Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You go to a truck stop and there are key chains with names on them, and there's no Finneas. There's no Billie. They're little things, but as a kid, you just feel weirdly ostracized.
If you can use songs as a tool, vehicle for empathy and a deeper understanding of how people are feeling and how people's emotions work, there's a lot of good that can come from that.
You might think of Hollywood as this full-on glamorous thing and to us it was like, 'All right, mom's got an audition. Do you want to sit in traffic for 50 minutes and go in with her?'
I was on a TV show called 'Glee.' I mean, I was on the real tail end of that show; it was already way past its peak. But still, for me aged 17 landing something like that was a big deal.
I love pop songs so much and I don't put a ton of pressure on myself as a solo artist to always write the most commercial feeling thing, I just want to write things I would love to listen to.
Obviously I'm very grateful 'Bad Guy' is doing so well - it's shocking and surprising and gratifying - but I do think it's important to try to make the next song that people are gonna be excited about.
My dreams as a kid were so far below the Grammys, like, maybe selling out a show, or, like, seeing your album on a shelf in an Urban Outfitters... and the Grammys are so far above that. It's very ridiculous.
Everything sounds better when Billie sings it, so the only ones I'll keep for myself are ones that really feel just super personal to me in their content, like this is my life story and maybe not anybody else's.
My feeling is that everybody starts out as an emulator. You follow their approach and that's how learning works. The pivot is that I don't think you're going to break new ground unless you do something different.
If I'm writing with or for someone else, it just has to feel true and real for them. It has to feel like they're being honest. If it's for myself, it's the same thing. It has to be something I can mean when I say it.
Even though we're all together making songs and I produce them, it's so her vision. Especially when we walk out on stage every night. It's so meticulously thought through by Billie and I admire that endlessly in her.
If you're thinking about all the possibilities of your life, there are extreme negatives, which you hope don't happen, and extreme positives, which you just aren't willing to think about because you think you'll jinx it.
The excuse of having a dog is great, because before I had a dog, I wouldn't be like, 'I need to go hike for two hours'; my girlfriend would have been like, 'What are you doing?' Now I take the dog, and she comes with me.
I am just fascinated by music and I want to know how to identify all the things I love about it; to me music theory is like learning another language and then being able to explain how much you love something more clearly.
I had a very positive, wonderful, happy upbringing, and still, for several reasons, I really didn't enjoy being a child very much. I felt that I had no control over my life and everything seemed scarier and larger than life.
I don't particularly like recording studios, they tend to be lifeless and without any natural light, so I wanted to record wherever we lived. We just don't want to be bound to a studio to who we'd have to pay untold sums to.
I feel like the thing that I've learned a lot is when you're involved in something, you don't always get to appreciate it for what it is as much. You're focused on the details and how you can make it better. It's kind of torture.
I'm not an author, but as a songwriter, I'm afforded this kind of luxurious ambiguity in songs of being able to confess the secrets of my relationships with people and face basically no consequences, or ask for no approval or permission.
Billie doesn't actually like recording sessions at all. We like making music together. She doesn't like going to some big studio and having them pretend to be a therapist for a couple hours. So by default, we always make the good stuff together.
I think the whole response to our art being so positive is that it rings true and it feels a unique thing and I feel that was the thing that we strive for in the beginning was to not conform to any preconceived notions of what we should be doing.
Well, I mean there are so many producers that inspire me. I used to try to imitate production by certain people. And now I'm only interested in doing the opposite of that. I'm only interested in doing production that like no one's ever done before.
I think that, for us, the thing that no one can take away from you is that if you make something that they've never heard before, they're gonna respond to that. They may not love it, it may not be their favourite thing, but no one can take different from you.
The first time I ever heard Airborne Toxic Event, my friend was turning 11 or something. And he had a paintball birthday party where him and me and two of our other friends went out to these paintball courses and I got obliterated. I don't think I got one hit.
If I'm making a song with Billie, then it's for Billie... She has to want to wear that song every day. And I think I try to do the same thing when I'm making a song for myself... I try to treat them both that way, like I'm sort of A&R-ing her and then A&R-ing myself.
So, I'll walk around with - just an iPhone will work - but sometimes I'll bring, like, a little mobile recorder and I'll just, like, if hear an interesting sound, I'll just record it. And then later, I'll listen through them and I'll go like, 'I wonder how can I use that?'
To me, my favorite joke on a stand-up special is when someone says something and you go, 'Oh my God, I've been thinking that my whole life, I've just never said it to anyone else.' Those little kinda quiet, personal observations you make that nobody else has talked about yet.
Being able to hear an artist and emulate them has been a huge part of being successful as a producer and co-writer. I think it's a problem when a producer comes in to work with an artist, and you can't hear the artist as well anymore. It's very important to me to be invisible.
I think in modern communication studies, we put a lot of emphasis on our relationships and our family relationships. Our relationships with our parents, and our siblings. I felt that there was this gap in content about communication with people who are super close to you in your peer group.
In the alternate reality where I wasn't involved at all, and I'd been like, just, sweating my way through, trying to have a music career for years? And then my sibling had one and I wasn't involved at all? I think I'd be very tortured by it. But the fact that we've had one in tandem makes a lot of sense.
I remember, one time, my dad took me and Billie to a fair. I was probably 7 years old, Billie must have been 3, and she put footie pyjamas on and then put a second pair of underwear on over the pyjamas. I remember being like, 'What is Billie wearing?!' and my dad was like, 'She's happy with it. Let's go!'
I think that's probably the number one reason why collaboration is good. You disagree with each other about things and then what we always say is whichever one of us is more passionate about the issue is the winner because if you care about something enough to fight for it, that means it's probably a good thing.
I'm a big believer in the benefit of a home studio. You're sitting there and maybe you don't know the next line. So you go outside for a second, maybe. Make a sandwich. Play with the dog. Or watch an episode of 'The Office,' whatever. And then it clicks, you run back into the room, and you've got it. It's not like your creativity is on the clock.
I'm not very interested in fame or notoriety at all - in fact, I'd be pretty bummed out if I woke up one day and I was, like, super, super famous. But the flipside of that is that I'm really passionate about my music, I'm really proud of it and I want it to be heard by as many people as possible, and I'm willing to embrace whatever comes with that.
