Linkin Park frontman Mike Shinoda returns to Genius, joined by new bandmate Emily Armstrong, to discuss their track “The Emptiness Machine.” This marks the band’s first release since the passing of Chester Bennington and the debut of new members Emily and drummer Colin Brittain. The song is featured on their latest project, From Zero. On today’s episode of Verified, Mike and Emily dive into maintaining the band’s signature sound while embracing change, crafting evocative lyrics, the lost art of bridges in songwriting, and much more!
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00:00If I'm a Linkin Park fan, I want to know, okay, if you guys are going to make new music,
00:05what does it sound like?
00:06Is it familiar at all?
00:07Does it have that really powerful, big, loud chorus vocal?
00:12Is that what we're doing?
00:14And I wanted that to be a resounding yes.
00:17Give the fans something familiar in the first part.
00:20Let me sing all the way to the first chorus, and then introduce this new person.
00:25It's almost like you come to somebody's house, and the person you know shakes your hand and
00:30welcomes you in, and then you meet new people.
00:32He's a genius.
00:34That's perfect.
00:35I'm glad we're here, then.
00:36That's the worst joke of all time.
00:38I'm so sorry.
00:39I apologize to you and to anybody else.
00:42That was horrible.
00:50Playing the song live, you're singing hit songs that you've known forever and the fans
00:54know and love, and then Emptiness Machine happens, and the fans are singing it just
01:00like any other song, and it's just like, whoa.
01:03They sing it just as loud.
01:05They accept it as one of the songs, and it's our song.
01:08It's not just a Linkin Park song.
01:09It's the one that this version of the band made.
01:24Waiting in the distance, just like you always do, just like you always do.
01:33It's almost like fantasy.
01:34It should give you a feeling more than it tells you exactly what's going on.
01:37It's more of a metaphor.
01:39The verse, first verse especially, I wanted a lot of the words to be dangerous words.
01:44Things that are sharp, or dark, or painful, or things like that.
01:48I wanted to establish, whatever this thing is that you're interacting with is not friendly,
01:55and there's an ominous kind of feeling to it.
02:08I don't have a standard way to approach a pre-chorus.
02:12A lot of times, I find that the verse is really where you're doing a lot of the establishing
02:17storytelling, and your pre-chorus is maybe, can be like a change of color.
02:23In the context of this song, I think this pre-chorus is more about the verse is an anxious
02:27verse, and so the pre-chorus is establishing, building tension, as opposed to leaving.
02:35It's staying on track, but it's pushing into a more tense lyric, really.
02:46I think a lot of us in the band, in different ways, have been through a version of being
02:58told how we ought to do things, or what we ought to ... I don't know.
03:02I haven't.
03:03Yeah, right.
03:04Except for Emily.
03:05All the rest of us really have been through a, here's how you should be, or here's what
03:12you're missing, or what, I don't know.
03:14There's all kinds of dumb versions of that, that I have almost this pathological attachment
03:19to.
03:20I keep writing songs about the same thing.
03:21I don't know what's wrong with me, and this happens to be one of them.
03:24It's strange, too, because I feel like my parents are good parents.
03:28They weren't super pushy about, oh, you can't be an artist, or you can't be a musician,
03:34or whatever.
03:35But for some reason, this topic often comes up for me in songs.
03:39The simplification of, you ought to be this, fit in this little box, is so ridiculous.
03:44Maybe I just react to it, and write another song about it, because it's the new, whatever
03:49this month's version of it is, or something.
03:51It's because you're good at it.
03:52That's why you keep writing.
03:54You're welcome.
03:55Don't know why I'm hoping for what I won't receive, falling for the promise of the emptiness
04:06machine.
04:07The emptiness machine, to me, it's like breaking that third wall between you and society, or
04:14some other world.
04:15You'd be exposed, to a certain degree, to be open for criticism, or even loved.
04:22Almost like being loved for somebody you're not, you know what I mean?
04:25I'd rather be hated for who I am, than being loved for who I'm not.
04:30That would be the quote, I think, for what that song means to me.
04:37Second verse lyrics, when I come in, the lyrics weren't something that I would necessarily
04:58write, which was exciting, to be able to bring to life lyrics that I don't know how to write.
05:05He's the genius in this.
05:07I was just like, oh man, don't fuck it up.
05:09On the second verse lyrics, sometimes I'll write a line, even in a singing song, where
05:15I'm like, that's a bar.
05:16I like that one.
05:17There's a fire under the altar I keep on lying to.
05:21In my mind, the way that's read is, I'm praying at the altar, and I'm lying.
05:27I'm a liar to God, or whatever.
05:30That's such a nasty little idea.
05:33We rarely ever do anything that's religious related, but in the context of this song,
05:40it's not like religion, religion.
05:41It's more like a metaphorical thing, that everybody is a part of this machine that is
05:47toxic.
06:03The song is so much about these bad things happening, and scary things, and almost like
06:25an addiction to something that's toxic.
06:28Then why are you putting yourself through this?
06:30The answer is, well, I just wanted to be part of something.
06:32I just wanted to connect with something else, somebody bigger than me.
06:36That's almost the reveal of why we would do that.
07:03That switch up in the last chorus, it's nothing too crazy of a switch.
07:08You're just like, oh, two words.
07:10When I was learning the Linkin Park songs that we do live, you would think that you
07:15understand the lyrics, but when you're learning it, you're like, wait, it's like there's a
07:19the instead of an uh now, and it's like these little things.
07:23I was like, oh, God.
07:24Some of those are big changes.
07:26Some of those are really meaningful, like, oh, I changed it from one thing to the other,
07:31and the meaning of the chorus changed.
07:33Absolutely.
07:34Absolutely.
07:35That's what I found so appealing.
07:38Like on this one, I was like, did we drop the F-bomb on this one?
07:42Yeah, I think we do.
07:43I think that's the move.
07:44Don't have to ask me twice.
07:46Well, yeah.
07:47You'd be the first one to jump on board.
07:51Bridge is a lost art, especially with songs getting shorter.
07:54What happened to the good bridges?
07:56The rage against the machine.
07:57You know who has the best bridges?
07:58Who has the best bridges?
07:59Tom Petty.
08:00Tom Petty.
08:01I aspire to that.
08:03That is like a high bar.
08:05To have the song where you get to the second chorus and you're like, man, that's a good
08:09song and then you get that bridge and you go, oh my gosh, like extra credit.