A Quote by Courtney Barnett
The music, I think, is just as important as the lyrics; it portrays the emotion of the song. I play the kind of music that I want to listen to.
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I want people to listen to the lyrics of each song and absorb the music fully before they look at me and make a judgment about what they think my music will or should sound like.
I think music is an intuitive force. It's this beautiful wave that connects all of us and inspires us, and I think music has the ability - when you listen to a song, you're not immediately thinking about the lyrics or what's going on in the mind of the writer, you're feeling the song.
It's difficult for me to describe my own music; every song is an experience that I set to music. There's no lyrics, no singer, just instruments, but I'm sure you can feel what the song is talking about just by listen to it. I can't describe a feeling, my songs are feelings.
I think that if you listen to the same exact genre of music that you play, it is so easy to be influenced by it. There will be times where we are writing a song, and then realize that it songs like something we just heard on the radio. There was a while when we were writing, that I didn't listen to music because I didn't want to be influenced.
Music is very transporting. I'll hear a song for the first time and I rarely listen to the lyrics. I picture that song playing as a soundtrack to a movie, or even just in the background of someone's life. This all sounds weird, but I have an active imagination, and music opens the floodgates of that area of my brain.
I just listen to so much music that I like the role music can play in scoring something. I'm not doing song parodies or funny songs, I'm just adding some music to my words. So it's limited and specific, but as a performer I find it pretty enjoyable.
I'm very much inspired by the Latin music, especially the romantic boleros. Not that when I sit to write a play I listen to boleros. But I think it's part of my DNA, it's part of my upbringing. I grew up in a house where this is the kind of music my parents used to listen to. This is the kind of music I would even hear in my neighborhood. I think that sort of romanticism is part of the culture.
It's of course important to mention that when DJing, I'm building my own story through the music. I'm figuring out what song to play next, what song to play after that, and how the two will blend together. How the emotion is going to develop from one song to another. So I first build that storyline.
I think people assume that whatever kind of music you make is the music you listen to. Don't get me wrong, I listen to tons of pop music and all the music that really inspires Best Coast is very straightforward '50s and '60s pop music, but I've been listening to R&B and rap since I was a kid. I grew up in L.A. It's part of the culture. I listen to anything.
I would say a great song [is where] you like everything in the song. The lyrics move you, the beat makes you want to dance and you feel invincible when you listen to that song. A good song I think you can listen to but you get tired of it really fast.
When I'm writing a record, I kind of don't listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.
I never really had the chance to play the kind of music I wanted to play. It was always just classical. It had its limits. I play piano now and again in the new forms of music that I actually want to play, but at the time, it was something that I just kind of moved past.
My parents were opera singers. I didn't want to play opera because I wasn't good enough. I didn't want to play their music; I wanted to play the music that I wanted to play, and I'm so lucky that today I get to play that music, even though I don't like every song I write.
I usually start with a guitar riff or some little pattern of chords, and then I kind of go from there. Usually my lyrics are the last thing to go onto a song. For years and years I only ever did instrumental, so I'm still trying to get confidant with my lyrics and find the right balance. I'll generally get inspired from the music. I'll have a guitar line, and then I'll have a melody line, and I hook the lyrics up to fit that rhythm. So, my lyrics to tend be very rhythmic as well. They work with the music rather than the music works around them.
People always think I just focus on rap, but I listen to every type of music. If I like a song it don't matter what genre of music it is. I might listen to Duran Duran, I might listen to Sublime, maybe Red Hot Chili Peppers.
I make up cassettes all the time - to take on the road with me - a song from this album, a song from that album. That's the way I listen to music; it's like one of those K Tel things: it's from all over. I listen to Fred Astaire, I listen to African folk music, I listen to Talking Heads.
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