Don’t call it a comeback (but it is)

LINKIN PARK

Could one of the greatest bands of the 21st century ever really replace a frontman as iconic as Chester Bennington?who committed suicide in 2017? The answer is a resounding yes, despite initial fan backlash to the idea and the somewhat chaotic launch of Dead Sara singer Emily Armstrong. Linkin Park returned to global fame with their comeback album From scratch and mass concerts in stadiums planned for all of 2025. At a time when almost no rock band, new or old, can compete on the streaming charts with their pop peers, Linkin Park has been placing both new and old songs on the Spotify Top 100 for months. Bennington once sang famous song “it doesn’t even matter in the end”, but millions of fans around the world apparently still believe otherwise.

Daniel Kohn

EMINEM

Is this a comeback just because you’ve been away for a while? and then release a perfect, sharp-tongued album with all the vigor of your previous work and your usual dose of controversy dynamite? Do you have to want to come back, at least show that you’re excited about it? What if, quixotically, your comeback involves retirement?

The Death of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce) Upon its release this summer, it immediately topped the charts, marking his eleventh number-one album. So the fans liked it and wanted it. But most critics hated it. Maybe they liked the music or not, they didn’t really say, but they did hated feelings! They were shocked shockedthat the artist formerly known as Slim Shady was unimpressed with Gen Z and didn’t believe in designer pronouns.

And these critics wanted you to know that they were grossly offended, tripping over themselves to outdo each other in their righteous indignation. But, um, we’re talking about Eminem here… who has alternately blatantly insulted and delighted millions every time he released a song, let alone an album full of provocative rackets! He is the Edward Scissorhands of the painfully politically correct, shredding what is valuable like a cabbage.

So he Is then! He’s back where he’s always been and stirring shit. Excellent!

Bob Guccione Jr.

CASSETTES!

The cassette is back, honey. (Source: Peter Bischoff via Getty Images)

I know we have declared 2024 “The Year of the CD” – we like a few drinks and after a while we start announcing everything – but the real comeback of the year, as in “last dead, buried and completely forgotten”, is that once humble cassette. Introduced in 1963, it was as much a revelation for playing music as paperbacks were for reading books, and from then on, until the mid-1980s and the advent of CDs, many, many billions were made, bought, borrowed, exchanged, recorded. dollars, unscanned and pirated. The cassettes were small (but durable) and relatively cheap. As is the case with cheaper than vinyl records, which themselves were once cheap or at least reasonable. Cassette players were also cheap and you could also record blank cassettes on them, and thus the phenomenon of home collections of your favorite or atmospheric songs was born.

Somewhere along the way they went out of fashion. CDs were fashionable. They supposedly sounded better (I would dispute that) and were literally shinier. Digital was the future, analog was doomed to extinction, the pathetic and few laments of people like me that analog it sounded better drowned in digital thunder.

Now – you guessed it – I have never lost my love for cassettes and, to the dismay of my long-time partner and despite her cold derision, I have never lost my cassette collection. The breakup sifted some of them, as it did all of us, but I still have thousands of them. I kept the faith. And now, after a long nuclear winter of sound isolation, the clouds have parted, the sun is shining and the cassette is back, baby. New cassette players are being produced, the competition is huge, musicians are releasing more and more records in this format, and Amazon is selling old cassettes like records. Alleluia!

BGJ

LL COOL J

LL has spent the last 15 years playing a law enforcement officer on your grandparents’ third favorite cop showthat is, exactly the kind of concert that will soften the image of even the toughest MC (see also: Ice-T). It’s surprising that he even bothered with a new album 11 years after the hype Authentic and the humiliating “Accidental Racist,” but FORCE it’s really, really good. Produced by Q-Tip, the beats constantly change shape with a funky scream that evokes the spirit but not the sound of his earliest singles. And LL explores them eloquently, from the perspective of a middle-aged black man in a post-George Floyd America. The presence of younger (!) artists like Snoop, No-Longer-Fat Joe, Busta Rhymes and Eminem only enhances the uniqueness FORCE.

I’ll just go ahead and call it a comeback. It’s better to apologize than to ask for permission.

Stephen Deusner

IT DON’T TAKE LONG!

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