Photo: Getty Images North America
When Linkin Park announced they were starting a new chapter with vocalist Emily Armstrong a few months ago, the news was met with mixed reactions. It's hard to replace the band's late singer Chester Bennington, and in a new interview with Los Angeles iHeartRadio station ALT 98.7, the band's co-founder Mike Shinoda explained why they never had any intention in continuing with a vocalist who sounds like him.
“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 then compared his reaction to the phenomenon “uncanny valley.” “Your brain likes it better and better and better the more it gets more real and close to the real thing," he explained, "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.”
That's exactly what happened to him when he watched these bands. “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," Shinoda admitted. "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.”
Linkin Park recently released From Zero—their first album in seven years and first with Armstrong—and also announced a massive 2025 world tour. Watch the interview below.