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As you go through your life, you make friendships, you break friendships, you have relationships. Music is the one thing I’ve always been able to rely on.

Ben Gibbard

Liking interesting things doesn’t make you interesting.
BEN GIBBARD

Interesting Liking Things
And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time.
BEN GIBBARD

Father Prayer Tiny
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
When I listen to Airplanes record, it takes me back. I remember a lot of my thought processes when I was 20 or 21, writing those songs and recording that record.
BEN GIBBARD

Airplane Song 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
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 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 GIBBARD

Clever Numbers Song
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
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
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
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
We were not goofing around anymore. We all threw everything we had into this in a way where we all found ourselves really far from home, and we were stuck with each other.
BEN GIBBARD

Anymore Each Other Goofing Ourselves
As a songwriter, I’m not necessarily writing about myself or my life.
BEN GIBBARD

Life Myself Songwriters Writing
I’ve always had a soft spot for Phil Collins. He’s a great vocalist.
BEN GIBBARD

Great Spots Vocalist
I can remember sitting up in guitarist Chris Walla’s bedroom and for the first time in my life having this realization like, “Maybe I can do this. Maybe I can make music that in some capacity people will enjoy and come see me play.”
BEN GIBBARD

Bedroom Capacity People Realization Some
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
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

Regret Taken Thinking
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
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
I just rediscovered my guitar.
BEN GIBBARD

Guitar Life Rediscover
Bands who are in their early 20s today, they are living in their own time and they have a series of parameters they have to work around.
BEN GIBBARD

Advice Giving Real
Now that we have the resources, we’re like, “Oh wow, a nice studio is pretty nice! They do have nice outboards here. It’s actually a pretty good place.” It’s funny how much changes so quickly.
BEN GIBBARD

Change Outboard Quickly
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 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 GIBBARD

Finding Growth Jobs Yourself
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
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
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

As you go through your life, you make friendships, you break friendships, you have relationships. Music is the one thing I’ve always been able to rely on.

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As you go through your life, you make friendships, you break friendships, you have relationships. Music is the one thing I’ve always been able to rely on.

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Popular Authors

More Ben Gibbard Quotes