Ben Lerner Quotes
How much easier it would be if when you played them slowly in reverse the lyrics really did, as some hysterical parents feared, reveal satanic messages; if there were a backmasked secret order, however dark, instead of rage at emptiness.
Quotes to Explore
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I like collaboration because, first of all, I'm good at writing lyrics. I don't know how to make beats. I don't play instruments. I'm not a good singer. So even when you see a solo album of mine, it's still a collaboration.
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I would love to have played Gollum.
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'Float On' was a fine song, but I was still writing the lyrics on the last day we were working on it and deciding if it was something we wanted to put on the record.
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My music is a little dark, and my lyrics are a little darker. Every day, I'm fighting towards the light.
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I played a lot of keyboards, but I really wanted to produce the sound that was in my head that I was trying to emulate on the keys. I wanted to do it for real. And it makes me look at the keys in a different way. So it's like I'm looking at the guitar and bass more like meat and potatoes and keys like coloring over top of it, you know.
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I want to bring that old soul back, the meaningful lyrics and all of that. And I can't think of a better way to do that than through Motown.
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I do pinch myself, like when shows in non-English speaking countries are sold out, and people are singing my lyrics. I don't think I'll ever lose that; I'm always appreciative every day of the support I have as an artist, because I'm not a commercial artist.
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The one album I can't live without is called 'Cumbolo' by a band called Culture. Every song on their album is deep, but there's one in particular called 'This Train.' I have a tattoo of the lyrics on my left arm.
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I pitched and I played the outfield.
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I'm not really into the whole lyrics thing; I just like to make music that people like to listen to.
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It's very much a piece of myself when I write a song. I don't mean to say it's very personal, like the lyrics mean something personal to me. When I write a song, that's my taste in music – my taste in chord progressions and melodies.
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Lyrics can be important, but ultimately, what pulls people in on a song is melody and the tracks and the way music feels.
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A lot of times when I'm writing lyrics, I just think about insecurities that I might have and turn them into a scene. Some things may be true, and some things may not.
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I've played soccer since I was five.
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We covered 'Hey Jude.' My father panicked, misunderstanding the lyrics and thinking our lead singer was belting out 'Hey, Jew' to a roomful of Holocaust survivors.
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I get writer's block all the time. The only way I can write what I consider to be good lyrics is to put myself through the mill.
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I started writing my own songs from the time I was a little kid. I would write my own lyrics to other people's songs that I heard on the radio and take whatever song and make it about fairies and angels - whatever little girls sing about.
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I've found lyrics in songs that always center me.
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The Smiths hasn't been equaled. That goes for the composition of the songs, the lyrics, and the performance.
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Only the broken-hearted know the truth about love.
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The questions I'm asking myself are, 'What makes me happy? Where do I want to be? What will make me happy at 50, 60 and 70?'
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As we try to change, we will discover within us a fierce struggle between our loyalty to that battle-scarred victim of his own childhood, our father, and the father we want to be. We must meet our childhood father at close range: get to know him, learn to forgive him, and somehow, go beyond him.
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How much easier it would be if when you played them slowly in reverse the lyrics really did, as some hysterical parents feared, reveal satanic messages; if there were a backmasked secret order, however dark, instead of rage at emptiness.
