Linkin Park: love them or hate them ? (Part 1)

PHOTO from lpfancorner.com

Love or hate the music of Linkin Park, no one can deny that they are true survivors. This is because while most of their contemporaries have either called it quits or have returned to the indie scene, Linkin Park has managed to not only stick around but also to remain a relevant and formidable act in the music industry.

Aside from their noted longevity and resilience to keep moving forward with their music, there is also a growing respect for this band coming from their most strident of detractors. Perhaps these “haters” are finally beginning to see what makes this band so special to begin with, after all.

Linkin Park has sold over 60 million albums worldwide to date. And that breaking record grows exponentially with each new studio-release from them. When I think of it, not a lot of bands that had their major label debuts at the break of the millennium have even achieved this amazing feat in terms of commercial album sales.

That statistic alone puts Linkin Park in an esteemed class of which they share with other acclaimed and celebrated bands in the history of rock.

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“Sticking” to a certain formula ?

When the band was unfairly lambasted by their critics for “sticking to a certain formula” that has worked extremely well for them in their first two multi-platinum studio-releases, it baffled me why this band was even receiving so much “heat” when I honestly didn’t see anything wrong with the music they had released early on in their careers starting with their major label debut ‘Hybrid Theory’.

So, eventually, the relentless harsh criticisms they were getting from all directions, put undue pressure on Linkin Park to distance themselves from the very musical influences that had made them a worldwide famous band in the first place !

Caving in to the pressure, they took on an almost entirely different musical approach after the release of their second studio-release ‘Meteora’. This move of theirs resulted in too much of a drastic change in their sound from that which most of us have grown accustomed to over the years.

For me, as a passionate music aficionado–and I have seen and heard a lot of popular mainstream bands come and go–I did not want a band like Linkin Park to sound like a “shell of their former selves” that they might have lost their popularity to the point they could have fallen by the wayside into obscurity.

Because when Linkin Park had adapted to the times and embraced what were then the current music trends in the forever evolving music landscape, you would have thought that you were actually listening to an entirely different band were it not for the distinctive vocal work of Chester Bennington and the occasional rap verses from Mike Shinoda.

While some could raise the argument that being able to adjust your musical style and riding along to the current wave of trends in mainstream music is a mark of a truly versatile band, for me–in the case of the Linkin Park–it could not be further from the truth.

Because for the band to not sound “dated” among the then current crop of younger bands in the mid 2000’s, that, ironically, became the very reason why Linkin Park had experienced a ton of backlash from their loyal fans !

“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t!” became the perfect illustration for Linkin Park.

(End of Part 1)