Throughout his career with Linkin Park, Chester Bennington made a legacy with his raw, scratchy, powerful vocals and long screams. Still, to fans’ ears, some songs might sound harder to sing than others. According to Mike Shinoda, there was one particular Linkin Park song Bennington had difficulty in singing, as he recently told KROQ.
Looking through Linkin Park’s song catalog, some songs come forward as heavier than others. While there are songs of rather sentimental value, like ‘Numb,’ ‘In the End,’ and ‘Breaking the Habit,’ songs like ‘Faint,’ ‘One Step Closer,’ ‘Given Up,’ and ‘Qwerty’ seem more challenging to sing.
As seen in Linkin Park’s live shows, some songs had left Chester Bennington soaked in sweat. As Mike Shinoda revealed, ‘Crawling’ was the most challenging song for the late vocalist to sing. Shinoda stated that Chester was getting worn out singing ‘Crawling’ during their sets, but they had to play the song as fans demanded it.
Mike Shinoda then said Chester Bennington was eager to add another song into the set so that he didn’t have to sing ‘Crawling’ every time. According to Shinoda, ‘Faint’ is another song with very aggressive vocals, but the singer didn’t ever complain about having a hard time singing ‘Faint.’
Here is what Mike Shinoda said:
“He was getting worn out singing ‘Crawling.’ ‘Crawling’ is hard to sing; it’s really hard. And when you’ve only got one album that’s like 45 minutes long, and you’ve got to play 60 plus minutes of a show, you gotta have ‘Crawling’ in there every night. It was a huge single. We won a Grammy, like, you have to play it.
He was just so happy; he couldn’t wait to have another body of work that he could mix and match into the set with us so that he didn’t have to sing that one song every single time. We could put it in and pull it back. So, I think we started by leaving it in for a while, but eventually, we got to swap it out a little bit, and he found other songs and other ways.
If you hear songs like ‘Faint,’ which has a very aggressive vocal, really high. For some reason, the way we wrote it and the way he sang it never gave him trouble. He never complained about ‘Faint.’ And to me, to my ear, it sounds like an even more difficult vocal, but it’s not.”
So, Mike Shinoda says that ‘Crawling’ was more difficult to sing for Chester Bennington than ‘Faint.’ As Shinoda admitted, Bennington hoped they’d release another album to use during the sets that would save him from singing it. However, another reason Chester didn’t want to sing ‘Crawling’ was that it reminded him of his battle with addiction.
