Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda On Dealing With Brutal Criticism & Fighting Tooth And Nail For Your Vision
Do you get defensive when your creative vision is criticized after days of painstaking work? So did Mike Shinoda, who isn’t just a super-successful musician but also an exciting artist. He was kind enough to talk exclusively to SUBvert about his own personal and sometimes painful experiences in the early days of Linkin Park. Read on to discover how you can use Mike’s hard-learned lessons to boost YOUR career…
Why listen to what Mike Shinoda has to say? Because right now, there is a good chance that you are taking career advice from your mates at work, your buddies on twitter and the guy down the pub who played guitar once in the 70s.
Here’s your opportunity to learn from a guy who’s sold over 50 million albums and won two Grammy Awards. He’s a vocalist, songwriter, rapper, plays keyboard and guitar, he’s also a producer and an outstanding artist. If you want to be the best, then learn from the best…
Oyakodon
So, Mike, you’re clearly a dedicated guy who has invested a lot of time into various artistic skills. What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned whilst developing your talent?
One big breakthrough happened in college. I went to Art Center in Pasadena, which is a really fast-paced and competitive school. There was very little social life on campus, because the workload was just so heavy.
We took what we did very seriously…so spending 40 hours on a painting, then putting it up in front of your class to have 30 people critique it was brutal.
As freshmen, most people got really defensive about their work. Then, at some point, I realized that the criticisms that made me the most defensive were usually the ones that were right. It really helped me to enjoy the process of making my work better, by leaving ego at the door during the creative process.
Neuphoria
Having your work critiqued by people is tough, was there ever a time when you struggled to overcome that fear of publishing your work or performing in-front of an audience?
When we released Hybrid Theory. Our first album was painful to make, because it seemed like everyone was trying to tell us to change. They wanted us to be more like this band or that band, and we fought it tooth and nail the entire way.
So, that is to say: we made the album we wanted to make.
But once it came out, it took off surprisingly fast, and we got a lot of criticism for it entering the mainstream so quickly!
We had to overcome a lot of our own fears about what it meant to “sell out,” and realized that we never “sold out” at all—we did what we wanted to do, and people reacted to it in a positive way.
As long as we didn’t compromise our integrity, we could stand behind the record, which is what we did.
Click here for Part 2 Of This Interview where Mike tells us how he developed loyal fans, his views on money and fame and what his top priorities are as a creative person. Plus he recounts the story about a particular band that treated Linkin Park like crap.
