Mike Shinoda has named Linkin Park's most “polarizing” album. According to Loudwire, he said, “A Thousand Suns which was our fourth record, it wasn't as commercially successful as the earlier ones because nothing could be – that would be impossible. It was very polarizing. It got one or five stars by everybody, so we ended up with three-star ratings all over the board because half the people hated it with all of their heart and soul.”
He continued, “Now we're at a point where if you ask the average person who's relatively familiar with the band what their favorite record is, a lot of them say that one. It's changed, the whole relationship with the band has changed.”
He added, “People go, like, 'Man, that was like the first album I ever bought, that's how I learned to play guitar! And then I moved on to guitar that was harder…' And that was part of the thing we were like, 'Yeah, Brad Delson could actually play much more difficult stuff…' But we loved how that sounded and we wanted to make stuff that a kid who couldn't really play guitar, and he'd be like, 'Yeah, let's play this riff!'”
