black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

I was trying to write a song based on a story in a random book of Puerto Rican short stories that I found in a thrift store.

Bradford Cox

I’m gonna put my two cents in as my status update on my Facebook page” or something. Not to sound like an anti-technology person, but it’s just a real drag that people live their lives that way.
BRADFORD COX

Live People Something Sound Way
I don’t have the capacity to write stuff consciously. When I do, it’s really awful.
BRADFORD COX

Awful Stuff Writing
Unfortunately it’s hard for me to be a fanboy for anything these days just because I see so much music.
BRADFORD COX

Collaboration People World
A song like “Walkabout”, it’s totally imitative. The goal of that song was to make people happy, and I’ve never really made a song to make people happy before.
BRADFORD COX

Goal People Song
What could be more experimental than me writing a straight up love song?
BRADFORD COX

Song Straight Up Writing
Usually I’m not really conscious of what’s going on. I don’t have a lot of memories onstage. At all.
BRADFORD COX

Conscious Memories Really
I think the younger kids need to realize there’s this whole forgotten 90s that people don’t really talk about.
BRADFORD COX

Kids People Thinking
That’s what culture is based on, the passing down of a certain narrative by imitation.
BRADFORD COX

Culture Imitation Narrative
I read a lot – surveys of vernacular music. A lot of it is the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music, which I’ve loved since I was in high school.
BRADFORD COX

Interesting Library School
I see a lot of people doing an “’80s thing” who weren’t even born until the ’90s.
BRADFORD COX

Born Eighties People
All music is devotional, whether it’s devotion to products, face washes, creams, plastic. Everybody is devoted to something.
BRADFORD COX

Devotion Music Something
My entire education in music was in reading interviews with bands like Stereolab and finding out about Brazilian music or a Romanian composer. You expose yourself to what people you look up to admire.
BRADFORD COX

Looks People Reading
You read about that Black Lips/Wavves fight as a spectator and you’re like, “Oh man, I’m gonna pick a team to be on!
BRADFORD COX

Fighting Real Team
People say ‘I don’t want to die alone!’ But you know what, honestly? I don’t want to die with a bunch of people looking at me.
BRADFORD COX

Bunch Look People Want
You gotta have friends, and it’s really hard to have friends that don’t operate on the same schedule as you or do the same kind of things you do, because they don’t understand it.
BRADFORD COX

Friend Kind Realizing Schedule
We didn’t have MTV, and I was desperate for something. You know, you’re young, you want something off the beaten path. And Twin Peaks was like, surrealism on network TV.
BRADFORD COX

Desperate Path Twins
I always write the first and last song of an album first, and then the middle just kind of happens.
BRADFORD COX

Album Song Writing
You’re not necessarily listening to the band and thinking about the lead singer, or the story of the group, or the context or the mythology of the group. You’re just listening to the song and whether or not it has a hook.
BRADFORD COX

Group Mythology Singer Story
I want to build an audience that’s willing to follow us in whichever direction we might choose.
BRADFORD COX

Audience Build Choose
When I started having a couple of beers and loosening up, I realized how many years I had wasted going back to my hotel room alone when I could have gone and just had a beer or two.
BRADFORD COX

Beer Couple Hotel Realize Years
You think about people like Elvis, Kurt Cobain, or the Beatles, who grew up without privilege and needed a certain validation through peoples’ acceptance, or admiration from their peers. And money is part of that, but it always comes too late.
BRADFORD COX

Acceptance Thinking Validation
When I got hit by the car, I became depressed. As a result, I’ve been on antidepressants and I feel like I have no sexuality left. People complain about that side effect, but I love it. I feel outside of society.
BRADFORD COX

Car People Sides
There’s not like this separate caste system where it’s like, “I’m the musician, you’re the audience. Never the two shall meet.” It was a case where it was like, “Hey, you know what? I’m on your level, man.”
BRADFORD COX

Audience Know Learn Musician Shall
The first thing I think I ever played in public, aside from singing in church, would have been – and this is a true story – when I was about nine or 10 years old, I was obsessed with Twin Peaks.
BRADFORD COX

People Song Thinking
The sober guy is always going to have this air of arrogance or self-righteousness, but it’s not my intention. I just knew that if I drank, I’d have a drinking problem.
BRADFORD COX

Air Arrogance Drinking Intention Self
I’m not meaning that in a disrespectful way; you go where people want to hear your music. So if that’s where people want to hear me play.
BRADFORD COX

Disrespectful Meaning Peopel Want
Sometimes, I do have something to say, so I’ll sit there and I’ll write a song to someone – and then I just throw it away because it makes me cringe.
BRADFORD COX

Sometimes Song Writing

I was trying to write a song based on a story in a random book of Puerto Rican short stories that I found in a thrift store.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

I was trying to write a song based on a story in a random book of Puerto Rican short stories that I found in a thrift store.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bradford Cox Quotes