Linkin Park Star Explains Band's Change In Musical Direction

Linkin Park have always been a band to mix genres but some fans were surprised with what appears to be a move more towards pop with the music they have revealed so far from their forthcoming album "One More Light".

The new effort is set to be released on May 19th and Mike Shinoda spoke with All Things Loud (via Radio.com) recently and explained the change in musical direction.

"We got off tour around a year and a half ago, and I'd already been writing a bunch of demos and playing things for the guys. I decided to stop in London, because I had been interested in potentially writing with some people outside of the band," he told the show.

"Justin Parker is one of them, and I'd seen his name on some credits including stuff by Lana Del Rey, and I also sat with Eg White who'd written with Florence + the Machine and Adele. We've always written all of our own stuff, even if we did have a couple of little collaborations on The Hunting Party. Those tracks were already written, though, with our collaborators just layering something else on top. The only collaboration which was written from scratch was the one with Daron from System of a Down on 'Rebellion.' It just got me interested in the idea of writing with other people."

He continued, "As a band and as friends we all know each other back to front, and I was really hoping to broaden my horizon and learn from some other writers who just do that for a living.

"During my first meeting with Justin Parker I just asked him, 'So, what the hell do you do for a living?' Like, I don't know anything about how it feels to be a songwriter and how it feels to go into sessions with people. I tried doing that in the early 2000s, but I absolutely hated it.

"So I asked Justin how it worked for him; do they do it all one-on-one, or are there writers camps where you all get together and work on, say, a Rihanna record? I got to learn from different folks how that worked, and for us there was one version which really worked but that probably wouldn't work for everybody.

"Each day we would come into the studio, and Brad and I would invite someone along so that we could have some small talk. We would ask each other what was on our minds each day and what we wanted to sing about. Sometimes it was something really stupid, but sometimes it would be something which ended up on One More Light."

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