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At this point in my life, I find myself obsessed with alternate paths I could’ve taken. I don’t think about this with a sense of regret, but with a sense of wonder.

Ben Gibbard

I think sometimes a narrative can come out of a single word.
BEN GIBBARD

Narrative Sometimes Thinking
To set the record straight for the God knows millionth time, we certainly didnt sign to Atlantic just for the money.
BEN GIBBARD

God Knows Money Records
I’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 GIBBARD

Distance Hopefully Song Storytelling
There were two recording studios in Bellingham. One was really expensive, a “nice studio.” We were at the point where we were young and irreverent.
BEN GIBBARD

Expensive Irreverent Nice Youth
We had friends who had a hit single on the radio and sold 500,000 records, and then they couldn’t get arrested a year later.
BEN GIBBARD

Friend Later Records Single Sold
The 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 GIBBARD

Cutting Home Real
An 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 GIBBARD

Girlfriend People Upset
The late ’90s were a really bad time for people trying to be rock stars, you know what I mean? It seemed like everyone was a one-hit wonder on the radio.
BEN GIBBARD

Ambition Country Mean
I feel that we are currently living in a world that is similar to late ’50s, early ’60s kind of world.
BEN GIBBARD

Kind Late World
You spend hours alone, only with your thoughts, and you torture yourself. It’s a tendency of many writers to temper the self-destructive act of writing with other self-destructive acts. I certainly was one of those people for a long time.
BEN GIBBARD

Long Self Writing
Nada Surf and Harvey Danger are good bands. I think they’ve just stayed true to why they play music in the first place, it’s just because they love doing it and they love each other and that’s the impetus for doing it, not trying to keep singles on the radio and on MTV.
BEN GIBBARD

Mtv Play Stay Thinking
I 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 GIBBARD

Cool Listening Mean Photograph Remember Year
If there is one thing I think I have accomplished, it’s that I always thought of myself as a very literal songwriter, and as I look at some of those older records.
BEN GIBBARD

Clever Distance Song
We 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 GIBBARD

Basement Exciting House Record Restaurant Vacation
Because of my age and what I do for a living and the amount of time that I’ve spent away from my family and loved ones.
BEN GIBBARD

Age Darkness Fun
For me, a song doesn’t really take flight until it has a lyric on it. …Without a lyric that I’m happy with, it could be the greatest song ever melodically or arrangement-wise, but it doesn’t have any resonance.
BEN GIBBARD

Song Wise Writing
Liking interesting things doesn’t make you interesting.
BEN GIBBARD

Interesting Liking Things
The second ‘Postal Service’ album is threatening to become the ‘Chinese Democracy’ of indie rock. It will come out eventually, or maybe it won’t.
BEN GIBBARD

Chinese Indie Rock Rocks
There are the people that are like, “I want it to sound like the last one.” You can’t please everybody all the time, but I think for the most part we tend to maintain a healthy level of self-reference to kind of make sure we continue to push things forward.
BEN GIBBARD

Everybody Life Like People Please
I couldn’t wait to go on tour back then. I would be sitting at my day job or my apartment, just itching to go. There were so many adventures that were about to happen.
BEN GIBBARD

Adventure Apartment Back Happen Tour
I 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 GIBBARD

Believe Love Real
Between 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

Listening People Together
Anything was better than going to work. All those early tours before we made any money were more like vacations. I don’t think it was until 2001 that we pulled our heads out of the sand and were like, “What are we doing?”
BEN GIBBARD

Thinking Trying Vacation
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 GIBBARD

Kind Song Thinking
Our band is very polarizing. There are people who absolutely can’t stand us, and people who absolutely can’t live without us. I’d rather spark those kind of polar-opposite feelings than have people be indifferent.
BEN GIBBARD

Feelings Opposites People
There were a lot of fences and walls existing in my life, literally and figuratively, and that was really not indicative of the kind of person that I’d always been. So, when I moved back to Seattle, the first thing I said was, “I will never live in fear again.”
BEN GIBBARD

Firsts Kind Wall
We never sit down before we start making a record and talk about this new sonic palette that we are going to try to explore. We always let the record kind of reveal itself to us over time.
BEN GIBBARD

Explore Kind Record Trying

At this point in my life, I find myself obsessed with alternate paths I could’ve taken. I don’t think about this with a sense of regret, but with a sense of wonder.

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At this point in my life, I find myself obsessed with alternate paths I could’ve taken. I don’t think about this with a sense of regret, but with a sense of wonder.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ben Gibbard Quotes