In the latest episode of Mythical Kitchen, Mike Shinoda explained why Linkin Park chose not to change their name following Chester Bennington’s passing.
Shinoda addressed the question, saying, “So the simple answer to that is that the music sounds like Linkin Park. Like, the DNA is all still in there,” Shinoda replied to the question. “It’s obvious to anybody who listens to it and gives it a chance. The second thing though is that as we were navigating the, I don’t know, like the decisions we were making about like what is the band? Like, what do we make? Who’s in the band? Who’s playing what? All of that.”
“We could have chosen a male singer. We could have chosen somebody that sounded very different. We could have chosen somebody that sounded very similar. We could have had the singer of one of our cover bands who covers Linkin Park and is like a doppelganger. Like, so, so, so close to Chester, could have had them. And so what we did end up doing, which just naturally felt better, it wasn’t a strategy,” he continued.
He then shared how they decided on Emily Armstrong as the band’s new vocalist: “When Emily came in, she sings so well. She’s a ton of fun to hang out with. We end up just sitting around. It was like, oh, we’ve been here for like two hours just talking. Yeah. Like, that’s the thing at the end of the day that made it obvious what direction we should go.”
The rumors about a new singer for Linkin Park began circulating after Orgy’s frontman Jay Gordon accidentally revealed that the band had a female vocalist. “Very, very cool guys and obviously a great band. They’ve been around a long time and they’re still going for it. It’s going to be tough without Chester [Bennington], but we’ll see. I hear they got a girl singer now. That’s what I heard.”
Shinoda also shared his satisfaction with the new direction Linkin Park is taking, emphasizing that the band’s ‘LP DNA’ is still going strong. “It’s really complicated,” Shinoda said. “For me, two years ago it was very overwhelming, and I think the best thing that we did was to just basically let things happen in the order and at the timeline that they were gonna happen, let things happen organically and not push too hard.”
He added, “And I feel like what ended up evolving was we just naturally kind of found each other, we found this new lineup, we found Emily and Colin in particular, and the music just kind of came into focus based on what we were having the most fun doing.”
Looking ahead, Linkin Park is scheduled for three shows in Mexico at the end of January and early February. The band will then perform in Japan and Indonesia in mid-February. In April, they will kick off a U.S. tour in Austin, Texas, followed by a second U.S. tour running from late July in Brooklyn to September 24 in Seattle.
