- In a recent update, Mike Shinoda confirmed that What I've Done was never meant for Optimus Prime.
- Shinoda revealed that he wrote four demos, each named after a character from the movie, namely, Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Starscream, and Megatron.
- What I've Done by Linkin Park was originally Megatron, but was ultimately used for Optimus Prime.
Whenever we think of Transformers, three things come to mind: breathtaking action sequences, Optimus Prime’s speeches that make you want to die in battle for him, and Linkin Park. The collaboration between the franchise and the beloved band began back in 2007, when Transformers first came out. We all saw the final scene where Optimus Prime looked up in the sky and gave his iconic speech, and then we were hit with Linkin Park’s “What I’ve Done.”
I don’t know about you, but since then, that song has always been one of the most heard on my Spotify Wrapped. Recently, Mike Shinoda revealed that there is a rather ironic story about Linkin Park’s What’ve Done and Transformers.
What I’ve Done Was Never Meant for Optimus Prime
Recently, Trackstarpresents interviewed Mike Shinoda, where they asked him about making music for movies, especially Transformers. To this, Mike responded that he and the others were working on their album, Minutes of Midnight, when they received rough stills from the original Transformers movie.
However, they didn’t have a song to send back, so Mike came up with four demo songs, each named after prominent Transformers from the movie, namely, Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Starscream, and Megatron. Following this, Mike Shinoda revealed that among the demos for Transformers, What I’ve Done was originally meant for Megatron. In his comment, Shinoda Said-
“We were in the studio working on Minutes of Midnight, our third record, and there were a couple of semi-finished frames with the robots and then a bunch of stuff where it looked like they were made out of clay. It was like the whole screen was gray, but you could see the shapes of them fighting or talking. We were like, Oh, this is going to be so sick. We didn’t have the song yet. I went back home and I wrote four demos, and each of them was named after a transformer. There was an Optimus, there was a Bumblebee, there was a Starscream, and there was a Megatron. What I’ve done was originally Megatron. So Megatron won the battle.”
As cool as this reveal is, it is equally ironic because a song that was originally written keeping Megatron in mind ended up becoming eternally correlated to one of Optimus Prime’s most iconic speeches.
However, it has been a while since we have had a similar moment with a Transformers flick, but with a brand new Transformers movie now in the works under Michael Bay, we might get something like that once again. So, let’s wait and see what happens.
