Friendly Fire / Papercuts (Singles Collection 2000-2023)

[Bambitt]

Well I dont think that the rushed comments are critical or whiny, it is just not regular for such release in comparison to boxsets for example. 
 

it might be a hint or something

[ScottiePippo]

3 minutes ago, Bambitt said:

Well I dont think that the rushed comments are critical or whiny, it is just not regular for such release in comparison to boxsets for example. 
 

it might be a hint or something

I think the timing for this release is very consistent with what the band has being doing recently with HT20 and Meteora20. There has been a couple of weeks of teasing and anticipation. Then the single to launch the promotion and then a little less then 2 months later the album drops. If this feels to you a little rushed it's also because I don't think the band or the label thinks this is as big of a deal as the two boxset. It's clearly not. Those two boxset were huge in terms of effort to put it toghether and also the new unreleased and rare material in them was much more than friendly fire and qwerty. Concerning the artwork I think the fact that is simple doesn't mean that it was rushed. The cover of ATS is super simple and that album took foverer. I honestly like both the cover of the singles collection and that of friendly fire. I appreciate their simplicity. Everyone has a different taste but just because you don't like it I don't think it's fair to start theories and accusation for why is that.

[bloodbath]

3 hours ago, Stranger said:

 

understood. thanks for the clarification! i hope this new "Numb/Encore" mix is a teased for COLLISION COURSE 20th Anniversary or something. 🥹

Hope so!

[YRQRM0]

Friendly Fire's drums rule, Chester sounds great on it, the structure was surprisingly interesting. I'm kinda surprised it didn't beat Halfway Right for being a bit more unique instrumentally, I guess they just liked HR better.

 

Also I'm disappointed to hear QWERTY isn't a new mix, I feel like that song would really take on a whole new life if it got the Lost treatment

[Qwerty18]

I find the fact that QWERTY is on the collection hilarious 😃

 

Not in a bad way - I wasn't expecting anything specific for that 14th track. But this is just so unexpected, it becomes a bit funny. Especially considering it takes over the spot of  tracks like SOTD or Heavy.

 

If I'd have one small issue with this whole thing, it'd be the absence of THP tracks. It's not about the collection itself, I probably wouldn't listen to it either way. But I find it a bit "insulting" to that record, which definitely feels like the "black sheep" of the family now.

Edited February 22 by Qwerty18

[NJPLP]

I honestly now think I get what was going on in that Instagram post with tracks 11 through 15, with the green screen for the 14th track, which we know is "QWERTY". "QWERTY" was on LPU 6, which had a green cover. I could be just thinking too much into things, lol.

[BeardyWilderness]

1 hour ago, Bambitt said:

Well I dont think that the rushed comments are critical or whiny, it is just not regular for such release in comparison to boxsets for example. 
 

it might be a hint or something

If they went any longer fans would moan it ‘dragged’ on.

[LPLStaff]

Hmm. Zero THP while putting 2 OML songs on, when there is room left in the tracklisting is a pretty odd move, especially if you are including QWERTY.

 

Mike's comments before were that he wasn't interested in Greatest Hits, so it will be interesting to hear what the band says in the press about this release.

 

They should have at least included one THP song. Could definitely understand zero THP and zero OML, but 2 OML and zero THP is odd.

What is the strangest omission for this? Catalyst was #1 globally in many charts, Shadow is huge, Given Up is pretty high on streams, Iridescent is big.

[xxHybridXeroxx]

7 minutes ago, LPLStaff said:

Hmm. Zero THP while putting 2 OML songs on, when there is room left in the tracklisting is a pretty odd move, especially if you are including QWERTY.

 

Mike's comments before were that he wasn't interested in Greatest Hits, so it will be interesting to hear what the band says in the press about this release.

 

They should have at least included one THP song. Could definitely understand zero THP and zero OML, but 2 OML and zero THP is odd.

What is the strangest omission for this? Catalyst was #1 globally in many charts, Shadow is huge, Given Up is pretty high on streams, Iridescent is big.

No Catalyst being there is definitely the strangest for me, but they should’ve included a THP song for sure. Even though the album wasn’t commercially successful it still deserves representation, I’m really surprised they didn’t put Final Masquerade or Wastelands on here

[DylHDZ]

Love FF, way better than HR imo if that’s what they compared it to. Chester sounds great, the melodies and instruments 👌🏼great and that acoustic guitar touch at the end just beautiful 

[YRQRM0]

1 minute ago, DylHDZ said:

Love FF, way better than HR imo if that’s what they compared it to. Chester sounds great, the melodies and instruments 👌🏼great and that acoustic guitar touch at the end just beautiful 

 

I have a feeling the acoustic outdo being repetitive of the way Invisible has an acoustic outro probably went into it too. 

[JerseyShore]

Good song, Chester is fantastic on it. Little disappointed it didn't make the album, but it's understandable. Not a glaring omission like some of the other B-sides we've heard (Lost, Fighting Myself, Primo, No Roads Left in particular for me).

[Subs]

Assuming FF has leaked then.

 

Has it premiered anywhere yet btw ? Asking as I swear I heard kerrange radio saying they were premiering Linkin Park shortly.

[rd1994]

20 minutes ago, Subs said:

Assuming FF has leaked then.

 

Has it premiered anywhere yet btw ? Asking as I swear I heard kerrange radio saying they were premiering Linkin Park shortly.

I saw something on reddit along the lines of "Where I live I can listen to FF"


In other news. I think including QWERTY, as much as I like the song, seems a weird move. The promos I found online explictly call it a single collection, so including QWERTY seems even more baffling.

Also again, making sure to mention 2000-2023 but excluding an entire album seems ridiculous to me. If you wanna include something softer you could include UIG or FM instead

Also that album cover is atrocious

[Sukotto]

Things are moving fast with this one, though looking at a couple days ago about the speculation over what 14 could be… seems obvious now that it was omitted from the marketing because QWERTY simply isn’t on Spotify and YouTube to have included in the track run down. Well played to their marketing team keeping quiet and letting the fan base hype itself up. 

[AceWav]

I really like the song on first listen. I think this should have been included, not replacing anything else on OML. But i understand why it wasn't on there. I think this is one of the most special songs melodically by Chester. It's a really colorful track with great energy. 

[Soeffingnaive92]

Song is fucking fantastic, I’ll wait for the official release to properly judge, but I love the little elements in there and Chester is great in there. It’s not a shocker like Primo, but if I had to pick I’d pick this one over GG and SFN any day 

[RYG4R]

6 hours ago, martinez said:

 

Correction on myself - also track 16, New Divide has new mastering, it is the song that never was available as hi-res too.

 

mate, how did you know about ND having new mastering? Did you hear it already?

[mrfox]

It looks like no THP|20 ☹️ 

Final Masquerade acoustic with new mix would be better than QWERTY imo

[ShadowUser]

If you look at any social media that has Linkin Park communities such as Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc., many, MANY, people have complained tirelessly about QWERTY not being on streaming for years and years. To the point it got extremely annoying, honestly. So it’s good that it’ll finally be available on streaming to shut these people up. It’s definitely their most well known non-album track besides My December. QWERTY has had a huge ‘’cult following’’ since 2006, even some casuals know about it, because it was always that song that people used as a complaint when Minutes To Midnight came out and that it wasn’t ‘’heavy enough’’. Even though songs like Given Up and No More Sorrow which are heavy as hell on on the album, people were all pissy that the band evolved with Minutes To Midnight. So QWERTY was definitely a big deal back in the the 2000’s if you were a fan at the time, anyone who was a fan and active back then will remember. 
 

As far as this release goes, I don’t think the band really wanted to even release this, but the label probably pushed them to release a ‘’Greatest Hits’’. Mike likely saw the release as an opportunity to put out Friendly Fire as he loved the track and mentioned wanting to release it a couple of years ago. Instead of making us wait until 2037, he saw this as a good time to release it to us. Makes sense to me. 
 

Honestly I feel like the band is being kind of tongue in cheek with this release, almost sarcastic in a sense without being overly sarcastic. The bright money green and I think they may be taking the piss out of the label and the mainstream casual fans by putting QWERTY on this. Because of the absolute randomness of it and it’s not the type of track that casual listeners or people who don’t know much about the band will enjoy, at least in my opinion. 
 

Overall this is just a little Greatest Hits compilation, not really a huge deal. It doesn’t mean the band is starting a new era without Chester and it doesn’t mean they are breaking up, either. People need to chill with that. When the band is ready, if they ever are, they will let us know. Mike has said this a million times. He said recently even that he is enjoying celebrating the anniversaries as they come and that right now they don’t have any plans to tour or make new music but the window is still open. Sometimes the fans gotta chill with pressuring them. There are other bands out there to listen to if you need ‘’new’’ music that desperately. The back catalog of Linkin Park is pretty large, personally I could be happy with listening to what we have now for the rest of my life, I never get bored of listening to the same songs I’ve been listening to for years and years. We still have many albums left to celebrate with 20 year anniversaries and what not. Many live shows to release. And also even the future of the band. It hasn’t even been 10 years yet. Maybe they will carry on as a 5 piece, maybe they will replace Chester, maybe they won’t ever truly get back together, but Mike and the band will let us know when they are ready, if they are. 
 

As far as The Hunting Party being left out, it is what it is. It wasn’t a commercially successful album. They left a lot of singles off of this release that are massive too from other albums like Shadow Of The Day, Given Up and others. If they really wanted to do a proper Greatest Hits they should have done a 2 CD/Vinyl with all the main singles from all 7 albums and 1-2 exclusive songs like they did. Maybe because the band really didn’t even want to put this out they didn’t put too much effort into making it a true Greatest Hits. Just some food for thought. But complaining that stuff like Numb/Encore should be left off for something off of The Hunting Party is ridiculous. The band won a Grammy for that track, remember the Paul McCartney performance? Wasn’t Jay-Z listed as the best rapper of all time last year? Massive, massive collaboration. And nothing on here besides QWERTY should have been left off for something from The Hunting Party. There was time still on this album to add a track from it without removing anything. For whatever reason, Warner probably didn’t want to include anything from it. Sucks but it’s not the band’s fault, really. 

Edited February 22 by ShadowUser

[LPLStaff]

7 minutes ago, ShadowUser said:

There was time still on this album to add a track from it without removing anything. For whatever reason, Warner probably didn’t want to include anything from it. Sucks but it’s not the band’s fault, really. 

 

The point is that this is 68 (?) minutes with FF and QWERTY, right? And CDs are 79~ minutes. So, there is room to toss GATS and Catalyst, or Final Masq and Given Up, or whatever combo of songs you want on there.

 

At the end of the day, if it has the band's name on it, they are responsible for what comes out with their name on it. The label obviously didn't put this entire thing together themselves with no input from the band because if that were the case, they wouldn't have put QWERTY on it.

[YRQRM0]

Totally agree with all of that @ShadowUser, not to mention Mike's solo stuff. Make It Up As I Go might as well be an LP track, Already Over is probably in the same vein as half the MTM demos we could get but better and with live variations, we were lucky to also get Cross Off with Chester, M20 gave us more than we knew existed, etc. We've got more than enough to entertain us without ever getting something new again, but will surely get a few more one-offs too given how little we have from the last 4 albums compared to the rest 

 

 

[thigolpbr]

Why didn't the band release a double CD for this?
I never thought about seeing a CD of the band's "singles or greatest hits".
Linkin Park has a lot of music that, even though it wasn't a single, became famous and popular.
A double CD the band would have enjoyed more my humble opinion.

[ShadowUser]

3 minutes ago, LPLStaff said:

 

The point is that this is 68 (?) minutes with FF and QWERTY, right? And CDs are 79~ minutes. So, there is room to toss GATS and Catalyst, or Final Masq and Given Up, or whatever combo of songs you want on there.

 

At the end of the day, if it has the band's name on it, they are responsible for what comes out with their name on it. The label obviously didn't put this entire thing together themselves with no input from the band because if that were the case, they wouldn't have put QWERTY on it.

If it were up to me, I would only have 1 track from Living Things, The Hunting Party and One More Light on here and leave the rest of the tracklisting for others. Burn It Down, Final Masquerade or Guilty All The Same and Heavy. Castle Of Glass and One More Light don’t need to be on here. Were they really that big of hits? Not that I remember. 
 

Papercut, One Step Closer, Crawling, In The End, Somewhere I Belong, Faint, Breaking The Habit, From The Inside, Numb, Given Up, Leave Out All The Rest, Bleed It Out, Shadow Of The Day, What I’ve Done, Waiting For The End and The Catalyst all should have been on here. All massive singles everyone knows. Yeah it’s heavy on the early albums but that’s what the biggest hits are from, sorry.

 

New Divide, I guess could replace maybe From The Inside or Given Up, but idk. 
 

It’s obvious Warner wanted Lost on here. So have to have that. And Friendly Fire should definitely be on it, of course. QWERTY is weird so maybe cut that for one of those other songs. 
 

Not having The Catalyst or Given Up is crazy to me. Final Masquerade too, even though personally I’d put Guilty over it. 
 

But idk I’m not the one choosing it all. Haha. 
 

[sublimeric]

I like “Friendly Fire”, but as is the case with most LP studio tracks, I HATE the effects on Chester’s voice. It sounds more like AI than Chester himself. 
 

Thankful we get to hear unreleased music, though, and finally have QWERTY on streaming services. 
 

I hope the band never stop releasing material, especially if they want to open their live recording vault, which we know has hundreds of shows in it