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CNN have also posted this text interview with Mike, he talks about Music For Relief, Haiti and Japan, and Linkin Park’s attitude to charity.

CNN: Has the disaster inspired you to write music?
Shinoda: I did write a song based on what I was seeing on the news about Japan, which is included on Download to Donate. We decided to call it “Issho Ni.” Basically, the rough translation is, “We’re in this together.” The song doesn’t have any lyrics. Once I wrote the music, I didn’t feel like words were going to make it better. It didn’t feel as universal with words. Hopefully, even more of our Japanese fans can relate to the music and understand that song.


CNN: A lot of Linkin Park’s music is kind of apocalyptic in feel. It almost goes hand-in-hand with the backdrop here.
Shinoda: Our DJ, Joe Hahn, has directed a lot of our videos. I think on the last video, I joked with him, “Can we stop doing post-apocalyptic or mid-apocalyptic videos after this one? Can we take a break?”


I think we can look to Joe for answers about why that imagery keeps showing up. I know that it does fit with the conceptual nature of our new album, “A Thousand Suns,” and that’s just stuff that’s on our collective minds.


A lot of this record was written in a very loose, kind of subconscious way. It was like the writing equivalent of what you do when you sit down at the telephone and doodle on a note pad. It’s kind of a stream of consciousness.


CNN: Perhaps this is the kind of stuff this generation thinks about. The world has become a very dramatic place, in terms of extreme weather and natural disasters.
Shinoda: In the last two records, “Minutes to Midnight” and “A Thousand Suns,” we’ve become very aware of our place on this planet, our influence on this planet — not meaning our band, but human beings’ influence on the places in which we live.


That’s partially a function of getting older. It’s partially a function of us traveling so much, and touring in so many different places. I mean, just to give you an idea, at one point on this current record cycle, for every one album we sold in the United States, I think we were selling six, seven or eight outside the States.

Read the rest of the interview here


Listen to the full interview below or download the audio here.