Emily Armstrong

Emily Marcia Armstrong is an American musician and songwriter, known as the co-founder of rock band Dead Sara and the new co-vocalist of Linkin Park starting in September 2024. Her vocal style has a very powerful, gravely, 90s nature to it that brings intensity to the music she performs. She was born on May 6, 1986.

Early Life

Emily was born in Los Angeles, to parents who were prominent members of the Church of Scientology, being born into it herself. She received her first guitar as a birthday present when she was 12, and from that moment knew that all she wanted to do with her life was to sing and play in a rock band. She claims she first learned that she could scream when she got really mad at a teacher, and "a voice came out that I never heard of, never heard from myself... and I went straight to the practice room to try and recreate it... and once I discovered that, I was able to hone it."

While in school, Emily performed with a variety of folk bands while developing her performance abilities. Emily dropped out of high school to pursue a career in music.

Career

Dead Sara

Emily Armstrong met bandmate Siouxsie Medley while they were both in high school through a mutual friend in 2002 when Medley was 15 and Armstrong was 16. The pair began writing music together in 2003. In 2004, they completed their first demo, entitled 'Changes,' an acoustic folk track with a Cranberries-esque sound, with Armstrong on bass and vocals.

Inspired by the likes of Hole, Nirvana, Fleetwood Mac, and Led Zeppelin, the young pair of songwriters and guitarists would "listen to records backwards, and get into the conspiracy theories and urban legends like The Beatles’ ‘Paul is dead’ stuff. One of the theories was about the song Sara by Fleetwood Mac, that that they sing ‘Dead Sara’ in the song. We were just young teenagers, and I remember that we texted each other at almost exactly the same time saying, ‘The band name should be Dead Sara!’" Before arriving at Dead Sara, the duo was briefly known as Epiphany in 2005, playing their first show under this moniker at Los Angeles' Mint Club, Armstrong playing bass and Medley on guitar.

Dead Sara embarked on their very first tour in 2007, opening for Endless Hallway on their California dates. Their debut release came in 2008 with the six-track EP The Airplane Sessions through Viscount Records. During this time, the band was going through a number of different drummers and bass players, before ultimately recruiting former Skrillex bandmembers Sean Friday and Chris Null to the band in 2009. Armstrong and Medley launched their own record label, called Pocket Kid Records, a subsidiary of Interact-TV, Inc., in 2010.

In these early years of the band, Armstrong began making a name for herself as a vocalist in the industry. Courtney Love enlisted her to sing backing vocals on Hole's 2010 record Nobody's Daughter, for which she received great praise for her contributions. Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane noted her as one of the newer artists she was most excited to see more of in 2011 in an interview with the The Wall Street Journal.

Discography