Mike Shinoda's Daughter Asked: What Does He Know About Performing?
Mike Shinoda tried to fix one chord in his daughter's school song. Her comeback, and his wife's Rock in Rio video, gave Fallon a great story.
Linkin Park had been back for less than two weeks when Mike Shinoda sat down with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show on September 17, 2024. The band played "The Emptiness Machine" with new singer Emily Armstrong that night, but the biggest laugh came from a story about his own kid, one wrong guitar chord and a dad who, in her eyes, knew nothing about being on stage.
From Zero
Linkin Park · 2024
Two Lessons and One Wrong Chord
A couple of years earlier, as Shinoda told it, one of his daughters announced she had signed up to play a song at a "school festival type of thing." The catch: she had taken exactly two guitar lessons.
2lessons
guitar lessons she had taken when she signed up to play
A week or two later he heard her practicing. She had most of the song down, but one chord was wrong. So he checked in, asked how things were going and casually showed her where her fingers should go. Her reply was short: "Yeah, whatever."
He took the hint and backed off. The next day she came to him and asked, "Hey, Dad, um, can you show me that chord?" He showed her and figured she had simply come around.
Anna's Version
Then he told the story to his wife, Anna. She laughed and said, "That's not what happened."
My wife literally pulled up a video of Linkin Park, onstage at, like, Rock in Rio in front of 85,000 people.
Mike Shinoda
Anna had overheard the first conversation, where their daughter basically told him to get out and stop telling her how to play. After he left, Anna went in and told her she should listen to her dad. The answer is the line Shinoda will probably never live down: "What does HE know about performing?"
So Anna pulled up a video of Linkin Park on stage at Rock in Rio, in front of what Shinoda remembered as 85,000 people. Their daughter watched it and asked, "Who's that?"
Why the Kids Missed It
It sounds wild, but the timing explains it. Linkin Park stopped touring after Chester Bennington died in 2017, and Shinoda told Fallon the band hadn't been on the road for about seven years. His three kids play some music themselves, including drums and piano, but they were so young back then that they barely remember Linkin Park as a working band.
7years
roughly how long Linkin Park went without touring after 2017, by Shinoda's count
That gap closed fast. On September 5, 2024, the band introduced Armstrong and drummer Colin Brittain in a livestream and announced From Zero, which arrived on November 15. By the time he sat down with Fallon, the new lineup had already played arena shows in Los Angeles and New York.
So the kid who asked "Who's that?" got a proper answer that fall: her dad was back on arena stages, and his chord tips suddenly looked a lot more credible.
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// Quick quiz
What did Shinoda's daughter ask after watching Linkin Park play Rock in Rio?
As Shinoda told Jimmy Fallon, she watched the clip and simply asked, "Who's that?"
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