Latest Andrew Bird Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• This might be a controversial thing to suggest, but in a quest to understand and relate to terrorism or school shootings, sometimes it feels like it's real, the appeal. As we've seen with ISIS, it's not always the devout who are getting into it; it's just people looking for a sense of belonging. The more they feel they're up against, the more intensity the cause has. It's an epic clash of cultures, and both sides are playing that up, but it's human beings disaffected, detached, and lonely.

  Andrew Bird

  Lonely, Real, School

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I've always had levity in my songs, so I like to turn things over, twist them around, and make fun of myself.

  Andrew Bird

  Song, Fun, Twists

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• The first splurge of creativity is kind of free, and the last 30 percent is painstakingly hard work, but it's good to light a fire and make it public and create that expectation. It's become part of the writing process, really, a way to ask the audience what they think, how they think it's going. I can't write songs in a vacuum.

  Andrew Bird

  Song, Hard Work, Writing

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I've literally opened it up to suggestions and it's totally chaotic and kind of a bad idea. You don't need the actual feedback to get a sense. When you're showing a song for the first time, people can feel that newness.

  Andrew Bird

  Song, Ideas, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• There's kind of this unequaled thrill of playing a half-finished song, it's kind of sense of slight embarrassment; like you're blushing. I like doing that. I did that with "Eyeoneye" and it was almost a curse on the song for a while; I debuted it when it was half-finished in a very public way

  Andrew Bird

  Song, Thrill, Half

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I also don't believe that "everything happens for a reason," which is in a similar category of world-views.

  Andrew Bird

  Believe, Views, Everything Happens For A Reason

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Norman is a very up-close, personal, character drama and I'd like to do something more zoomed out, a little more pastoral, some sweeping epic. I'd like to try something different.

  Andrew Bird

  Drama, Character, Epic

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I think jazz was just seeking respect and validity because a lot of people didn't believe it was a viable art form, and then they got a lot of attention in Europe. A lot of bands that can't catch flies in the US have these followings in Europe, [but] it's less and less the case. American audiences are way more sophisticated and adventurous than anyone thinks that they are.

  Andrew Bird

  Art, Believe, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I'm just trying to get my body in shape so that I can handle it. It's a very physically demanding thing. I've been doing it for 16 years, so I know what I'm going into now. I'm trying to stay calm and not panic.

  Andrew Bird

  Years, Stay Calm, Trying

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• There's been this perception that Europeans still hold on to, that they discover the real talented ones in American culture and give them proper credit and that's not true anymore - it used to be. A lot of jazz musicians would get respect in Europe.

  Andrew Bird

  Real, Europe, Giving

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• The weirdest time is when I'm having to explain myself all day to journalists, and then I don't perform, so there's no release, just a lot of self-consciousness. Then what do you do with that at the end of the day? How do you release your brain from talking about yourself all day?

  Andrew Bird

  Talking, Self, Brain

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I'm into lately being a little less precious about writing and being like, "Okay, what if I just locked myself in my room, pretend that there's someone outside with a gun that's saying, 'Don't come out until you write something.'"

  Andrew Bird

  Writing, Gun, What If

  Interview with Genevieve Koski, music.avclub.com. January 20, 2009.

• What you see at the Field Museum is only like, 10 percent of the collection. It's birds of paradise and passenger pigeons and in all these drawers that pull out, these specimens come out and it's spectacular. And it worked out.

  Andrew Bird

  Museums, Bird, Paradise

  Interview with Genevieve Koski, music.avclub.com. January 20, 2009.

• I didn't have the patience for the research, or anything like that. I just like how it sets the imagination off. It's just an area that's very fertile for great words. Great metaphors, potentially.

  Andrew Bird

  Imagination, Research, Metaphor

  Interview with Genevieve Koski, music.avclub.com. January 20, 2009.

• Sometimes the word dictated the melody.

  Andrew Bird

  Sometimes, Melody

  Source: www.avclub.com

• With the words, a lot of things start with questions. Some word kind of piques my interest, and I love the way it sounds, but I really don't know what it means. And I honestly don't care for a while.

  Andrew Bird

  Mean, Sound, Pique

  Interview with Genevieve Koski, music.avclub.com. January 20, 2009.

• When I start asking my friends, "What do you think this means?" And it leads to way more interesting conversations than what it actually ends up meaning in the dictionary. Like "apocryphal," for instance.

  Andrew Bird

  Mean, Thinking, Interesting Conversation

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Most of the songs that I appreciate are lyrically vague.

  Andrew Bird

  Song, Appreciate, Vague

  Interview with Genevieve Koski, music.avclub.com. January 20, 2009.

• I don't like super-descriptive modern fiction. I like, "Here's what was happening in 1582 all over the planet." Then that gets my imagination going.

  Andrew Bird

  Imagination, Fiction, Modern

  Interview with Genevieve Koski, music.avclub.com. January 20, 2009.

• Some of my earlier songs are kind of more about mental illness.

  Andrew Bird

  Song, Kind, Mental Illness

  Interview with Genevieve Koski, music.avclub.com. January 20, 2009.

• There's songs that could either be taken as a conversation between two people, like "The Privateers," or "Why," from a much earlier record. Or "Glass Figurine." That's my version of a relationship song.

  Andrew Bird

  Song, Taken, Glasses

  Source: www.avclub.com

• The melodies come out so strong that I'm like, "Oh, crap." It's really better if they could both be kind of able to compromise, but the melodies, even more recently, they come out very fully cast and formed.

  Andrew Bird

  Strong, Able, Be Kind

  Interview with Genevieve Koski, music.avclub.com. January 20, 2009.

• In New York, I'm playing in a church, solo, doing instrumental stuff. There's talk of doing more, like, installation-type things with some of the specimen horns I've played through. Just filling a room in a museum with these horn-speaker sculptures and then making loops that run all day, and you walk around the room and sort of mix the sound by where you stand. That's all way in the future, but that kind of stuff is a different way of thinking about performing.

  Andrew Bird

  Running, New York, Thinking

  Interview with Genevieve Koski, music.avclub.com. January 20, 2009.

• With digital sound just becomes simply information, not the sum of its parts.

  Andrew Bird

  Sound, Information, Digital

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Anyway, I'm digressing, but this is just kind of this 10-and-a-half-minute, ambient - you hear cicadas and birds and the wind outside and crickets as I'm swelling the piece. I could never do that on a pop record. I could, but why would I want to be agitating?

  Andrew Bird

  Wind, Bird, Pieces

  Interview with Genevieve Koski, music.avclub.com. January 20, 2009.