Linkin Park members Emily Armstrong and Mike Shinoda are reportedly safe during the LA fires.
Linkin Park co-lead singer Mike Shinoda recently made an appearance on an episode of Mythical Kitchen, during which he explained why he didn’t want to change the band’s name after deciding to continue on without the late Chester Bennington.
“So the simple answer to that is that the music sounds like Linkin Park. Like, the DNA is all still in there,” Shinoda said. “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.
Shinoda then detailed how they decided that Emily Armstrong was the right person to step into Bennington’s shoes and usher in this new chapter for the band.
“When Emily came in, she sings so well. She’s a ton of fun to hang out with,” he said. “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.”
