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We wanted to be like R.E.M., but the reality is that 15 years after R.E.M. was putting out those records, the playing field had changed drastically as well.

Ben Gibbard

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
I don’t spend my time perusing message boards to find out what people think about me or if people think my songs are good or if people love that lyric or this or that. I just want to be happy with it myself – and if other people like it, that’s great.
BEN GIBBARD

People 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.
BEN GIBBARD

Friendship Make Relationship
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
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
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 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 GIBBARD

Directly Earnest Itself Twirling
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
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
As a songwriter, I’m not necessarily writing about myself or my life.
BEN GIBBARD

Life Myself Songwriters Writing
I don’t want to be overly dramatic and say it’s the only thing that gets me up and keeps me going. But people in your life come and go.
BEN GIBBARD

Come Going Keep People
I don’t hear it now the way I did when I was 20. I think it is undeniable that the songs have become more instantaneously descriptive and literal.
BEN GIBBARD

Descriptive Life Literal Now Undeniable
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
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
We wanted to be like R.E.M., but the reality is that 15 years after R.E.M. was putting out those records, the playing field had changed drastically as well.
BEN GIBBARD

Change Drastically Record Well
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

We wanted to be like R.E.M., but the reality is that 15 years after R.E.M. was putting out those records, the playing field had changed drastically as well.

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We wanted to be like R.E.M., but the reality is that 15 years after R.E.M. was putting out those records, the playing field had changed drastically as well.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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