Would ‘Stick N Move’ Have Been a Better Lead Single for HT20 Than ‘She Couldn’t’?

[Rockter]

Both of these songs are very clearly demos, but ‘Stick N Move’ might have gotten significantly bigger if it had received more promotion.

While completely understandable, given that the band was just creating their first album, ‘Forgotten Demos’ as a whole doesn’t have nearly as many gems as ‘Lost Demos’ does, and SNM is the biggest outlier here with just how radio-friendly it is in comparison to 'She Couldn't'.

 

At the end of the day, I suppose it doesn’t matter that much since Linkin Park wasn’t up to putting out more stuff for a couple of years afterwards, but I don't think 'She Couldn't' was a particularly good pick here.

 

Edited September 25 by Rockter

[Justin]

I think they probably felt like She Couldn't was more of a finished song than Stick N Move. It just needed some polish to make it radio ready. They also may have felt that She Couldn't was more likely to have radio success in 2020 than Stick N Move would've been.

There's also the fact that Mike probably would've wanted to scrap his verses and start over, or at least re-record them, if Stick N Move was going to be a single. I'm pretty sure he said he had to be convinced by the rest of the band to not do that with Fighting Myself.

Edited September 24 by Justin

[bloodbath]

They weren't the biggest fans of Stick 'n' Move, that's one thing. Second one, for me it's a VERY early version of Runaway, whereas She Couldn't a song of its own. The third one, She Couldn't it's more original, so my guess Stick n Move wouldn have cause so much impression. 

[Rockter]

31 minutes ago, Justin said:

They also may have felt that She Couldn't was more likely to have radio success in 2020 than Stick N Move would've been.

Yeah, I feel like this might have been the biggest reason here.

 

On one hand you've got these very energetic verses from Mike and on the other hand there's like basically  2 lines with Chester repeated over and over with fairly small differences, which as acceptable as they may seem to more hardcore fans, the more casual side might not be as satisfied with them.

 

31 minutes ago, Justin said:

There's also the fact that Mike probably would've wanted to scrap his verses and start over, or at least re-record them

It's odd, but it seems to be some sort of personal preference of his for some reason. But SNM vocals are pretty much as high quality as they were on Hybrid Theory and I can't imagine them getting much better and not losing what makes them good.

 

  

8 minutes ago, bloodbath said:

They weren't the biggest fans of Stick 'n' Move, that's one thing.

I guess that's a valid reason, although I find it a bit difficult that they were happier with Runaway than they were with this version of the song. To me it's more of a blast from the past kind of a song, although they might not necessarily agree depending on their headspace in 2020.

Edited September 24 by Rockter

[JZLP-Benningstrong]

I was just talking about this like a month ago in the shoubox

 

She Couldn't as a rare gem its cool but as the lead single of the 20th anniversary of your BEST ALBUM EVER it fucking sucked

that song didnt represent the spirit, the DNA of the band.

 

The demos for HT all of them are rough, for the mainstream the quality is not good enough.

 

For me the best decision coudl have been to create a PRETTY FUCKING AMZING music video for APFMH and finally have it as a single, it would have boosted the sales by 20X.

 

Someone dropped the ball.

[Rockter]

5 hours ago, JZLP-RoadsUntraveled said:

For me the best decision coudl have been to create a PRETTY FUCKING AMZING music video for APFMH and finally have it as a single, it would have boosted the sales by 20X.

Don't know if I would go that far, mostly because revisiting a song that's been widely available for the past 2 decades isn't quite the same thing as a NEW LINKIN PARK SONG FEATURING CHESTER BENNINGTON FROM THE HYBRID THEORY DAYS.

 

Best case scenario, I could see whatever the most recent version of 'And One' was, but with a proper new mix. It's very doubtful it would have done nearly as well as 'Lost' did, but it absolutely could've done better than 'She Couldn't' ,which from what I recall they didn't even have actual multitracks for. Obviously though, since the release only had the HTEP version of the song, my best case scenario here was completely undoable.

Edited September 25 by Rockter

[martinez]

I think for example both Stick N Move and Dialate had no any chances to be released as a first pre-release song because they sounds really bad in terms of quality so that will be really bad idea to release them first.

[Hybrider]

The best single for HT20 would be And One. Unreleased version which they played live.

[SerioDrew]

Imo yes, She Couldnt isnt single material imo. I can see why they didnt pick SnM (sounds raw and not 100% finished) but if it got a proper re-mix treatment like Lost it could be a lot better single. 

[JZLP-Benningstrong]

On 9/25/2024 at 4:41 AM, Hybrider said:

The best single for HT20 would be And One. Unreleased version which they played live.

the HTEP sound quality was fucking considering the budget that they had.

 

She Couldn't sounds like Boyz II Men vs BSB

[unksoldier2000]

51 minutes ago, SerioDrew said:

Imo yes, She Couldnt isnt single material imo. I can see why they didnt pick SnM (sounds raw and not 100% finished) but if it got a proper re-mix treatment like Lost it could be a lot better single. 

i mean, after the release and Pictureboard hype and analyzing it carefully, the HT20 compared to MT20 sucked (in terms of songs) like, we could had so many variations, between Mark and Chester, a whole disc dedicated to Xero, and one for Hybrid Theory.

the art part was way better in HT20, sadly MT20 killed that whole graffiti vibe with those nosense AI graphics.

[SerioDrew]

Agreed that song wise M20>>>>HT20 but i believe they served different goals. M20 was about the music and HT20 was about the history, thats why they went with the songs they went with. Also note I cant be unbiased on SnM cause the Xero version is prolly my fav non album LP song xP

[bloodbath]

The band wasn't in a good place back in 2020, that's why promotion was so discrete, even though they said that a boxset for HT was way more important that any of the following records (except for ATS). But regarding the selection of tracks, they did a pretty good job. It was never about emptying the vaults, but a glimpse of of HT came to be throughout various demos. Yes, 6 or 7 POA demos weren't necessary, same as hypothetically including another 7 versions of Papercuts barely undistiguishable one from another. Remember, that kind of stuff only matters to us, not the mainstream audience. If they should have included X or Y version of Part of Me, Crawling, In the End or whatever, depends on each ones personal taste. 

[Hybrider]

They definitely should put Xero - Fuse instead of Step Up twice. Or they could put Xero version of Step Up. I also think, that if they are now going From Zero, they should rerecord Xero demos. Imagine how fucking great would sound Reading My Eyes, Fuse or Dialate in HQ. Imagine if they do a rerecorded Xero album for LPU with Emily.

[Rockter]

I guess the dissapointment with the HT20 demos just stems from the fact that only 5 out of 12 were new to most of us on here, and the people more on the casual side aren't going to revisit most of these if the number of streams on Spotify and YouTube is anything to go by.

 

It's good to have these in higher quality, and overall that part of the boxset does it's job as sort of a walk down the memory lane, which is important for what's supposed to be a celebration of an anniversary of one the biggest albums of all time. I don't think we missed out on any bangers, cause what the best of what they worked on at the time already ended up appearing on Hybrid Theory, maybe only with the exception of SNM in place of Runaway.

 

A seperate disc with Xero demos, while it would be very cool to have, would be unrealistic when they had to convince Mark Wakefield to give the permission to release the few demos we ended up getting that are probably the best Xero demos that were made (excluding Pictureboard IMO, and SNM that was apparently Xero's biggest banger during their few live shows). Although a Xero casseste would've been amazing rather than the Street Team sampler, although I guess Disney might've been diffcult about the 'Fuse' sample.

[unksoldier2000]

2 hours ago, Rockter said:

I guess the dissapointment with the HT20 demos just stems from the fact that only 5 out of 12 were new to most of us on here, and the people more on the casual side aren't going to revisit most of these if the number of streams on Spotify and YouTube is anything to go by.

 

It's good to have these in higher quality, and overall that part of the boxset does it's job as sort of a walk down the memory lane, which is important for what's supposed to be a celebration of an anniversary of one the biggest albums of all time. I don't think we missed out on any bangers, cause what the best of what they worked on at the time already ended up appearing on Hybrid Theory, maybe only with the exception of SNM in place of Runaway.

 

A seperate disc with Xero demos, while it would be very cool to have, would be unrealistic when they had to convince Mark Wakefield to give the permission to release the few demos we ended up getting that are probably the best Xero demos that were made (excluding Pictureboard IMO, and SNM that was apparently Xero's biggest banger during their few live shows). Although a Xero casseste would've been amazing rather than the Street Team sampler, although I guess Disney might've been diffcult about the 'Fuse' sample.

yep, i forgot about Mark being shy, lol...
ALSO, totally forgot to mention the LPTV beats, that are in fact Mike's demos... such as Goop, Beat 10 ( Grr longer version), Rendezvous, Beat 4 and tons of others LPTV unreleased beats.