Broken Social Scene Quotes
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The great thing about "Shoot 'Em Up, Baby" is that it's the first song that we went and recorded [with Andy Kim].
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Let It Die' is more piano-based, organ-based and percussion-based. Live, the songs are more guitar-based. The record that we're doing right now is really guitar-based. I feel like finally I get to write some parts that I'll be excited to play on tour for this record.
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I like the idea of interviews where you just talk about stuff instead of where it's my chance to talk to my public through something else.
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It's very hard to separate what is a conscious decision and what's not.
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My pledge to myself is I will believe in my music, always. I stand behind everything I do. If I don't think it's amazing, how the hell is anyone else going to think it's amazing? But that's just me.
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The new solo album sounds like me: I'm singing about bad business transactions, bodily fluids, and courage.
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I think more like Charlie Chaplin than like Jennifer Anniston.
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Being alive and understanding that and making the decision to actually live take a lot of courage.
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Blind hope. Blind hope is all we have. There's a Greek tragedy called Prometheus Bound; Prometheus is the [titan] that gave humans fire. He's chained to a rock and bemoaning his fate and saying, "I gave you everything. By giving you fire, I gave you blind hope. By giving you a little light that kept you warm at night, I let you believe that this was all going to be okay." For me, that's what art has been. Music and books, it's an act of hope to make them, and it's an act of hope to listen to them. That hope will be dashed, you will say goodbye.
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That's the main work that I've done in my life - really wanting to get past that gender trap where there's a certain nudity in poetry. It's not about showing my soul, it's about observations.
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I could be dramatic and go "He saved my life!", but sometimes you just need to see it again. Sometimes you need to see that person want it so badly for all the right reasons, and it makes you realize that no matter what you do you already won.
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I don't like saying goodbye to people. I find it much easier to forgive people than to say goodbye to them, I always have, in any facet of my life. It's hard sometimes to forgive people, but I find it harder to say goodbye if you love them.
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There was this wonderful day where we sat and listened to all of Andy's [Kim] songs throughout the years, and I think we spent around six hours at my house, and then we played all these tunes of mine that have never found any version. And "Heaven Without a Gun" is one of them, and it struck him. If you can find a compadre who doesn't live in the literal world 'cos you're not always fighting to explain yourself to make sense, that maybe it's the dyslexia, maybe it's the dreamer, maybe it's the idea that grammar was not your foreplay - excuse me - see what I mean, your forte.
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You're not going out there to make a living out of it by selling records. You want acclaim and you want to know people are listening.
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I suddenly thought about being backstage, and I think it shocks you to meet the people you shared your bedrooms with. And a lot of them either take themselves too seriously or don't know how to take themselves at all. But I wanted to be aware in a very sarcastic way that every song I've written has probably been written about 12-16 times before. And doing that makes it very hard for me to accept serious singer-songwriters in the world, the up-and-comers, the ones who are out there who let that define their every move, who live and die and breathe for it. It's a bit of a tragedy, I think.
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This is the thing I've noticed is that the greater the distance between you and any ordinary task is the measurement of how much rockstar potential you have.
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It's hard: you get older, you have a career, the normal frustrations that come with what you do when you wear your heart on your sleeve and you try really heard. I was exhausted, and I couldn't quite see the magic of creating at that time. That's all. I couldn't get into it, and Andy [Kim] slowly resuscitated me, and that's how I made Darlings.
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We haven't really changed, we've just gotten better at executing what we've always been trying to do. We're not really a band that has undergone huge stylistic decisions to change, we're just trying to follow the song. More and more, we let the song lead us - we don't try and put the song into a structure of our taste or our fashion.
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People are terrible. They do terrible things to each other, they hurt each other, they lie, they're vain, they're shallow, they're violent ... but they're all we have.
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I think if I were living in a utopian world, then it wouldn't be political commentary; it would be about daffodils.
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When I see friends of mine break up and they're like, "Oh, we still really love each other, but we just couldn't make it work," I don't get that. I don't understand what that means. Make it work.
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You should never leave something with a feeling of defeat.
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There's an interesting story around that ["Heaven Without a Gun"], because the girl I was dating at the time got into a bike accident and couldn't make it into the studio, and the gentleman Dave Hamlin who worked on this record along with Ohad sort of took it, rearranged it. Dave went and sonically changed it and changed the keys so that Andy could sing it better. All these pieces came together that suddenly displayed that the song was meant for Andy [Kim] to sing. And he always said, "I'll never understand it, but I'll sing it with all my heart."
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Everybody has their own ways of wanting to do things.