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I kind of dropped a lot of bad habits about three years ago and became kind of accidentally straight-edge. I don’t have Xs on my hands, but I guess if I wanted to go back to calling myself straight-edge, I could.

Ben Gibbard

I don’t want to be overdramatic about it, but I’m starting to see a lot of my bad habits get the best of me.
BEN GIBBARD

Habit Starting Want
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
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
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
And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time.
BEN GIBBARD

Father Prayer Tiny
Liking interesting things doesn’t make you interesting.
BEN GIBBARD

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

Narrative Sometimes 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
I kind of dropped a lot of bad habits about three years ago and became kind of accidentally straight-edge. I don’t have Xs on my hands, but I guess if I wanted to go back to calling myself straight-edge, I could.
BEN GIBBARD

Habit Kind Running
I don’t think Chris realized he was in a band until 2001. He all of a sudden woke up one day and realized he was in a band. He thought he was just recording my solo project. Three albums later, we’re in Baltimore trying to figure out what to do with ourselves.
BEN GIBBARD

Album Project Realized Sudden Think
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
You remember that stuff and laugh about it now. You don’t feel it the way you did back then when you were so scared and nervous and tired and hungry.
BEN GIBBARD

Back Hungry Laugh Nervous Remember Tired
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
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
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
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
As a songwriter, I’m not necessarily writing about myself or my life.
BEN GIBBARD

Life Myself Songwriters Writing
We always idealize the past because we don’t feel the painful stuff the way we used to.
BEN GIBBARD

Feel Idealize Painful Way
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
I’ve always had a soft spot for Phil Collins. He’s a great vocalist.
BEN GIBBARD

Great Spots Vocalist
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
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 just rediscovered my guitar.
BEN GIBBARD

Guitar Life Rediscover
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
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
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

I kind of dropped a lot of bad habits about three years ago and became kind of accidentally straight-edge. I don’t have Xs on my hands, but I guess if I wanted to go back to calling myself straight-edge, I could.

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I kind of dropped a lot of bad habits about three years ago and became kind of accidentally straight-edge. I don’t have Xs on my hands, but I guess if I wanted to go back to calling myself straight-edge, I could.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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