YMMV / Minutes to Midnight

• Broken Base: This is one of the most polarizing Linkin Park albums, gaining the strongest They Changed It, Now It Sucks! reactions against the band until ten years later, but also having its fair share of defenders claiming it to be a Growing the Beard album that helped the band shape their identity (such as by introducing some political themes and having Mike start singing in addition to rapping) and survive the changing musical landscape due to Nu Metal having been losing popularity since the time of Meteora's release.
• Critical Dissonance: Sold very well and got positive reviews, but was thrashed by the fanbase, especially those who wanted another Hybrid Theory or Meteora. The general consensus being that they traded in everything that made them unique in order to be a generic rock band.
• Franchise Original Sin: One of the complaints about Minutes to Midnight was the lack of rapping and Shinoda on lead vocals in general. However, the two most popular songs from Meteora - "Numb" and "Breaking the Habit" - didn't feature Shinoda rapping (and the latter didn't feature his vocals at all), but it was not an issue then because Mike still performed rap vocals on the majority of the songs. Their debut single, "One Step Closer" from Hybrid Theory, also had no vocals from Mike, but it was not obvious because the chorus vocals were layered and Mike lip-synced those parts in the video. In contrast, Mike only raps on two songs on Minutes to Midnight and sings lead on one other, leaving Chester's distinctive voice to dominate most of the songs while Mike takes a backseat, resulting in the They Changed It, Now It Sucks! reactions this album received at the time.
• Growing the Beard: Depending on who you ask, it's this. This album marked the first of many albums for the band to reference more political themes and develop a distinct style. It also helps that, although Mike's vocal presence was infamously limited here, this was the first album to feature him singing instead of just rapping, an element that stuck with the rest of the band's discography.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Like the rest of their body of work, certain songs on this album have shed a lot more light into Chester's long struggle against depression that ultimately drove him to suicide in 2017. In particular, there's "Bleed It Out", which references a noose, "Given Up", and "Leave Out All the Rest", which reads like a suicide note.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Fans and non-fans alike would admit that they'd only listen to "Given Up" for Chester's epic two-note, 17-second scream in the song's bridge.
• Memetic Mutation: "[X] but if it came out in 2007."^Explanation Based on a Twitter meme involving the ending of the first Transformers movie, which features "What I've Done" at the end of the movie. Other media, such as Black Panther (2018), Batman Begins, Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Boys (2019) have been edited to include the song. Both the movie and this album were released in 2007.
• Misaimed Fandom: "Bleed It Out" sounds like it's a song about self harm (hell, even Tampon usage), but it's just as meta as "One Step Closer" — it's about writer's block, and the band just having a hoot with the lyrics. Hence, the first lyric being "Yeah, here we go for the hundredth time".
  • To be precise its about the dissonant frustrations the band had with writing lyrics for the songs in the album, to the point that they, along with Co-Producer Rick Rubin, had to dump song drafts left and right repetitively.

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