Mike Shinoda Gets Brutally Honest on New Song ‘About You’

Linkin Park‘s Mike Shinoda unveiled a stomping new solo song, “About You,” featuring Blackbear. The track will appear on Shinoda’s debut solo album, Post Traumatic, out June 15th.

“About You” opens with Shinoda spitting brutally honest bars ”“ “I buckled up told myself to suck it up/ I was scared to death to get up there and spill my fucking guts” ”“ over a beat of clattering percussion and blitzing synths. But the song eventually ebbs into a melodic haze, with Blackbear crooning the track’s poignant bridge before Shinoda rides out the song on its bitter hook, “All of a sudden it’s about you/ Even when it’s not about you.”

Shinoda also shared a video for “About You,” which he directed. Much of the clip was filmed in Shanghai and features Shinoda performing the track in front of the city’s luminous skyline.

In an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Shinoda said he crafted “About You” out of several other songs he was working on. He also addressed the lyrics, saying they weren’t directly about late Linkin Park singer, Chester Bennington.

“You know part of the thing about the lyrics in this song, which I know you’ll appreciate, is I was writing all these songs and a lot of the early stuff on this album was about what had happened and it was about Chester and all that. Then I started trying to write some songs that weren’t about Chester and weren’t about that whole thing, and I realized that people would hear them as if they were about him. I was like, man even when I try and make a song that’s not about him, it still feels like it’s about him.”

“About You” follows previously released Post Traumatic tracks”Crossing a Line” and “Nothing Makes Sense Anymore.” In January, Shinoda shared a three-track EP, also titled Post Traumatic, marking his first new music since Bennington’s death.

Watch the music video below: