Mike Shinoda has opened up about the decision to pick Emily Armstrong as the singer for a reunited Linkin Park instead of a Chester Bennington sound-alike.
The announcement of Armstrong was greeted with some backlash, in part due to drama surrounding her ties to scientology and Danny Masterson; however, some fans were simply upset that the band didn’t pick someone who sounds just like Bennington.
Shinoda compared it to the Linkin Park cover bands he’d seen on YouTube, defending the choice of Armstrong as the singer for the reunion in an interview with Los Angeles radio station Alt 98.7.
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“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 continued, “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.”
Fresh off the release of their new album From Zero, Linkin Park have a busy 2025 campaign ahead, including a massive world tour featuring over 30 North American dates (get tickets here).
You can check out the interview with Shinoda in the TikTok video below.
@alt987fm #LinkinPark #HelpfulHondaMusicLounge #emilyarmstrong @Linkin Park
