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Making music is all about forgetting about everything around you.
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When I became a 'rock musician,' I assumed pop music was easy to write and that interesting rock music, or alternative music, was hard. It was only later I realised that writing a pop song is the hardest thing musically.
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Sometimes you really rely on the audience to have a good time playing live, and sometimes you could have zero people or a thousand, and you'd feel exactly the same.
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For me, it's always been draining to be around people for too long because I'm naturally a pretty expressionless person. From an early age, I found being alone incredibly liberating.
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I grew up in the grunge era. I've always resisted the idea of being part of a machine, wanting just to be an artist in my own right. But at some point, I just realized shutting things out took more energy than just letting it in.
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I'm actually in love with all of Scandinavia.
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I'm always working on new music.
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My mum was quite poor, and my dad was rich. She didn't dig that, so she left him.
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I used to hate iPhones. Before I got an iPhone, I used to be like, 'What are you doing, sitting there on your phone. Join the real world, man.' I categorically disliked iPhones. When my friends got an iPhone, I was like, 'Oh, we lost him.'
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Tame Impala has two lives. One is the album, which is like a producer, and the other life is like a band: more of a live incarnation where we're basically a covers band for the albums that I produce.
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Whatever it is that my heart wants, I'll do it, which is different than I used to be. I used to tell my heart what it wanted.
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One of the first albums I can remember hearing was a Supertramp best of, with mostly 'Breakfast in America' songs on it. It's kind of the same thing as the Flaming Lips, where there are these really melancholy lyrics and melodies, yet it's extremely uplifting. They're like a nonfuturistic version of the Flaming Lips.
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It's kind of always been a secret fantasy of mine, the idea of writing a song and then not having to be the face of it.
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It's funny how concert dreams are such a recurring thing among musicians. It's like how everyone has that dream of their teeth falling out? Except musicians have this dream of just standing onstage and there being all these people out there, and for some reason, the song isn't starting.
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With each award we get, we become a little bit more overrated. That's what it feels like.
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The inspiration to write a song comes to me when something has happened to me more than once. If it's happened to me more than once, it's probably happened to other people.
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I used to think interacting with people in the audience, touching people in the crowd, was a total ego-based thing. I never realized how fulfilling it would be. It's more about being on the receiving end - it's people giving. That's a powerful realization.
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Some of my most important musical experiences were from a burnt CD with songs my friend downloaded for me at a terrible digital quality.
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I think after a long tour and after an album, your brain feels like it wants to relax, but at the same time, making music for me is something that comes kind of naturally. Just like a brain process.
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I don't like the idea that I'm a one-trick pony, even if I am! No matter what else I do, I have to make sure that 'Elephant' isn't Tame Impala's biggest song anywhere.
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My personal life, my musical life, my life as an artist - almost everything has pointed all these little arrows that make up which way I go as a person and what I feel comfortable as my identity.
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For me, working alone is being able to express, which is the artistic part.
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To me, rock and roll is like an ethos or a state of mind.
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I've played festivals in Australia. If it's a dance music festival or mainstream festival, there's maybe, like, 10 percent who pay attention to the music.