Linkin Park, Blackpink, and true "Creation"

I feel the music you listen to in high school tends to be pretty formative. I have since grown to appreciate pop and EDM more than I did back then, but otherwise my playlist is still dominated by either rock or classical. Of course, music is varied and resists simple categorization by genre so this isn't really a "rule", especially if a band's sound changes over time.

Linkin Park is an excellent case in point. In high school, "Hybrid Theory" rocked our world. The album overall was full of angsty emo rock; "Numb", "Papercut", and of course who can forget the iconic "Crawling". The next few albums were somewhat similar but things started to change a bit; lyrically at least the band started to explore different themes. Less raw anger, and more self-reflection, digging within to find motivation in a tough world. If you listen to their newest (2017) album "One More Light", you'd probably have no idea it was the same band. "Heavy" in particular feels very different with the incorporation of a collab with Kiiara, a female singer for the first time. Their newer stuff could be hit or miss for me personally (I probably enjoyed maybe 30% of the tracks overall in The Hunting Party, Living Things, and One More Light, compared to 70% for Hybrid Theory, Meteora, Minutes to Midnight, and A Thousand Suns) but I did appreciate what they were trying to do.

One More Light was released 15 years after Hybrid Theory. That's a pretty long time to be doing the same thing. I'm sure a lot of fans would be perfectly satisfied if Linkin Park had kept the exact same style for 15 years, but on the other hand you could legitimately criticize them for lack of innovation, which is to say that no matter what you do you're going to alienate *someone*. So public opinion by itself isn't relevant to whether or not a band should evolve - what matters is how, and if they want to. As a band, Linkin Park has taken a lot of heat for their newer work, though I think many listeners were able to re-evaluate and appreciate these albums in the aftermath of lead vocalist Chester Bennington's untimely suicide, seeing that there really is something being said in their music, something that most modern bands don't really attempt to explore.

So I would categorize Linkin Park as more than "performers" and "musicians", but "artists" too. To be clear, that someone is a true "artist" doesn't mean that their stuff is necessarily "good". A lot of art is shit, in my opinion. But that in large part is because I don't necessarily relate to what this artist is trying to say, or I do understand the message and just disagree. To create art is more about the intent than the result, I'd say.

To go off on a slight tangent (it makes sense, I promise), one of my guilty pleasures on Youtube is the FineBros' "React" series. Yes, it's predictable and caters to to a pretty low common denominator, but it's still somehow funny - and more importantly, oftentimes introduces me to bands or groups or funny videos that would have otherwise escaped my attention. A few weeks ago they did a "[Group] reacts to Blankpink" series, and I was *very* impressed by Blackpink's music videos. That their beats are catchy and the girls are very attractive doesn't surprise me - catchy pop music has basically been analyzed to the point where it can be created by formula. But I couldn't help but feel drawn in by the high production value and effort put into the whole thing - it's clear that everyone involved put in a lot of time and effort to create something with wide appeal. As a group, Blackpink is a technical masterpiece. Visually speaking, their stuff is absolutely beautiful. But it isn't art.

Now, this isn't to denigrate Blackpink. There is obviously value in executing something extremely well. It takes a lot of dedication, hard work, and attention to detail to do what they do. On the other hand, the work doesn't feel the least bit "genuine", compared to Linkin Park's stuff - the new experimental stuff, in particular. And I get it - to be an "artist" is, to a certain extent, a luxury afforded to those that don't necessarily have as much to lose. Blackpink (like any high profile KPop group) is very talented, but they're deeply entrenched in a system/institution that requires a high ROI on a blockbuster budget. You can't really take risks when you've spent a budget of 50 million on an album - it needs mass appeal to pay for itself and draw in profits. It's a story played out all over, whether it's blockbuster Hollywood movies with plots that are basically paint-by-numbers, or Triple A video games with budgets larger than the GDP of small island nations. It's all technically very impressive, but there's no art.

Now, not everything needs to be art. In fact, entertainment and culture would probably be pretty shitty if that was a requirement. A teenager's foray into understanding and picking apart his/her emotions makes for great artistic material, for the teenager - but it's pretty played out for everyone else. But artists lead the way, bringing new policies and concepts to life, the most successful of which are co-opted by "the industry" and turned into something with polish that eventually permeates throughout the masses. We'd stagnate without art. Someone has to "create", and the rest of us take this raw material and refine it into something even better (subjective, of course). It's a fairly symbiotic relationship, I'd say.

So all that is a long-winded to say that I love both Linkin Park and Blackpink, despite the fact that the two groups are almost polar opposites in every way.

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Chinese version of this post here.