hahninator

It just seems so weird, if that was the case (I’m not saying it ISN’T; it likely is), that Chester / all of the band wouldn’t just get a writing credit on every song like every other album. I mean Chester has a writing credit on Session lmao. He was heated it got nominated for an award. 

Phew, those remixes sound so bad.

When I was listening to Post Traumatic this morning I thought, "why do I like this album so much more than the last 3 albums?" I think the Post Traumatic EP had a huge effect on us all... it's some of the most emotional work we've ever heard from Mike and it talks about Chester. Add that in with the fact that I love Mike rapping and have always enjoyed his solo stuff... that probably plays a big role. But it's just funny because Mike is the main songwriter in Linkin Park and we know some of the PT songs were actually Linkin Park songs.

1 hour ago, leftshoe18 said:

Mike has writing credit on all the songs and Brad has credit on 7 of 10. They've always been the main songwriters in the band so I'm sure that's pretty similar to the actual writing of previous albums (though they've always been just credited as written by Linkin Park). They worked with other songwriters but it's exaggerating to say they didn't write their own songs. They wanted to make a modern pop album (for some reason) and part of that process is working with other songwriters.

This is a good point. A really good point. It reminds me of Taylor Swift, who writes all of her songs in her entire catalogue, but she works with songwriters sometimes who also get some credit on the songs. But she is credited on every track because they all start with her on acoustic guitar or piano or vocal melody, and the songwriters/producers sometimes help her bring it to life.

1 hour ago, Stranger said:

OML is like an album where the label really wanted/force the band to do it after THP didnt do so well in the commercial market. gotta say WBR is the mastermind of everything. they literally make THP failed so badly by having worst marketing, tour and more. so, the band had no choice by following the order to make this pop rock record which most of the fans really disappointed. personally, the album is good but not better than the rest of their catalogue.

I am not sure what made you think this, but honestly that opinion is completely false... literally not true at all. And there has never been 1% of a hint in any direction that WBR is forcing them to make a certain style of music. WBR has no control over what LP does with the style of music they make or even what song they release as a single now, listen to Mike's comments literally this week how WBR was strongly opposed to Catalyst as a lead single for ATS but LP makes the calls and Catalyst was what was happening. Same for GATS, I'm sure.

The most "WBR pushes LP to do something" move we have ever seen is when MTM was finished, they thought it would be good for LP to have a big lead single as a comeback, so Mike and Chester quickly wrote What I've Done... one of their best/biggest songs. It's truthfully Mike is the master of everything with a nice dash of Chester and Brad, and WBR says "ok" to what the band does. I just watched an interview with Phoenix where he said the label fully trusts Mike to produce the LP albums now because his track record is so good with the band. LP made OML because LP wanted to make OML.

1 hour ago, Comfortinthepanic92 said:

Plus, the fact that Chester took singing lessons (vocal coach or stuff like that, you know better than me) was something really effective on OML, I love his delivery on the title track, NCSM, BS (that bridge is awesome) and Halfway Right (probably my fav song) 

This is a great post. Like I said earlier, the production sound on the album is absolutely phenomenal. Chester's voice is crystal clear all over it and his delivery is honestly flawless. As Mike said live before, he sets Chester up (in a songwriting sense) to allow him to shine vocally in the best way. That's not exactly how he said it but that was the point he made. NCSM is an A+ track.

Regardless of what I think about the SONGS, Chester's delivery and singing on the album is very good.

4 hours ago, JZLP said:

Mark if you wanna listen to an overproduced album listen to this crap

That's funny you mention that because the OML album has probably one of the best production sounds in the entire LP catalogue. The production quality and sound of each track is enormous. Crank it in the headphones and sonically it all sounds really fantastic, even the versions on the LP YouTube. You can tell whoever is responsible for the final sound really put a lot of work into it. It's refreshing compared to the deliberately raw sound of The Hunting Party. I will get into the production issues with Amends in another thread, but not in this one.

Looking back at the One More Light album on my iTunes, quite a few of the songs have under 10 plays (Heavy, Good Goodbye, Battle Symphony, Invisible, Halfway Right) three years later. There isn't much replay value in a majority of the album for me and so inevitably, this is Linkin Park's weakest album for me. The Hunting Party is pretty close. For my personal tastes, the band peaked creatively with ATS and then slipped downhill with Living Things (a portion of which was composed of shortened ATS demos), further downhill with The Hunting Party, and even further downhill with One More Light. I personally enjoy Post Traumatic much more than those three albums.

It's odd to me that after such a lengthy down time (canceled 2015 USA tour), all of 2016 off, etc, they came out with only ten songs. Mike wanted Place to Start to open it and we know they have other songs completed.... I'm just surprised the album was so short. Chester has two writing credits on the entire album - we are talking about the guy who is behind the Waiting For The End chorus (maybe the best in their catalogue?) and other highlights... I mean that just doesn't even make sense to me.

Tracks like Halfway Right and Battle Symphony are some of the worst in the catalogue to me, alongside tracks like Lies Greed Misery, Hit The Floor, etc. Good Goodbye doesn't fit on the album at all as the only song with Mike's rapping, something the album actually lacks but with just GG on it, it feels so out of place. The "live from the genesis" verse is pretty good, and is leagues better than the two guest verses so I am surprised they cut it. I think the guests aren't noteworthy and actually contribute to the songs they are on being worse (Pusha, Stormzy, and Kiiara).

Highlights: I do think Nobody Can Save Me is a fantastic track (loved seeing Mike play it on the Post Traumatic Tour), I love Talking to Myself as well (but it is better live), Sorry For Now is A+, and One More Light and Sharp Edges are great. So that's half the album, ha. You can't deny that the song OML is one of the best songs they have ever written. However, the weaker part of the album just drags it down so much and combined with how short it is, I just don't ever listen to it. Meanwhile, A Thousand Suns for me has had tremendous replay value in the past few years and I jam that album frequently. While the initial response to ATS was a huge backlash, the album aged extremely well and I think that OML is not going to age even half as well in seven more years.

OML was an experiment with them to learn from other songwriters and I fully understand that (and even support it) but I know these guys can write better music solely on their own.

With all that said, I thought the touring cycle was actually off to the best start since MTM. The small Chester and Mike shows were really cool and the band was in epic form on stage in South America and Europe. The European shows were next level for LP, playing the longest shows in the history of the band, changing the setlists to take some fan requests (APFMH, FTI, POA, SIB, etc), and I thought the set was structured well. While I think the album was not great, the touring cycle was a monster. While covering the tour and watching it show by show on YouTube I was shocked how many shows they would "hit a home run" in a row. Check out Rock Werchter into the next show in Sweden... some truly good LP stuff there.

If you want to look at something positive that came from OML, it's that Mike can take some of these songs and sing them on future LP tours. Nobody Can Save Me, Battle Symphony, Invisible, Sorry For Now, Good Goodbye (some sort of mashup), and One More Light at the very minimum are able to be used for their new shows and I think that's very helpful.

On 5/16/2020 at 8:14 AM, Broman said:

I ran a vocal remover on the track, it tends to leave behind backing vocals and reverb tracks. Still can’t hear Jaime in the least bit, and anyone that has seen or followed his instagram knows Jaime doesn’t sound like his dad so he’s definitely not doing leads. If he’s actually on the track, this is just bad mixing

Well, yes, there are two different things at play here. One - the album is extremely overproduced and I think that plays into the problem of the mixing being bad. The guests on the entire album are not very audible at all, but perhaps that was intentional. It's a shame with how quality the guest list is that they couldn't turn them all up a little bit. However, like I said, they may have not wanted to on purpose (to not draw attention to the guests).

Two - Jaime was on the track just as a tribute to his dad, it wasn't a cash grab move to put him there to begin with - how could it be, when that was his dad? Although Sean is full of bullshit in many different areas, he is right when he says it was a good move to put Chester's son on a track as a nod to Chester. It's an assumption that GD made that Chester would have wanted his kids to sing on a song with him one day. And that's a pretty fair assumption to make, no matter who makes it, with Chester's track record of being SUPER pro-family (the good ones) and EXTREMELY supportive of all the children involved in his life. Remember, Draven was on a song too until he pulled back. Jaime stayed on, and did this music video too. I don't think any of those are negative things at all, those are actually some of the highlights of this project.

1 hour ago, X3RO said:

I spent all my ShinodaBucks to ask him about the Xero Demos and if he plans to release more Xero content, i just hope it answers it soon  

What? Did you not see that LP is releasing a HT20 release? Keep your Shinodabucks, the answer is in the HT thread already. 

20 seems like a great number for LP to do it for each album. Lots of money there to be made, which is a driving force behind it all. I'd buy all of the editions.

14 hours ago, Hybrid1988 said:

I absolutely love ATS. Easily my favorite non HT album by them but I wonder what it could've sounded like with Trent, Atticus, or Brian Eno. Wow, amazing artists that could've taken that album to totally different places. Really cool bit of info there from Mike!

Great album. LP surely doesn't have over 5 albums or so left in them, right? They need to work with these different producers. Brian Eno and Steve Lillywhite would be pretty good ones.

Atticus probably would have synths rolling everywhere on ATS, like "fine" but full band LP form, ha. He makes good music with Trent. It's hard to imagine ATS in any other form, but Blackout would have probably brought down buildings if Atticus was involved ha.

5 hours ago, lpplus said:

Very Interesting. Do you think at some points LP goes to Eminem for a song and he didn't want to that?! Or maybe Eminem goes to LP and they didn't want to do a song together?!

Yeah LP probably approached Eminem which is why Mike worded it that way. Just how it is sometimes, not everyone always wants to collaborate. The most likely time period could have been 2005, but remember that's the worst time in LP's career too so maybe the timing was bad on more than just one side. LP, Eminem, and 50 Cent were at least in talks for the summer 2005 stadium tour in the USA. I think LP's struggles with WBR plus the burn out from the million shows on the Meteora cycle really affected what could have happened in 2005. They could have done a Jay-Z tour in early 2005 for Collision Course right into a huge summer stadium tour with 50 Cent and Eminem. Then take 2006 off to make the album.

Downside: We wouldn't have gotten The Rising Tied or the Fort Minor tour. Upside: We could have had two epic tours in 2005 and maybe LP would have collaborated with one of those artists. Who knows, but too hard to play the "maybe" game. The WBR stuff came at a bad time for LP because Collision Course deserved its own sold out arena tour.

$50k now that Chester passed. 

LP isn’t paying anyone $50k for an hour or less of footage when they have hours of their own rehearsal footage. They’re businessmen, they aren’t stupid. 

Ostrick blew it with the HT thing now because if he had a fair price he’d probably get an offer from someone. 

The one thing they have never released from that era that would be cool to see is them in the studio recording some songs. In the End, Papercut, etc vocal sessions, guitar tracking, anything. Did they think at that time to film that stuff? Or only Meteora onwards?

8 hours ago, Diaux said:

This a good little thing by Instagram, i like it

Sadly is not available in my country right now. Is probably gonna take some time to get it world wide, for example the add music to the stories thing took like 3 months to get it on my country while people from US already had it

Not available for me yet and I am in the USA.

I would guess that of every 5-10 collaborations Mike does, maybe 1 is released lol

5 hours ago, xeroboi said:

Just seen something about it on reddit?

We have no idea at this point. 

I didn't even know these were available in lossless. They are so hard to get (a VPN is needed, really?) that I'm not opposed to people sharing the lossless files here.

When I was listening to the Rhinestone (Zomba Sampler) version, it reminded me that the version on the Hybrid Theory 9 track has the same instrumental as we knew, just with new vocals by Chester.

What about Esaul? We have what, 4 versions of that song? So hard to keep up with these versions. Are they all the exact same instrumental just with four different vocal takes?

Anyway I think it's likely that the Xero version of Esaul with Mark that they recorded had the instrumental reused exactly, and it's what turned into the Esaul with Chester. Same thing that happened with Rhinestone. Also wouldn't surprise me if they had Chester re-record vocals for another Xero song or two since the audition tape has more than two songs. Perhaps Reading My Eyes or something else had him re-record vocals. Pictureboard, probably.

The oldest Esaul I would assume is the LPU 11 one, the one they were rehearsing in Frat Party. Chester's vocals sound young as hell there. 

Random: The LPU 12 version and Hybrid Theory 9 track demo for Rhinestone are the exact same, right?

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.

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.

https://www.pscp.tv/paparoach/1mnxeQvQyNaxX

Replay there

Man yeah those were so cool.

Yeah. He said in PT Tour interviews he had presented LP with the songs to release under Fort Minor and LP was good with it all, and he was going to release “several” songs in fall 2017. Definitely Lift Off was one but IOU could have been another. He’s spoken about this 2-3 times. 

1 hour ago, Justin said:

It seems like since the beginning the association of Mike with SOB has resulted in nothing but miscommunications, misinterpretations, and straight up bad luck. It’s a pretty classic example of business messing up a personal friendship.

 

Side note: Didn’t Tak also go off on you and curse you out and stuff? I don’t remember the context or when it happened, but I remember something like that happening some point.

Yeah, like over 10 years ago. Maybe 2009 he did that on Twitter. Don't have screenshots of that. It happens, not everyone will see things the same. We're just fans and he knew Mike personally so obviously he has a huge leg up on knowing what the deal is. SOB definitely had a reason to be upset that things didn't work out on Machine Shop but I have always thought blaming Mike for some of their problems hasn't been the best move.

1 hour ago, SFNL14 said:

I used to have Asbestos as my alarm, and God, I started to despise that song!

Ha.

Similarly, when I'd plug my iPhone into my car via USB, A-Six would always play first no matter what. So now I'm quite sick of the riff.

Not that surprising to hear but of course good to see Phoenix say it. My suspicion is they've been meeting regularly to work on musical ideas since the end of the Post Traumatic Tour in March 2019. Would be nice to hear from them in 2021.

https://old.reddit.com/r/LinkinPark/comments/g5imni/ryu_on_fort_minor/

Someone asked about this on Facebook so I'll copy/paste my reply here. If I left anything out let me know.

The question was: "Ryu said ‘’ the mixtape was better anyways!’’ when he discussed Fort Minor’s album The Rising Tied. He also discussed how he never received royalties for being on the album. Why did he say these things? Does he not like Mike or the album anymore? Does anyone know?"

My reply: "Ryu has been vocal on Facebook recently about these topics, which is the source of the OP's comments. My understanding of it is Mike would of course pay SOB (and other guests) for the guest spots on the album but then they don't get paid consecutively after it if any of the songs go on and end up doing well. Basically you aren't paid twice for the same song. Well it turns out Remember the Name ended up exploding, and yeah they are a bit disappointed the song is MASSIVE and they never saw an increase in money from that. Just depends how they set up the agreement back in 2005. You could of course also blame them for that themselves if they weren't smart enough to negotiate a better deal. Anyway these comments are public on Ryu's Facebook if you want to go read them.

Next, Ryu said he wants an award for Remember the Name doing so well. It sold whatever the number is to get an award. Basically it boiled down to Mike could "push it through if he wanted to" but they said Mike has so many awards he doesn't know what to do with so he'd have no real incentive to get ANOTHER one made. Ha. LP's former manager Rob McDermott is even on the thread commenting saying he wants one too. Wild. Some of the comments trash Mike but Ryu and Rob never do that, they just want awards made (+ money). Ryu has made similar threads like this over the years.

Lastly, there was not a huge fall out but there was of course drama around the "Welcome" song in 2015 with Fort Minor. Ryu recorded a verse, thought he was going to be on the song, and it would be released as Fort Minor and he would be involved in the reunion. Mike ended up cutting the verse without telling him, then later told Ryu it would be on a remix of the song that ended up not coming out as we all know. Ryu was also there for the art mural/music video filming for the song too so understandable he thought he was fully involved in everything. Kind of sucks for him in that regard since on Recharged he dropped the line saying he wanted to do a "Fort Minor part 2" in his verse. http://linkinpedia.com/index.php?title=Welcome

And if Ryu/SOB were not on the Fort Minor comeback in 2015 or the Fort Minor comeback in 2017 that was planned (Lift Off, IOU, etc before Chester passed away), I wouldn't hold your breath for Mike making music with them again. All signs right now point to Mike working with Linkin Park as Phoenix just said they have been writing music.

Mike has not been close to Tak since 2007~ish I think, I mean Tak thoroughly destroyed Mike on social media for months before he disappeared online. He and SOB were very hostile about the situation with Warner Bros... Mike signed them to Machine Shop to get the Styles of Beyond album released, Warner shelved it, Ryu said Mike was too busy on an LP world tour (Minutes to Midnight) to pay attention and get it resolved for them, and then Mike had to successfully negotiate with the label to get Styles released from under the grasp of Warner. What a mess. The album came out much later of course but the damage was done. Listen to "I Did It to Myself", the solo song by Ryu, where he talks about it. And of course WBR cashed in on "Second to None" featuring Mike that was on the Transformers soundtrack but wouldn't let the album come out. Ouch. I bet it ruined any shot of Mike considering them all a part of Fort Minor in the future due to the big mess it caused, but that's just speculation.

If I forgot anything someone feel free to add more info."

On 4/21/2020 at 3:48 AM, cg9 said:

On Wikipedia, have people change the other two singles from Hybrid Theory on when they were was recorded. I corrected two of them (OSC and ITE).

Thank you! While we have Linkinpedia for facts, it's also important Wikipedia is correct too since it has so many people using it so feel free to always copy over factual information to Wikipedia from Linkinpedia whenever you want.