Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Every single song on 'Torches' was a little self-contained pop song, so there wasn't any fat on the songs; there wasn't a lot to cut.
I experienced bullying a lot. I was an only child, and I was kind of a small kid with a big mouth, and so I always got myself in trouble.
Fear just crushes creativity, and if I let fear into the studio and into the songwriting, I was going to let it kill the artist inside of me.
I feel like kids are getting more and more used to communicating through a glass screen than they are face-to-face, and that worries me a little.
Art brings to life things that can seemingly be dead, and can put a fresh perspective on things that are living. It's so important we keep creating.
I realized probably when I was, like, 20 years old that the hardest thing to do is to write a pop song - not, like, a candy-pop, throwaway pop song.
When you're underwater with goggles on, a couple of your senses are taken away, and it becomes this purely visual thing. It's just you and yourself.
I've played so many gigs in front of around seven people. It's difficult to keep motivated, but it's all about growth. The love of music kept me going.
I'm really into the recycling of art. That one piece of art inspires another piece of art, which inspires another piece of art. I really like that idea.
I love countermelodies, I love hooks and melodies that stick in your head. If I could put 20 melodies in a song and they would all work together, I would.
I don't care if it's Dr. Dre or Dr. Luke or Brian Eno. When you're in a studio and making music together, it becomes pretty apparent if you see eye to eye.
There's just really interesting facets of culture just swirling in Morocco. They all have slightly different colours, so it's just an inspiring place to be.
When I write a song, the music comes from my spirit, which is very playful and optimistic, but then the lyrics come from my head, which is in a different space.
Through technology and social media, we're able to create an identity online that shows people the face that we want them to see and rather than who they really are.
I feel like trying to write a song in order to be a big hit is just not something I'm interested in because it's not going to come from an authentic place of expression.
I wrote 'Torches' before experiencing touring as a band. I really had no idea what they would sound like live, and that was something we had to figure out along the way.
People worship anyone in the entertainment industry. You can be a used-car salesman and have a television commercial on the local station, and that makes you a celebrity.
I've written hundreds of songs, and I tend to think that my instincts are pretty good when it comes to what people are going to like and what people aren't going to like.
It's the meanest thing to abuse your power as a songwriter. To write pointedly about someone... it's kind of unfair to use them. They can't answer you or have a rebuttal.
There are a few songwriters in bands I really relate to that write a certain type of joy, because a lot of artists don't really write joy. It's a thing only a few people do.
Arcade Fire has kept their indie cred. They will sell out stadiums yet still have underdog status. But when you're a band like Coldplay, people are waiting to knock you down.
I wrote 'Pumped Up Kicks' when I began to read about the growing trend in teenage mental illness. I wanted to understand the psychology behind it because it was foreign to me.
When I'm writing songs, my favourite thing to do is to try and rabbit-trail and go places I've never gone to before. Just like exploring a new terrain or a new country or something.
I think artists throughout the history of time have always been controversial and have been a voice to speak to public culture in a way that a politician can't because they'll lose their constituency.
With 'Torches,' I wanted to make a great pop record; I wanted every song to be exciting, not to have too much space, no long pieces of music without vocals. I kind of wanted to write the perfect pop album.
I look at bands like the Beach Boys, Hall & Oates and Blur, and those are the bands I want to be in company with because their songwriting is intelligent, and yet you don't need to be a musical genius to pick it up.
I've written so many songs that are hopeful - songs that are, like, about an old man that gives all his possessions away because he wants to help people. I wrote 'Pumped Up Kicks' just to tell a different type of story.
'I Get Around' came on one day. I'd never heard the Beach Boys before. The sound was so fresh to me. That was the first time when I truly was gripped by the power of music. It opened my eyes to the heights that music can achieve.
I could have pigeonholed us and wrote a whole record like 'Pumped Up Kicks,' and we would have been this breezy, nostalgic West Coast Beach Boys recreation band. That's not the type of writer I am. Once I try one style, I move on.
I want to make music for everyone. I'm not trying to start a super exclusive group. I don't want a clique of people where you have to wear a certain type of clothes to come to our shows, or you have to be the ages of this and this.
Walking into the studio making 'Scared Hearts Club,' it was important for us as artists to write a joyful record, but using joy as a weapon because joy is the best weapon against oppression; it's the best weapon against depression.
'Pumped Up Kicks' is written from the perspective like Truman Capote wrote 'In Cold Blood' or Dostoevsky wrote 'Crime & Punishment.' It's psychologically breaking down someone's state of mind and diving in and walking in their shoes.
My aunts and uncles were like, 'You've got such a great voice - why don't you try out for 'American Idol?'' I'd say, 'Because I'm a songwriter, not a puppet.' Even if I won and became really successful off a show like that, I'd be miserable.
When I was 21, I was in a pretty serious band, and we almost got signed - went to New York, showcased, all that - but didn't end up getting signed, and we broke up. I went back to the drawing board; I really took a hit from that whole experience.
L.A. gives me a lot. L.A. is a city of extremes. People come here from all over the world that have these, like, giant ideas, and they put everything into it. And some people just fall flat on their face, and some people, you know, shoot like a rocket.
I had really bad grades in high school and didn't want to go to college, and my dad said, 'Why don't you move to L.A. or New York and pursue music? You've always been good at it.' It was the first thing that made sense to me and... It was the right move.
'Supermodel' was a hard record for me; it was an emotional record to write. I was purging a lot of stuff with that album, and I think the one thing I didn't really consider, that I'd be supporting it for two years and living in that state of mind every night.
I was afraid of the sophomore slump even before our first record came out. It was a very real fear because I'd watched so many bands I'd loved in the past not deliver. I knew it was a very real thing. I didn't know why it happens, but I'd been thinking about it a lot.
We've grown up on the Beach Boys and the Beatles and Blur and Bowie and the Clash. Also E.L.O. and Hall and Oates. Those are all artists who write songs that are accessible but still left of center. It's intelligent pop. There's still something different and complex about it.
Culturally, it's really funny to me that people respect the weird guy as an artist. There can be a curmudgeon in the corner with spiders building nests in his hair, and he hasn't bathed for three weeks, but for whatever reason, he's more creative than the guy sitting next to him that's showered and is talking to everybody.
One of the things with the second record, a word I held close to my chest was 'brave.' To take chances to go outside the box and explore. To continue to toss off any expectation that our fans or anyone else might have of us, to just tap into who I am as a writer and artist and really just operate within that freedom of creation.
In Morocco, a Muslim country, I got to hear the call to prayer five times a day. At first it felt kind of scary, kind of dangerous, because of the propaganda towards anything Muslim in the U.S. subconsciously coming out in me. By the end of the trip, it was so beautiful, and then not hearing it when I got back to L.A. really threw me off.
The jingles saved my life. When I got hired to do that, I was on top. I finally was making a living doing what I loved. Before that, it was so bleak; it got so dark in L.A. I was 25, been living there for seven years trying to make it, and getting really close to getting signed with different bands and as a solo artist only to have my hopes dashed.