While speaking to Q101 in a recent interview, Linkin Park’s new co-lead vocalist Emily Armstrong revealed that she never really wanted to be a singer. Reflecting on her musical journey, Armstrong admitted that she only ever began to sing out of necessity.
“I had singer friends. I never wanted to be a singer. So I’d have people sing the songs that I wrote, and that was like… I just loved being in a band, you know? Obviously, I ended up being a singer,” she said.
“I was kind of forced into it, just because the singers that came and went – I was just kind of annoyed, people leaving and coming and going. I didn’t realize at the time I wanted it to sound a certain way. I realized that later. We were about to do a little tour up the coast of California, and the singer couldn’t do it. And then I was like, ‘Okay, I guess I’ll just do it.'”
Armstrong continued: “It was kind of annoying. I was like, ‘Okay, I wrote the songs. I’ll do it.’ But then at that point, I was just kind of like, ‘Okay,’ so once I started getting in front of people, I was like, ‘Okay, there’s something to this. I’m still not the best.’ But I could hear it. I clicked into that, and then I just started going into that mentality of just chasing that sound that I heard so well in my head and realizing, ‘Oh, I can’t get anybody to do this.'”
“You can’t articulate something like that, you just have to do it. And so I started doing it, and I found so much pleasure doing it and being in a band and writing the songs and having it just come to life in a way. But at the same time, it’s a dream to be in a band with another singer because that’s always been something that I really wanted,” she added.
