Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda explains that he didn't want a new singer to sound like the late Chester Bennington, saying it "made him feel weird" and that he'd rather Emily Armstrong bring her own voice to the band's new music🤗

Mike Shinoda, the founder of Linkin Park, has emphasized that Emily Armstrong, the band's new singer, is not attempting to take Chester Bennington's place as the band's late original frontman.

 The musician maintains that the band will not be "rewritten" in response to harsh criticism of the decision to place Armstrong front and center. The Papercut rockers announced their comeback earlier this month after a seven-year break following Bennington's suicide in 2017.

 "This is meant to be a new chapter of Linkin Park," Shinoda stated on the New Music Show on BBC Radio 1.

"We cherished the last episode, which was fantastic.  After it was over, we were given the task of answering the question, "Well, okay, what do you do if you start from scratch with another voice?"

 Shinoda clarified that neither he nor Armstrong, the singer of Dead Sara, have any plans to "start the band up again" despite having been writing songs together since 2019.

 "We were just gradually coming together, and then things just started to fall into place with Emily and Colin (Brittain), our new drummer," the 47-year-old rock musician stated.

 "We discussed adding her voice to pieces we had previously created that simply featured my voice.

"Once we did that, we were like, 'that sounds really good, we should try that on even more songs'."

 Bennington's family has criticized the decision to allow Armstrong to join the band, with his mother Susan Eubanks saying she felt "betrayed" by the band's new lineup.

 "I feel betrayed," she said in an essay for Rolling Stone magazine.  They assured me that they would notify me if they ever took any action.  They probably knew I [wouldn't] be very happy, but they didn't tell me.  I'm furious about it.