I’ve covered Avril Lavigne. I like good pop songs, and I don’t think there should be any kind of preconceptions about where good pop songs come from.
BEN GIBBARDI’ve covered Avril Lavigne. I like good pop songs, and I don’t think there should be any kind of preconceptions about where good pop songs come from.
BEN GIBBARDI was literally just going and applying for jobs, and I couldn’t get a job, and I was getting more and more broke, and you find yourself groveling for jobs you don’t even want.
BEN GIBBARDI can remember how I sang – a little more nasal-y back then. Listening to those old recordings is like seeing a photograph of yourself from 10 years ago. You’re wearing what you thought looked cool at the time. You had your hair styled the particular way you thought looked cool.
BEN GIBBARDAn ex-girlfriend once got upset when I told her that music is the most important thing in my life. It’s more important than anyone else could ever be.
BEN GIBBARDI’ve always had a soft spot for Phil Collins. He’s a great vocalist.
BEN GIBBARDI have always been very open and earnest about some things in my life, some things that are not directly in my life, but they’re twirling around me at the time.
BEN GIBBARDThe Photo Album is the weakest record. For the first time in our careers, we found ourselves with an economic incentive to be on the road and to be making albums.
BEN GIBBARDI’d like the songs to be more storytelling, but also have the turns of phrase within them that would hopefully distance my writing from the pack.
BEN GIBBARDI kind of dropped a lot of bad habits about three years ago and became kind of accidentally straight-edge. I don’t have Xs on my hands, but I guess if I wanted to go back to calling myself straight-edge, I could.
BEN GIBBARDWe were playing Chinese restaurants and basements and record stores and houses. We were crashing on floors and it was all new and exciting. It was like a vacation. It didn’t feel like work.
BEN GIBBARDMore times than not, it’s a failed endeavor. You will fail more times than you succeed. But I think you need those failed endeavors.
BEN GIBBARDI’m a war of head versus heart, it’s always this way. My head is weak, my heart always speaks, before I know what it will say.
BEN GIBBARDI want so badly to believe that there is truth, that love is real. And I want life in every word to the extent that it’s absurd.
BEN GIBBARDThe songwriting of Hall & Oates is deceptively complex. There are a number of key changes that pass you by as you’re listening to the song because they’re so seamless and clever.
BEN GIBBARDEvery record we do there are always two camps. There’s the camp that’s like, “I love it. It sounds different than the last one.”
BEN GIBBARDBetween every record, we all split off in our own world and we all end up listening to usually pretty different music on our own. We come together not really knowing what the other people having been really listening to and what’s been influencing them.
BEN GIBBARD