When Linkin Park came back with their first new single “Heavy” featuring young songstress Kiiara, everyone was shocked. The band did a complete U-Turn and changed up their style: instead of heavy guitars, the new track was a pure pop song. Since then every promo single release off their upcoming album One More Light was accompanied by a heated discussion by fans who love the new style vs. fans who feel like their favorite band has betrayed them. Linkin Park themselves repeatedly stressed in interviews that One More Light is a deeply emotional record which isn’t intended to fit into a box.
Tomorrow is the big day: One More Light will finally be released! It has ten tracks of which five have already been released as singles or promo singles:
01. Nobody Can Save Me
02. Good Goodbye – 2nd single
03. Talking to Myself
04. Battle Symphony – Promo single
05. Invisible – Promo single
06. Heavy – 1st single
07. Sorry for Now – Promo single
08. Halfway Right
09. One More Light
10. Sharp Edges
In case you’re wondering if the criticism is true, that Linkin Park have made a pop album, let me tell you this: yes, it’s true. One More Light is pure pop music. “Heavy” was a great first single as it represents the style of the whole album. Still, we aren’t listening to the selling out of Linkin Park, but to the evolution of Linkin Park. Why? Let me explain:
Rock music has this weird self-conception that it is the one true authentic genre of music: real people need real skills to play real instruments while the vocals are live and raw. Pop music on the other hand is said to be fabricated, fake, dishonest and written in 5 minutes by song writers who vomit one track after the other onto fake singer’s albums. When has the rock world become so arrogant? Music is a form of art that changes with the people who create it. Just because someone picked up a guitar at some point in their life, it doesn’t mean they’ll play it for the rest of their lives. What matters is that the musical piece has a heart and soul.
And this is where we come back to Linkin Park’s One More Light. This album has so much heart and soul it’s almost pumping blood on its own.
Read the rest of my review on GENRE IS DEAD Magazine!
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