Linkin Park Expose Chester Bennington Ripoffs

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During an interview with Alt 98.7, Linkin Park vocalist Mike Shinoda spoke about Linkin Park tribute bands. He opened up about the decision to pick Emily Armstrong as the singer for a reunited Linkin Park instead of a Chester Bennington sound-alike.

“We just want Emily to be Emily,” he said. “The songs are the songs. Emily is Emily… There was a time early on, like 2020-ish, 2019, whatever — like, I remembered I was watching videos… I think a video of a cover band, a Linkin Park cover band, showed up in my feed. Fans were loving it. They were all like, ‘Oh my God, this person’s so good. They sound so much like Chester.’”

Shinoda likened his reaction to the “uncanny valley” — “your brain likes it better and better and better the more it gets more real and close to the real thing, and then the moment before it becomes exactly as real, your brain goes completely the opposite direction … right back down to ‘I hate it,’ because your brain can tell that it’s trying to be tricked. And nobody’s brain likes that.”

He said: “So, when I was watching this YouTube video, or Instagram video, of this cover band, I was like, ‘That’s really cool, but it’s also creepy that it sounds so much like Chester.’ I don’t like it, it weirds me out. It made me immediately know that it wasn’t the move for us. I don’t like it. I like it for [the cover bands], I just don’t like it for us… These bands do a great job, but I wouldn’t put that in our band.”

During the same interview, Mike said that Emily didn’t want to come off too excited.

During another interview with RTL2, Mike also spoke about ‘Overflow,’ the 7th track of the band’s eight studio album ‘From Zero.’ He said: “As we were writing it, some of the core ideas were about almost feeling overwhelmed. It’s kind of like when you’re on social media and there’s just too much shit. It’s just so much. [..] And it’s making me anxious.”