the first time they played stadiums, but that really didn't mean much when they were only half full when LP (the third band out of five on the bill) took the stage.

 

*BONUS: The "cutting 5 songs from the Live in Texas CD tracklisting and releasing them as the LPU 3 CD" debacle was downright insulting to their fan club.

 

2. Doing Hybrid Theory in its entirety as a one-off at Download Festival instead of the originally-planned Hybrid Theory-themed club tour (and by extension, not playing several songs from HT more than once on the THP cycle, even though they spent significant time rehearsing them).

 

3. Cutting the Living Things touring cycle so short.

 

4. Discontinuing the DSP program/not bothering to go back and release shows that they had previously recorded (stuff like Wantagh 2007 when they worked things out to release the show from the same venue in 2008, for example).

 

*BONUS: Running a "what was your favorite song from Projekt Revolution" poll on LP.com without telling anyone what they intended to use that information for, and then using the top 10 results for the LPU 7 CD, which consisted entirely of material pulled from DSPs that everyone already exchanged online at a time when the band encouraged it...that was an even bigger insult to the LPU than the LPU 3 situation. BTW, I correctly predicted what the poll was being used for the same day it went up, and nobody believed me...

 

5. Rebooting the LP.com/LPU community every few years with different hosting companies after bailing on Sparkart in 2009. Even to this day, their online community has never recovered to being anything close to what it was during the pre-2009 era.

Making this thread pages even bigger rotfl

 

1. I have purchased my first copy of LiT in Switzerland in 2004 (good times) and believe it or not it stuck with me for a long time. Besides everything that you guys are saying here about choosing this one for a DVD, the worst thing imho was cutting some songs off the CD (then throwing the cut-outs on LPU CD wtf? Some would say it was obvious cash grab, easiest way possible since they already had stuff recorded and mixed) and of course censoring the whole thing like just Rate it and get over with fucks and shits here and there, no big deal.

 

2. Of course LP/JZ, this had so much potential, imagine a WORLD tour KoRn, LP, Jay-Z and few other bands along. CC album has the lowest count of songs played live i think.

 

3. DSP program -> all has been already said here, not to mention our efforts to get all of them! (this was by far the best initiative LP fans could do back then) the prices were OK, and LP surely could make a stable profit off these throughout the years. Little do we/you know, as far as I remember, discontinuing the program was forced by: a) Small amount of people buying them, b) royalities that had to be paid in order to sell the DSPs c) other stuff, like venue agreements to record and sell. These are the things I sure remember that we discussed and some of them have been confirmed (especially the purchases numbers) Like you guys said, one of the best ideas for a band to deliver to fans and one of the worst advertised things LP did.

 

4. Tour-wise I think I can agree with what Astat said about HT live and LT live. HT should have had a smaller club tour around the globe, while LT should have had more concerts. I don't want to start the stupid topic "2345677 concerts in Germany while other countries got 1 or none" here because we all know how it works, right?

 

5. Last but not least the thing that always pissed me off, the websites. Like I don't get it, if something looks good, works good, and people are generally happy about how it all fits, why do you have to change things 180 degrees? Starting on LPU ending on LP.com, 2000-2003ish I believe were the years all worked enough good to leave it that way (especially lp.com forums and of course LPU forums too) Then MTM happened with all the fancy websites called LPNetwork nobody really cared about...then every other stuff that sucked too. The only time lp.com had some potential to look both cool and be functional was 2010 but of course they had to screw it up by putting too many shit on the main page..

 

The worst thing was always the total site swap (what was a bit cool sometimes, the excitement and stuff but only for a split sec) and later on the developers swap which was a total disaster over the years...Imho better way was to continue LPU 1,2,3,4 main page designs and just changing the themes of the new year than a total page swap which occured during lpu7 i think and later on. This applies to forums too.

[JZLP-Benningstrong]

Other bad decisions:

 

-Very short studio albums, a 15 songs album wouldn't hurt anybody (not counting interludes) 

 

-Dropping Reading My Eyes in Road To Revolution 

 

-M Shadows singing Burn It Down? This man needed some heavy shit

 

-Dropping Across The Line

[Broman]

1. Releasing Hybrid Theory

2. Releasing Meteora

3. Releasing MTM

4. Releasing ATS

5. Releasing LT

 

next time expand it to top 7 smh

 

 

/s

[Justin]

1. Live in Texas. DVD should have been a full show (not 2 shows edited together), and ideally they would have held off on a DVD until it was a show they headlined.

 

Also I've always been irritated by Live in Texas having multiple songs removed from it, RTR having 3 songs locked as bonus content, and CC's full DVD performance not including the first songs of the set. They seem to have this weird habit of not just presenting a full, uncut show.

 

2. Not making an original song with Jay-Z. We know that the issue wouldn't have been that there was no interest from Jay. He produced TRT and performed a few times with LP in the years following CC. An original song with Jay-Z would have been way bigger than a Busta Rhymes collaboration.

 

3. Going through that period of time where they shortened a bunch of songs to fit everything in. It detracted from the overall quality of those shows. It just wasn't needed.

 

4. Not playing one show for the entire year of 2016, for multiple reasons and not all of them related to music.

 

5. The choice to bring in outside songwriters for OML. I understand wanting to experiment with their songwriting, but overall I would have to say the experiment that was OML, while not a bad album, was a miss. It was short and it wasn't particularly strong lyrically or musically. There's also the issue of certain songs, like Heavy, being obvious attempts by LP to keep up with the times and make poppier music. It felt forced, and the Kiiara feature felt like it happened because she's a current pop artist who revealed herself to be an LP fan. The strongest songs on OML are the ones either written by the least amount of writers (SFN) or the ones that were the most inspired and personal (the title track).

Edited April 26, 2020 by Justin

[RYG4R]

5 hours ago, Justin said:

 

5. The choice to bring in outside songwriters for OML. I understand wanting to experiment with their songwriting, but overall I would have to say the experiment that was OML, while not a bad album, was a miss. It was short and it wasn't particularly strong lyrically or musically. There's also the issue of certain songs, like Heavy, being obvious attempts by LP to keep up with the times and make poppier music. It felt forced, and the Kiiara feature felt like it happened because she's a current pop artist who revealed herself to be an LP fan. The strongest songs on OML are the ones either written by the least amount of writers (SFN) or the ones that were the most inspired and personal (the title track).

 

 

Well, Nobody Can Save Me and Invisible are decent tracks too. 

[Diaux]

Pretty much everything is already posted but i gonna give my 2 cents on this

 

1) Recharged (Yeah is like a meme now, but this was totally unnecessary. The remixes aren't that great expect for the COG and Victimized one by Mike)

 

2) Dropping Reading My Eyes from the setlist of RTR (I know JZE said before but still. It was the perfect opportunity to make that song more recognizable for the more casual fans, and is my favorite song by the band so that really fucked my up)

 

3) No recordings of some of the rare songs from 03'/04' tours (Like Nobody's Listening with the Standing in the Middle verse, HTF or the Figure 09 to FTI with the Blood Anger Suffering transition)

 

4) Release only censored version of songs (Glad that stopped for MTM)

Edited April 27, 2020 by Diaux

[lpplus]

You guys already said everything but here is three more:

 

1- Do you guys remember the promotion for this show: https://lplive.net/shows/2013/20130803

Like we were all prepared for (at least) RME full thing but all we get was this: Bleed It Out (Ext. Bridge w/ Reading My Eyes Verse 1; Ext. Outro)

 

2- Releasing the shows we already watched on TV as official DVDs like ATS+, LT+,etc. We have Madrid 2010 show in feed quality ( a 20 F*CKING GB video). I mean didn't you guys have other shows that filmed proshot under your pillows?!

 

3- (This on is kinda a personal opinion) Changing completely the direction of their 4th album. According to demos we heard from that era that album would be really heavy. I like ATS a lot btw and I'm not saying they shouldn't released ATS

[Subs]

Honestly, I was there for HT live at download 2014 so its a non issue to me 😀

 

 - Big one is not playing more of THP live, I would have lost my shit if I heard KTK live

 

 - Recharged album, honestly I barely count it as an official release what a load of junk

 

- Having in between on MTM and not any of the other awesome b-sides

 

- Not releasing many b-sides in general

 

I'm just being picky now 😄

 

[hahninator]

16 hours ago, JZLP said:

Other bad decisions:

 

-Very short studio albums, a 15 songs album wouldn't hurt anybody (not counting interludes) 

 

-Dropping Reading My Eyes in Road To Revolution 

 

-M Shadows singing Burn It Down? This man needed some heavy shit

 

-Dropping Across The Line

 

Did you miss Faint? M Shadows sang Faint too.

 

I would have had no issue with the RTR set if they had kept RME around for PR08 for the DSPs, or released some Europe 2008 DSPs. That was a really cool thing they did to play a Xero song live and besides LPU6, they missed a lot of opportunities to showcase that. The RME on LPU6 is epic.

 

Across the Line is a tremendous song and probably my favorite non-album song in their catalogue.

 

15 hours ago, Justin said:

1. Live in Texas. DVD should have been a full show (not 2 shows edited together), and ideally they would have held off on a DVD until it was a show they headlined.

 

Also I've always been irritated by Live in Texas having multiple songs removed from it, RTR having 3 songs locked as bonus content, and CC's full DVD performance not including the first songs of the set. They seem to have this weird habit of not just presenting a full, uncut show.

 

2. Not making an original song with Jay-Z. We know that the issue wouldn't have been that there was no interest from Jay. He produced TRT and performed a few times with LP in the years following CC. An original song with Jay-Z would have been way bigger than a Busta Rhymes collaboration.

 

3. Going through that period of time where they shortened a bunch of songs to fit everything in. It detracted from the overall quality of those shows. It just wasn't needed.

 

4. Not playing one show for the entire year of 2016, for multiple reasons and not all of them related to music.

 

5. The choice to bring in outside songwriters for OML. I understand wanting to experiment with their songwriting, but overall I would have to say the experiment that was OML, while not a bad album, was a miss. It was short and it wasn't particularly strong lyrically or musically. There's also the issue of certain songs, like Heavy, being obvious attempts by LP to keep up with the times and make poppier music. It felt forced, and the Kiiara feature felt like it happened because she's a current pop artist who revealed herself to be an LP fan. The strongest songs on OML are the ones either written by the least amount of writers (SFN) or the ones that were the most inspired and personal (the title track).

 

The Jay-Z thing... he had them turn all the computers off, put phones up, turn cameras off, etc and went in to the booth and dropped a legendary freestyle at the end of the Collision Course sessions. Would have been cool to have had that as a bonus with the album or something... add LP to it and make it a track. Anyway my point is Jay-Z didn't want to do it at that time. In 2005 Mike said he didn't have him on TRT because he respected Jay-s retirement. I think their relationship wasn't that great when Jay returned to music. Just a missed opportunity in 2004 like you said.

 

2016 - OML was on track for a second half 2016 release aka LP would have toured, but of course Chester had to go to rehab... no one can control that unfortunately. I'm sure LP never intended to take the full year off.

[bloodbath]

On 4/27/2020 at 6:29 AM, lpplus said:

You guys already said everything but here is three more:

2- Releasing the shows we already watched on TV as official DVDs like ATS+, LT+,etc. We have Madrid 2010 show in feed quality ( a 20 F*CKING GB video). I mean didn't you guys have other shows that filmed proshot under your pillows?!

You know what was even worst? When they released some of the shows without the missing songs, f.e. the monterrey and the Berlin 2012 shows. 

 

I have a theory about the ommited songs from Live in Texas. You know, back in 2003 downloading music was already a big deal, BUT DVDs not so much (I mean, there was screeners and all that, but I'm talking about DVD Fulls). LP weren't the only ones doing that. The labels thought "Well, if you want to hear the FULL show, you have to buy the DVD! and we know that you can't download it 'cos it's too big and your download speed it's too shitty". Of course they were wrong and years later, if you wanna to sell a live DVD, you have to offer extras, like the full audio on CD

[Vinescence]

I would't say it's top 5, but that A Line in the Sand (Live) release a few years back. I mean, the idea was super cool, but the actual quality of the track is really bad.

 

Also, Guilty All The Same music video

[Ninja]

6 hours ago, Vinescence said:

I would't say it's top 5, but that A Line in the Sand (Live) release a few years back. I mean, the idea was super cool, but the actual quality of the track is really bad.

 

Also, Guilty All The Same music video

The quality of that was pure ass. Idk why. Wouldn’t they want an officially released live track to actually sound good? Plus virtually every other performance of the song was better than the one they chose. Brad didn’t even play at that show. Why didn’t they choose a performance of the song from Europe? Berlin one comes to mind as a great one, same as the Italy one. So many. Would have been one of my favorite live tracks ever released by the band if they did a good release for the song.

 

The GATS video was horrible too. A shameless shill for that Project Spark thing that never ended up being anything. Why waste a music video for your lead single for that? THP had so many problems, the whole cycle. It is one of their best albums but a few sloppy choices on the album and the entire cycle was chaotic and a mess. The way they handled that cycle was a mistake. 

[Astat]

4 hours ago, Ninja said:

The quality of that was pure ass. Idk why. Wouldn’t they want an officially released live track to actually sound good? Plus virtually every other performance of the song was better than the one they chose. Brad didn’t even play at that show. Why didn’t they choose a performance of the song from Europe? Berlin one comes to mind as a great one, same as the Italy one. So many. Would have been one of my favorite live tracks ever released by the band if they did a good release for the song.

 

The GATS video was horrible too. A shameless shill for that Project Spark thing that never ended up being anything. Why waste a music video for your lead single for that? THP had so many problems, the whole cycle. It is one of their best albums but a few sloppy choices on the album and the entire cycle was chaotic and a mess. The way they handled that cycle was a mistake. 

 

https://imgur.com/a/C1tMeV4

 

Hi Geki!

[JZLP-Benningstrong]

39 minutes ago, Astat said:

 

https://imgur.com/a/C1tMeV4

 

Hi Geki!i

 

 

Ninja or Zangief is Geki

[GlassCastles]

32 minutes ago, JZLP said:

Ninja or Zangief is Geki

(spoiler it's both lol)

[Soeffingnaive92]

 

1. Not shooting a proper MV for Rebellion;

2. OML shortened to just 10 songs and not a "standard" 12 songs album

3. Recharged not being an EP with just the remixes by the band;

4. Not releasing IMR as a single off LT

5. LITE music video 

Edited June 28, 2020 by PurpleFlinstoneVitamins92

[mrfox]

01 basically no rarities for die hard fans at shows/a lot singles at shows/not rotating setlists much

02 poppy sounding one more light (fucking chipmunks!)

03 stoping dsp program

04 GATS as the first single

05 Heavy as the first single

 

 

[Soeffingnaive92]

1 hour ago, mrfox said:

01 basically no rarities for die hard fans at shows/a lot singles at shows/not rotating setlists much

02 poppy sounding one more light (fucking chipmunks!)

03 stoping dsp program

04 GATS as the first single

05 Heavy as the first single

 

 

Curious, what would've been your pick as 1st single for OML ? 

[KeysToTheLinkinPark]

16 minutes ago, PurpleFlinstoneVitamins92 said:

Curious, what would've been your pick as 1st single for OML ? 

Talking To Myself or Battle Symphony maybe

[JZLP-Benningstrong]

4 minutes ago, LinkInThePark said:

Talking To Myself or Battle Symphony maybe

OML singles for me:

 

Nobody Can Save Me

Heavy 

OML

Sharp Edges

 

The rest of the tracks are awful as fuck.