Mike Shinoda and Emily Armstrong spoke with ALT 98.7 FM about their album ‘From Zero.’ During the conversation, Shinoda shared the process behind creating ‘Heavy Is The Crown’ and how they intentionally kept the scream shorter in tribute to Chester Bennington’s 17-second scream.
“So on ‘Heavy Is The Crown,’ we had this idea for the scream in the bridge and it was going to be this long thing and for hardcore Linkin Park fans, I did time that moment. I literally pulled out the timer, I was like, ‘How long is this part? It’s about 17 seconds, okay,’ because that’s a that’s a thing, that’s a number in the lore of Linkin Park,” Shinoda explained. “So we did it and I should say, we wrote it and we planned it and it’s like, ‘Okay, here’s how the part goes.'”
Shinoda didn’t think Armstrong would be able to nail the scream in one take. “Then Emily gets in the booth and she’s like, ‘I think I know it. I’m going to get this on the first take. I was like, ‘Okay, all right, go for it big guy [sarcastically]’ and she totally did. We did a bunch of takes of it. We did like a whole bunch of takes but the verse one was the one. It was cool because it ended up being just shy of 17 seconds and it was like 16 and a half. When we went through the different takes the longer ones actually didn’t sound as good. It was weird when they kind of ended over top of the next vocal.”
“So one thing about keeping the shorter one, is that was nice, it was like in a sense it respects Chester’s 17-second scream. It’s like yeah that one’s still the long scream but by the way, she can kick ass too,” he added.
Linkin Park released their long-awaited album on November 15 this year. At first, the band had no plans to return with a new singer or album, but Shinoda eventually convinced his bandmates to bring Armstrong into the band.
“I was a little more of a believer earlier because I spent the most time with Emily so I was like, ‘Yeah she’s good,’ and I think the guys are going to like her but I don’t want to be pushy about it. I want to just present what I think I know and let them react. So we just started doing some sessions and I played them. I even made them like a little very short Dead Sara playlist,” Shinoda said in an interview with the Zach Sang Show.
He added: “It was just me and Joe and Dave [Farrell], and Joe [Hahn] was like, ‘Do you think Emily would just sing? Could we just have her sing all of the stuff?’ He wasn’t being silly, he was like serious. He’s like, ‘Do you think we could demo her voice as the lead on certain songs just her on the whole song just to hear what that sounds like?’”
Linkin Park is currently on tour in support of their new album, with their most recent show in Saudi Arabia.
