‘We’re just going to make music that we like,’ Chester Bennington tells MTV News. By James Montgomery Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington Photo: MTV News By now, you’ve probably listened to Linkin Park ‘s A Thousand Suns somewhere between 20 and 50 times (just like Mike Shinoda told you to !), and you’ve probably formed a pretty solid opinion on the album. Either you think it’s a brave, ballsy reinvention of the band’s sound , or you hate it because, dude, where are the guitars ?!? Safe to say, A Thousand Suns is easily Linkin Park’s most divisive album, but no matter how you feel about it, the band is fine with it. After all, they stopped listening to other people’s opinions years ago. “When it comes to people’s opinions about the music, we know people are going to like some things, and some people are going to not like things, and that’s the greatness of opinion,” LP’s Chester Bennington told MTV News. “You don’t have to like something because someone told you it was good, and you don’t have to think something’s bad because someone says [it is]. “[And] there have been periods of our career where our maturity level might not be what it is today, and … like, we read 60 things that are positive about the band, and the one thing someone says they didn’t like, you’re like, ‘Oh God, I have to change my life,’ ” he continued. “And you know, you can get caught up in that kind of stuff. So we’ve decided — very clearly — that we’re just going to make music that we like, that is challenging to us to create and pushes us in a place that makes us feel uncomfortable and giddy, like we’re discovering something. As long as we do that, and we feel happy with the record we put out, then it’s like, ‘OK, we’ve done our best, and if you like it, great, and if you don’t, go find something that you like.’ ” To that end, though much of the criticism about Suns seems to focus on how different it is from LP’s previous efforts (that or the whole “no guitars” thing), Bennington said that those different moments are actually his favorite on the entire album … rather unapologetically so. “I think that ‘Waiting for the End’ and ‘Iridescent’ are probably tied at #1 [for my] favorite song on the record,” he said. “I just think they’re really beautiful. They’re different. I like the way ‘Iridescent’ builds and climaxes, I like the summertime vibe of ‘Waiting,’ and I like the lyrical content of it all, and the dynamic, too.” Related Videos MTV News Extended Play: Linkin Park Related Artists Linkin Park
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Linkin Park Tell Thousand Suns Critics To ‘Go Find Something You Like’
