Stephen Malkmus Quotes
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Lyrics are back, maybe. It seems like there was a bit of an attitude that lyrics are not important.
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Things tends to often consolidate like Disney. It's the same with music. There's Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young and Patti Smith. There's these three people that everyone seems to agree on. No matter what they like, they seem to like those three.
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There's something in life that's cool, it's relatively cheap, and fun, and populist. Even when it's elitist.
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My wife is a big fan of George Oppen and I got into him. I could have a career like his. It's not an alpha male situation, George Oppen. It's quiet. It's poetry.He just lived a life of an intellectual poet.
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But we're still rehearsing and planning to make a new album next year. We have some really good new songs that we've already been playing on that last tour that we just finished.
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The best I do, if I'm just playing around and riffing in a fantasy world, and then I'll write something down. Hopefully I write it down.
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I thought The Doors were the greatest band for a while.
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Lou Reed is something like a personal favorite of mine, but you could always put me into that drawer of singers who can't really sing, who speak their songs.
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So much of rock lyrics is just a mirror of real feeling. It doesn't feel dangerous to me. They just feel like "rock lyrics."
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When I was in high school, I was a late bloomer. And just like all those supermodels who said they were gawky and no one liked them, that was me - metaphorically. And so I was ready to rise like a phoenix in later times.
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There's no point that an album should sound like a watered down version of another album.
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You don't realize that when you're young, and you're surprised there's a lot of people at your gig - you just think it's general British-press hype.
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Family is the best. I can honestly say, it's a gift that is beyond making art. I didn't know that when I got into it.
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Most people want to be seen or heard. You want to shine. That's my way of shining.
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I don't really know where the songs are coming from often. Many of the best things I made up were just off the top of my head.
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I've wanted to not play as much. I would like to just sing now. Even though I don't think I'm a great singer, I wouldn't mind just - not being a frontman, per se, but singing and not playing.
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If a voice is just too nice, without an edge, it kinda all flows by. You forget it. You don't listen to the lyrics.
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We're probably a couple of freaks who've created their own little universe, are living in our own little world and that's the only place where we can survive.
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I'm not sure if you can blame everything on the American way of life, but the United States are big. So, if you have a lot of people there, the percentage of stupid people is bound to be higher.
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I don't know if you look back on your life and just see successes, but probably the first things that pop up are the regrets.
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We're not on a desperate mission to write chart compatible stuff.
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I'm better when I'm an autodidact and things just come. Or you're just blessed. I'm not bragging or anything, it just comes to you.
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Every song has a different genesis, or feeling. Usually the lyrics, I don't really know what it's all about, I just kinda do it. I mean, there's a combination of, like you're saying, that kind of lyrics about commitment or vaguely relationship lyrics mixed with jokey 90s Beck-style non-sequiturs and stuff.
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What I love about music, when you can look at something and be like, "Wow, what's this all about?" You can't really picture what these people look like - is it one guy, or a band making music in a garage?