Parting Shot

Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda

less than two weeks after his linkin park bandmate chester Bennington died by suicide last July, an emotionally raw and sleepdeprived Mike Shinoda began jotting down lyrics. “I felt like I needed to do it,” says the songwriter and vocalist for the enormously popular rap-rock band. “I tell people that life was so difficult, and the songs were easy.” These early sketches were expanded into songs, which turned into Shinoda’s new solo album, Post Traumatic, an unflinching glimpse into how he dealt with the shock of his friend’s death. The songs are diaristic and bracingly specific: In “Over Again,” he reflects on his terror at getting onstage for the first time without Bennington and confesses, “I get tackled by the grief at times I least expect.” Shinoda spoke to Newsweek before the recent deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain—two losses that amplified the epidemic of suicide in this country—but his thoughts are applicable to anyone living with mental illness. “I strongly urge people who feel like they don’t quite have things under control to go talk to somebody,” he says.

Which song was the most cathartic for you?

I don’t think of the songs that way. The album feels like one thing to me. In the beginning, it was having the guts to sit down and sing. It was more escapist. Over time, I started writing about real things I was thinking. Sometimes, you kid yourself—you talk in a way that covers up the truth of the matter, like saying you’re ɿne when everyone asks how you are. As I was writing a song, I tried to challenge myself to pull those layers of bullshit.

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There isn’t a singular solution, you know? Just realizing it’s OK to check in with yourself, to admit that you don’t have things under control. It’s almost foreign to me, but there are some people that are either too scared or too macho to go see a mental health professional.

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They talk about stages, and I always thought that meant they happened in order—you just had to get to the next one. But the stages are random and chaotic, you just ʀip-ʀop between them. The other thing I found is that grief’s exacerbated by the number of people going through it with you— everybody’s bouncing off each other. One person’s having an OK day, another is sad, another angry. It creates even more chaos. —Z.S.

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