Bradford Cox Quotes

I like playing at public schools. I like when there’s more of a diverse audience. I’ll play wherever people want to hear my music, and I’ll be glad and grateful for the opportunity, but I’d rather not play for a bunch of white privileged kids.
BRADFORD COX

Grateful Kids School
I’m real critical of myself. I think a lot of what I’ve done is boring indie rock. I didn’t intend it to be that way, but somehow milk gets added to everything.
BRADFORD COX

Done Real Thinking
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 don’t like the sound of my own voice. And, for people I don’t know, their impression of me is what they read on the internet, and they’re so far off a lot of the time.
BRADFORD COX

People Sound Voice
The same people that always think I’m pretentious will think I’m pretentious, and the people who relate to me will continue to relate to me.
BRADFORD COX

People Pretentious Thinking
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
I’m a really friendly guy, I guess, and I really like meeting people.
BRADFORD COX

Friendly Guy People
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

Book Song Writing
In reality, I’ve probably got the lowest self-esteem of anybody I know, which has really been rubbed in my face lately in personal situations.
BRADFORD COX

Esteem Faces Reality Self Situations
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
I need punk rock. It’s the medicine for me, but it’s bitter and sickening. If you don’t need it – if you’re happy and healthy – run toward that.
BRADFORD COX

Medicine Rocks Running
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
I want to build an audience that’s willing to follow us in whichever direction we might choose.
BRADFORD COX

Audience Build Choose
All music is devotional, whether it’s devotion to products, face washes, creams, plastic. Everybody is devoted to something.
BRADFORD COX

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

Born Eighties People
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’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
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
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
I’ve been going through a lot of… stuff. I need some space, which people were very kind enough to give me, and I feel really gracious about that. Nobody forces me to do things or say things or do interviews.
BRADFORD COX

Giving Nobody People Space
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
They had it at the library and I always thought that was interesting, even when I was into punk and stuff. Just the history of storytelling and the amount of melancholy a lot of old music has.
BRADFORD COX

History Lot Music Old Storytelling
What could be more experimental than me writing a straight up love song?
BRADFORD COX

Song Straight Up Writing
I’ve been going through some personal things that have stirred up a lot of old wounds.
BRADFORD COX

Old Personal Things Wound
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
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’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

Other Famous Personalities