I’ve had terrible, terrible, terrible shows where I just thought, “That was off-key” or I forgot lines or I thought I looked like an idiot, and then you’re leaving and talking to people, and they’re like, “I had the best time of my life! That was amazing!” You just never know.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPEI was living in a loft with Dave Sitek – this loft full of people just working on their stuff. Some were painting, some were writing. Any plans you had were kind of like a plan for the next two months.
More Babatunde Adebimpe Quotes
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I probably couldn’t have the same experience listening to that song because I’m self-conscious about some of my singing parts.
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Oftentimes, when music is just blasting out it seems like it’s overcompensating for something missing in the song’s structure. When I think of the music that I listen to constantly, it’s never like an assault.
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If anybody won life, David Bowie did, at least as a creative entity in the sense of writing yourself into existence and writing yourself out in such a graceful swoop.
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If you push hard enough you can change. You can take everything you know and round it up, turn it into something else, and keep turning things into something else.
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I know that being upset without having an avenue to fix anything is a real hard place to be in for too long. But it’s even worse thinking that it’ll go away if you just ignore it.
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The cynicism doesn’t come across in the final; it can be taken as a very sincere plea for someone to not go away.
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When I’m in the mode of feeling positive about love, I don’t really feel the need to mark it down in song. In fact, I know what that song would sound like, and I would not subject anybody to that.
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Regarding race or gender or sexuality, one of the great things about art and music is that they can provide people with very little else in common with a similar entry point for discussion, but the discussions still need to happen for life to get more interesting.
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I like the model of people getting together to make something when they want to do it and not being dictated to by a cycle.
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I have nothing against people getting their band back together, but the artists I love marked a time in my life, and to merge that time with now can be personally depressing.
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I don’t want my reasons to be informed by what people think about what I’m doing.
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Hearing that [David] Bowie passed was like you don’t really believe it. It’s as if the sky shifted a little bit, to remind you it was there.
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You have to be a really talented writer if you’re trying to encapsulate a news story with a song and have it live after the event. I don’t have the focus to do that, really.
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The feeling of being halfway through a show and just realizing that there’s nothing you can do to save it – it’s a horrible feeling.
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I was living in a loft with Dave Sitek – this loft full of people just working on their stuff. Some were painting, some were writing. Any plans you had were kind of like a plan for the next two months.
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It’s insane when someone shows up to your show and is like, “You could run off with me right now!” I’m like, “It’s cool, I think I’m gonna go read.”
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A lot of people have reunion things, but I think bands are supposed to break up.
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Adam is one of my favourite writers, period. He has such a unique voice and he’s somebody who I admire so much for putting the effort into inventing his own language and furthering it.
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Most of the bands that I really like no longer exist. That might just be because I’m in my thirties or whatever. But I also think it’s the rare band that doesn’t, like, turn into something else.
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There are a lot of spikes that can happen when what you’re doing starts to get attention or people start to talk about it. They can just kind of really do a number on your reasons for making music.
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I feel like people just let each other live a little more in New York.
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No one wanted a job. No one could hold a job. You tend to see those going hand in hand.
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I feel like now if you’re going to start a band you have to have an Instagram full of yourself looking a certain way, lined up like five dudes in mugshot alley, hanging out by the bridge or up against the wall, or “We’re in a library for some reason!”
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Ten years is a pretty good run for anything.
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I think that music and art and film, at their best, can connect with something that is eternal in human beings, that might not have so many labels on it, something that’s ultimately universal and that may just be a feeling.
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One second you’re having the time of your life in front of all these people, and then you come backstage to the exact opposite – there’s only lukewarm carrots back there.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE