black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

I wonder what I was thinking when I was trying to say a particular thing. I hear some of the weird little nuances in the recording; I can hear what the room sounded like. I remember what it smelled like.

Ben Gibbard

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
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
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
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
A lot of the material is about the inevitable disappointment people feel as they move through life, and things don’t feel the way they expect. No experience will ever match up to the idealized version in your mind.
BEN GIBBARD

Disappointment Moving People
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
The story of our band is that we were this relentless touring band in those early years. We were leaving day jobs and going off on the road and having fun and seeing the country for the first time.
BEN GIBBARD

Adventure Country Fun
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
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
I like writing on piano and a computer, and a lot of ‘Plans’ came out of samples and vocal lines.
BEN GIBBARD

Lines Piano Writing
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
Around that same time I started running. I never saw myself as the kind of person who would become a runner. It seemed unfathomable to me that I would ever run three miles, let alone 26.2.
BEN GIBBARD

Around Miles Myself Runner Started
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

Healthy Self Thinking
There’s a cinematic quality that happens in my mind when I hear something that really lands. An album is just a journal of a life moving through time.
BEN GIBBARD

Land Mind Moving
Hall & Oates is one of the few musical groups as satisfying now as it was back then. There’s something incredibly musically satisfying about their songs. Nothing has diminished my love for them.
BEN GIBBARD

Group Musical Song
Everybody has a language or code that they use with their wife or their girlfriend or boyfriend or what have you. It’s a language aside from the language they have with strangers.
BEN GIBBARD

Girlfriend Language Wife

I wonder what I was thinking when I was trying to say a particular thing. I hear some of the weird little nuances in the recording; I can hear what the room sounded like. I remember what it smelled like.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

I wonder what I was thinking when I was trying to say a particular thing. I hear some of the weird little nuances in the recording; I can hear what the room sounded like. I remember what it smelled like.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ben Gibbard Quotes