To me, this is pretty much the first song in their discography where they lost their magical LP touch. It's not about it being pop, they can make good pop music (Burning In The Skies, Waiting for the End, etc.), but this just isn't a very good song. There's no build up, no interesting solo parts, no unexpected changes, it's just a flat pop song.
Your post is still irrelevant. You soured at the fact that people who worked on Heavy worked with Gomez, Bieber, etc. as if it were old cheese found in someone's ass. Heavy doesn't even sound like any of those artists.
A crapload of people have worked with Biebs throughout his career (including Rick Rubin). If LP looked for songwriters to collaborate with, as they did, odds were always really good they would've inevitably stumbled upon someone who had contributed to his music at some point or another. It's the kind of opportunity any pop songwriter worth their salt would probably kill for because Biebs is one of the biggest names in the world - there's no way you could fault them for that.
The thing that makes this such an epic fail on LP's part, is this.. By going with this pop style, by bringing in these Bieber writers and so on.. Linkin Park thought they were going to creep up in the charts and be loved by people who'd never heard them before. What happened in reality, is Linkin Park were already on everyone's radar.. and these people saw "New Linkin Park" trending on Facebook, got excited.. clicked and then said "What the fuck is this shit!? RIP Linkin Park"
I don't know if this has been posted elsewhere but now that the track list has been released, I think we can safely say this snippet is from the song "Sorry For Now". It sounds really good imo. Cannot wait for this album to be on repeat for me in my Summer playlist!
Haven't they said that it is pretty much an acoustic song? At least here it has too much other stuff going on. By the way: Heavy charted on 22 in the worldwide ITunes charts: http://www.kworb.net/ww/ Not bad
While I wish the song was a bit longer, it definitely jolted me in a similar fashion that What I've Done did in 2007. It's incredibly well put together and sticks in your head. With the Final Masquerade acoustic, and this recent acoustic session, I'm hoping for some real mellow stuff on the album. If the last record was The Hunting Party, may this be the stoner cookout after the kill.
So if, like two years ago, someone would have just shown you the instrumental to "Heavy", you would have guessed it's Linkin Park or any of the Biebers, Rihannas etc. from the radio?