Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by James Murphy

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician James Murphy.
Last updated on December 3, 2024.
James Murphy

James Jeremiah Murphy is an American musician, DJ, singer, songwriter, and record producer. His most well-known musical project is LCD Soundsystem, which first gained attention with its single "Losing My Edge" in 2002 before releasing its eponymous debut album in February 2005 to critical acclaim and top 20 success in the UK. LCD Soundsystem's second and third studio albums, Sound of Silver (2007) and This Is Happening (2010) respectively, were met with universal acclaim from several music review outlets. Both albums have also reached the top 50 in the Billboard 200.

One of the big things that broke the band up for me, which I've become much clearer on over the years, was that I had no desire to be famous.
To do a band properly does kind of mean you don't really get to do anything else.
I'm an underdog by nature, and I like to be fighting. I don't make music for myself. I make music to fight. — © James Murphy
I'm an underdog by nature, and I like to be fighting. I don't make music for myself. I make music to fight.
I don't drink beer, and I don't drink at home.
I was someone who grew up obsessed with bands, how they were and how they treated one another, and how they treated fans.
I always wished I had a more flamboyant streak, but it's just not what I'm made of.
What we are as a live band is different to what we are on recordings, but they're both equal versions: they're both LCD Soundsystem, but in very different ways.
Even in the band I was in when I was a kid, I'd be telling everyone what to do. I'd be leaning over the drums, telling them to tune their guitars, micromanaging.
I've always been a good imitator. I love music. But I'm just not that original.
I had friends who were jocks or whatever... Then, around 12 or 13, kids get cliquish and cruel, and that disgusted me. It seemed a reprehensible use of one's arbitrary social status. So I got really aggressive about it and became more of a weird kid.
I don't want to be subsumed into popular culture and played on the radio next to some garbage music.
I'm basically a schlub.
There's kind of a limitless amount of things I want to do, and when the path seems to open, that's when I try to do a thing.
I was always just blown away by David Bowie and how mannered the guy was willing to be. It was so far from what I imagined someone with my confidence to be capable of.
If there was a direct influence on a song, I never hid it. — © James Murphy
If there was a direct influence on a song, I never hid it.
The more you are like me, the less interested in my band you are.
I'm a DJ, and I live in Williamsburg, and I run an independent record company.
I have a thing about inane lyrics - the world doesn't need them.
I'm generally a very optimistic guy.
If I opened a record store, it wouldn't be all punk rock and esoterica.
Songs can click together really quickly, and other times, they're really laborious and heavy-lifting.
I have an interest in everything, but I don't have an interest in starting new careers.
For most of my life, making music has cost me money. So I learned to live very, very cheaply.
When I want to DJ what I think to be the best-sounding place in the world, I go to this place in Sapporo, Japan, called Precious Hall, which has kind of a custom sound system with a much lower ceiling and a smaller room.
I moved to New York in 1989 and went to study at NYU.
As things mature - whether they be real estate, rock n' roll, politics, festivals, radio - there's an efficiency that develops, and with it, very often, comes some soul-crushing truths.
My gut instincts are strong, but they're not always accessible to me, which is why I like DJing, because you don't have time, and you have to go on instinct.
I spent a good amount of time with David Bowie, and I was talking about getting the band back together. He said, 'Does it make you uncomfortable?' I said 'Yeah,', and he said, 'Good. It should. You should be uncomfortable.'
I understand that if someone's going to make me his idea of cool, I can't control that.
One of my favorite photographers is Ruvan Wijesooriya, who takes most of the LCD photos. His work is incredibly colloquial and raw.
I was a singing guitar player as a kid, and I found it really embarrassing, so I stopped singing and became a drummer.
My high-techness is pretty low-tech. I'm not wildly computer savvy. I'm a record person.
LCD is a band about a band writing music about writing music.
If being in a band was my job, then I would quit. This is not a good job. A good job is in financial management.
I started playing in my first band when I was 12. I like to date myself by saying I was in a New Age band when it wasn't ironic; it was actually called new wave because it was new.
I like clever lyrics, funny lyrics, dumb lyrics. I can never put my finger on what I like about them.
The vast majority of kids in my school went on to college. That's just what you did. And I remember feeling like, 'No, I'm not doing that.' The idea that college was next, that it was a given, meant it was of no interest to me. So I didn't go.
I was into punk rock my whole life. I never listened to the Eagles. I never listened to things that were getting Grammys. So getting a Grammy nomination wasn't bad, it just wasn't meaningful.
Making people dance has another function that has nothing to do with art, and I mean that in the most positive way possible. It's like food - if you're not eating it, you're doing something wrong. If they're not dancing, something is wrong.
I'm always surprised by how optimistic and open sometimes people who are very successful are. — © James Murphy
I'm always surprised by how optimistic and open sometimes people who are very successful are.
I got a phone message from Janet Jackson saying, 'Hi, I love 'Losing My Edge', can you do me something funky and dirty like that?' I can't really do off-the-peg stuff, so I never called back.
I don't see myself as necessarily a very creative person. I'm a technical guy.
I don't write off silly pop people at all, because you never know where they're coming from.
It's strangely energizing to have people who don't make music themselves take potshots at you from the Internet.
In my experience, people looking for progress aren't actually looking to move things forward. They're looking to be perceived in a certain way: as a forward thinker. It's about vanity rather than any altruistic motives for the art.
Songs are songs, and to reduce them is to waste them.
Restaurants remind me of bands: there's lots of camaraderie, people work very closely together, very hard, and it's a bad job to pick if you want to make lots of money. Whether music or food, the reward always has to be because you love it.
LCD live was set up to be an argument about what's wrong with bands and why bands should be better. I always thought that we were so obviously not a great band, comically not a great band. I was not a great front man.
The plan is to keep on putting out records until someone shows up and tells us to stop.
I'm not a big songwriter guy. People who are really good singer-songwriters usually left me kind of cold. — © James Murphy
I'm not a big songwriter guy. People who are really good singer-songwriters usually left me kind of cold.
When I do a remix, I try to think about what I don't have in my bag and create something to fill that gap.
I don't prepare very well. I'm always sort of wrapped up in what I'm supposed to be doing in the moment, and then I suddenly appear someplace, and I'm really not prepared.
I never did albums fully at DFA; I always would go someplace else so I wasn't making a record in my office, basically.
We didn't set out to be cool. We set out to be an extremely tight band. We wanted to defy expectations. The more negative your mindset on coming to one of our gigs, the better for us, frankly.
One of the things that I think is special about DJing is creating this atmosphere of collectiveness, as if to say, 'We're all in this together.'
I wouldn't say I'm a friend of David Byrne, but I guess I'm an acquaintance. I'm obviously an admirer, and we've met, but we don't call and chat about 'Breaking Bad' or anything.
I love rock. I love the music that was born out of the latter part of the 20th century. It means a lot to me.
Those early years in New Jersey were amazing. We lived in a really small town with tons of kids my age. There were fields and woods and a creek - it was a pretty ideal place to be a little kid.
I have a very toxic combination of being completely determined, inflexible, controlling and being totally shy, guilty at hurting anyone's feelings, hypersensitive to other people's needs - and it's just paralysing.
Punk rock, to me, was always outsiderness. When I first saw large-group-scene punk rock, I was repelled by it, because there were way too many people who agreed with each other.
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