And it just gets worse: Linkin Park, Good Goodbye

For a band that has been globally popular for over fifteen years you wouldn't think Linkin Park would need to worry about gaining new fans. I'm not saying their albums are of Dark Side of the Moon quality but they do share with the likes of Pink Floyd the means to attract generation after generation of new fans. Which makes the 2017 incarnation of the band so head scratchingly weird. Previous singles have shown Linkin Park to be sleepwalking their way through easy street of bland pop songs. So when it was announced that the next single would be a collaboration with rappers Pusha T and Stormzy, I thought that Chester, Mike, and co had some ambition left to be more than mediocre.

Alas no, "Good Goodbye", stuttering chorus and all, is the latest in a batch on diet singles that scrapes away any edge the band had left. It's an awful song, only partially saved by Stormzy who actually brings an air of presence to the light weight instrumentation, which itself is undermined by the shout out to the band. Mike Shinoda has always sounded like a boy rapper trying to be a man, at least he has since he stopped writing interesting lyrics about introversion and isolation and replaced them with empty posturing. No one's coming for you Mike, because no one cares. As for Chester, he continues to be the flat chorus man with not even a spark of the aggression that made his a hero to millions of teenage outsiders. The mainstream can have Linkin Park, we don’t want them anymore.