A tear rolls down Mike Shinoda’s cheek, his lips quivering as a cameraman zooms in on his face. “Are… are people really slating us all over the internet?” asks Linkin Park’s keyboard player and co-vocalist, before breaking into a grin and shaking the cameraman’s hand.
The tear isn’t real; it’s a drop of water he carefully poured on to his cheek; the man filming is You-Tuber Boyinaband. The skit is for one of his videos, and the joke – that the overtly pop sound of Linkin Park’s new album will alienate fans who cherish their nu metal days – is firmly on the band, but they’re fully in on it.
“I used to get upset about [being slated], I was like, ‘F**k these people, man,” admits frontman Chester Bennington, 41. “When our first album Hybrid Theory came out [in 2000], it was cracked on by the critics. If we got a good review on a live show it was like, ‘Too bad these guys play the kind of music they play, because they were actually fun to watch.’ But now, I can’t wait to see what people are going to say about this one.”
“We reached out to people whose work we admire from all genres, including country and pop”
Mike Shinoda
“We’ve lived through the same moment a number of times,” adds Shinoda, 40. “We have seven studio albums and probably five of them are worthy of the ‘what is this album?’ conversation.
“A couple in particular – I remember when we put out [third album] Minutes to Midnight, that was a shock. Hybrid Theory and [second album] Meteora were very similar in style, but Minutes to Midnight was a drastic departure. We sequenced the songs in a way to exaggerate the differences; we put the heaviest song next to the quietest song. We wanted people to be shocked.”
It’s inevitable that seventh album One More Light, released today, will yet again take fans by surprise. The sounds that define Linkin Park in many people’s minds – elements of metal mixed with samples and hip-hop-inspired interludes of Shinoda’s rapping – are nowhere to be found on the record, save for verses by Pusha T and Stormzy on second track “Good Goodbye”.
As for how that collaboration came about, Shinoda calls Stormzy “phenomenal”, but assures me the story is no more interesting than the band reaching out to both artists, and them agreeing to collaborate.
The first single, “Heavy”, is stripped-back, soulful R’n’B pop with clean vocals throughout, and is the first time Linkin Park have featured a female vocalist – the upcoming US pop artist Kiiara, who has yet to release her debut album.
“We’ve lived through the same moment a number of times. We have seven studio albums and probably five of them are worthy of the ‘what is this album?’ conversation”
Mike Shinoda
When Bennington joked to me in a phone interview nine months ago that Linkin Park in their early days were the “Backstreet Boys of metal”, One More Light was still being recorded. I wonder now if he made the comment knowing that pop-based jibes would be thrown at the band. Spin magazine pulled no punches when it asked in February: “So, how bad is that new Linkin Park and Kiiara song?”
While the Backstreet Boys is a stretch, the new album could easily sit on a shelf beside Twenty One Pilots and latter-career Maroon 5. The trendy, glitchy production of Tove Lo pops up in places, and the title track could almost pass as something One Direction might have released in the “grown-up” half of their career. It should be catnip for radio, but it might be kryptonite for old-school fans.
Before Shinoda pretended to cry on camera, I sat with him and Bennington in a dressing room in London’s YouTube Space as they prepared to perform an acoustic set for selected fans. They reminisce about the time they considered dropping out of the 2001 Ozzfest tour for not being metal enough.
And then I recall something else Bennington told me in that phone call. “We’re not a metal band,” he said. “I think there are elements to what we do that make us metal, and we love those, but we also love hip-hop and pop music. We even like country music. We don’t want to be bound creatively to a box.”
It’s something he’s stressed in many interviews, and makes the choice of collaborators on One More Light – as well as Stormzy, Pusha T and Kiiara, there’s songwriters Justin Tranter and Julia Michaels, best known for working with Britney Spears, Gwen Stefani and Justin Bieber – seem less left-field.
“I haven’t been sober very long; I always end up back in it. But the perspective I have now is that it’s a journey and it’s not the way things have to be”
Chester Bennington
“We’ve never worked with any [songwriters],” Shinoda, who shares lyric-writing duties with Bennington, says. “We reached out to people whose work we admire from all genres, including country and pop.”
They also turned their songwriting process on its head. “Usually we have tracks worked out and sounding pretty close to what the album version will be, and when we come [into the studio], they inspire the lyrics,” he continues. “The whole experience of this record was waking up in the morning, having an idea and writing it. It’s all about what’s happening to me right now; it’s being sung in real time while we’re feeling the thing.”
One thing that hasn’t changed is Bennington’s willingness to open himself up and explore his flaws through lyrics.
“I’m dancing with my demons,” he declares in the opening line of the first track, the tropical, house-tinged “Nobody Can Save Me”, while “Heavy” sees him “dragging around what’s bringing me down”.
The songs might sound different, but the things bringing him down are the same. “I started using drugs when I was 11, I started drinking when I was 13. That’s sad,” says Bennington pensively. “My son just turned 11, and if he was doing what I was doing at that age, it would destroy me as a parent, I’d feel like I’d completely failed him.
“I started going to 12-step programmes when I was 24, but I didn’t get sober when I was 24. I never really opened up in them, I never took advantage of what was being offered to me. I haven’t been sober very long; I always end up back in it. But the perspective I have now is that it’s a journey and it’s not the way things have to be.
“The whole experience of this record was waking up in the morning, having an idea and writing it. It’s all about what’s happening to me right now”
Mike Shinoda
“When we did the song ‘Halfway Right’, I was thinking to myself, here I am at my age, with all the experience and opportunities to not feel like I’m feeling. That’s one of the reasons ‘Heavy’ matters to me; it’s a very present thing, like, ‘I do not like the way I am right now’. At the time, it was 100 per cent true.”
Frustration and visceral anger characterised Linkin Park’s early, and arguably best-known, albums, but the light and sunny sound of One More Light evokes a new mood: optimism. Bennington appears to have embraced being able to think critically about his addictions. I doubt that even a bad review could dull his current sprightliness. He grins: “We’re prepared for it.”
‘One More Light’ is released on Friday 19 May
