Linkin Park One More Light: An Album A Day

An album a day is posted 5 days a week, Monday through Friday



Here's an album that hasn't generated any controversy...

Maybe it's just me, but I really feel like Linkin Park caught way too much hell for this album. Is it the best album they've ever done? No, not by a long shot, but I cannot understand the outrage from some Linkin Park fans. As a longtime fan of Linkin Park myself, I’ve been seeing the same comments about the band being a sellout or needing to go back to their nu-metal roots since A Thousand Suns (and trust me, it goes back further than that.)

The thing is, they did exactly that on their last album The Hunting Party, which is a nu-metal album that is heavier than anything they’ve ever done. And the response to the album was okay, but that was all it was. Where previous albums had brought in new fans or broadened their sound, The Hunting Party was a niche album pandering to fans who would still rather listen to Hybrid Theory on repeat than hear anything new.

And that is why I can understand the frustration that spawned the comments Chester Bennington has made towards fans of the old Linkin Park. The band literally just made an album geared specifically for them and they still wanna call Linkin Park sellouts and say they don’t care about their fans.

Now that all the background is out of the way, how does the actual album hold up? Because regardless of obnoxious “fans” and backstory on the album, the only thing that matters is the music. Honestly, it’s average; some tracks are really good, some tracks are okay and a few tracks are just a boring waste of time.

The best tracks are Good Goodbye, Talking To Myself, Heavy and Sharp Edges. Good Goodbye is the song that I wish more of this album was formatted like, it is the only track to feature rapping and overall has a modern trap feel. This song would fit very well on Living Things with the ambient synths in the background with an aggressive rap beat on top. The guest verses work well with Stormzy’s verse particularly well done.

Talking To Myself features one of the only cases of lead guitar playing on the album and is a strong alternative rock song. The chorus reminds me of Handclap by Fitz And The Tantrums (another rock band to take a dip into pop) and overall this track is what Linkin Park doing pop rock can sound like at their best. This and Heavy are tied for the best overall pop track on the album, with this being more of the Imagine Dragons leaning side of pop rock and Heavy being closer to Kiiara's style mixed with twenty one pilots.

Sharp Edges is the closing track and is one of the weirder moments on this album, but I really enjoy it. It has an indie folk sound similar to Ed Sheeran and at times has an almost country feel. While it is not something I would expect from Linkin Park, I find myself really loving this track for what it is; and that is kind of the best way I can sum up this album.

While there are some real duds (Halfway Right, Battle Symphony) I generally enjoy the album for what it is. Something I learned a while back with Linkin Park is you have to approach each album as its own entity, because after Meteora they have not made two albums with the same style. As a 2010’s pop rock album it’s pretty good, definitely in the top 20 pop albums of the decade.

But as a Linkin Park album this is definitely the worst one they have done. The style of this album is so much weaker than anything they have ever tried before that it simply doesn't match up. When compared to all the other genres Linkin Park has covered on past albums, 2010’s pop rock just can’t stand up.
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