In a new episode of the Live One Podcast, Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda talked about working with other musicians and how it compared to working with their late frontman, Chester Bennington.
“With Chester I had another human being that I could feed him ideas and he could bring them to life like nobody else. He was amazing,” Shinoda said about his late bandmate. “I didn’t know any better. I hadn’t had so much experience with anybody else. I was just like, ‘Oh this is what it’s like to have a really good singer you can say ‘Hey what about this?’ and they try it and then you both go high five.’ That’s great.”
Shinoda also explained what it’s like working with other singers: “When I started working with other people, I realized that it’s harder. That’s unusual. [I was like,] ‘They are really good at singing and I think I know how to write a vocal.’ And then we get together, we do it, and everybody’s good at what they do.”
After Bennington’s death in 2017, the band took a seven-year break. This year, they reunited with singer Emily Armstrong. Some fans criticized the move, feeling she was trying to sound like Chester. But Shinoda said, “We talked about putting her voice on things we’d already written that only had my voice on them. Once we did that, we were like, ‘that sounds really good, we should try that on even more songs.'”
Shinoda added, “When she sings, it’s like the passion and she’s just 100% her, that’s the best part. She’s not trying to be Chester, she’s not trying to be anybody else. She’s her and that’s why it works.”
Even with the criticism, their lead single ‘The Emptiness Machine’ climbed to number four on the UK Official Singles Chart and hit 25 on Billboard’s Hot 100 in the US. The band also sold out concerts in London, New York, and Los Angeles.
