A Quote by Lauren Mayberry
I try not to say exactly what songs are about sometimes, because I feel like it ruins it for people.
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Sometimes I make songs about girls, and I say 'he,' or I'll make songs about guys, and I say 'she,' or sometimes they're exactly what they're about. I feel like it just allows me to get a lot more perspective.
You do try to write songs that you feel like people can relate to and you try to be as honest as you can so that people hear your records and they feel like, "Oh, my god. This is exactly how I feel. I went through this."
People listen to the music and sense what it is about. Sometimes they know exactly what the songs are about, sometimes they interpret their own meaning to the music, and thats great when this happens because it shows its striking a chord.
Pop music often deals with subject matter like breakups, or you have songs that are like, "I will love you forever," or "you're so hot right now," or "I really feel you," or "We should be together." There aren't that many songs that are like, "I just walked into the room and now I have nothing to say because I feel so awkward because I fancy you so much." There's not as many songs that deal with that awkward bit about love; about how you can really have such a huge crush on someone that actually is completely disabling.
I'm always interested in hearing how other people read and react to my songs. I hadn't thought of it in just that way. One of the things I love about doing things that are creative is that I feel like it's my right as an artist not to be affected by the reactions of those people that are going to hear my songs. But I also feel like it's the right of the people hearing them to have their own interpretations of what these songs mean. Sometimes people will see things that I don't see.
People say you're trapped in this genre. You're a horror guy. I say wait a minute - I'm able to say exactly what I think. I'm able to talk about, comment about, take snapshots of what's going on at the time. I don't feel trapped. I feel like this is my way of being able to express myself.
I feel like I write so that people can think of it as theirs. If my song is exactly about your life right now, then it is - I don't even want to say that it's mine, because it's yours.
I say that is because those are the times where sometimes you feel actually a little bit hurt. Because you feel like saying to these folks, "[Don't] you think if I could do it, I [would] have just done it. Do you think that the only problem is that I don't care enough about the plight of poor people, or gay people, or immigrants, or ...?"
I know exactly what my songs are about and I try not to tell people, because a friend of mine really loves 'Stop Your Tears' and I made the mistake of telling her what it's about one day. Now she has to distract herself and look elsewhere when I sing the last verse about being at the river with the baby, because she knows too much.
I think if you listen to our records, they come at different points in your life. When people say to me that Stars records have themes, I think what they mean is we write songs - or try to write songs - that are timeless. We try to write songs that catch you at the right time in your life, and that you can hold on to. We write kitchen sink songs. If you're doing the dishes or you're driving to your mom's funeral, or if you're getting over having done MDMA and you feel sad, you can listen to Stars because we're not going to demand of you that you be cool.
I feel like you have to be so precise in what you are going to say, or you can be hammered if you say it the wrong way. That part makes feel bummed out because sometimes these things can take a while to figure out. Different people formulate things in different ways and have different processes. I feel like let's just take a deep breath and not be so perfectionistic about it all.
The interesting thing is that, well, here's what I think about songwriters and songs. Sometimes people sit down and say, "I gotta write a song today, I have a title" and all of that, and sometimes inspiration just happens, almost like "Sugar, Sugar" and a couple of the other songs. But basically, I just started playing the piano, and I'm not a great piano player.
I try to love my neighbor as myself but I'm not trying to be a people pleaser. Sometimes that's hard, because my human nature is to want people to be happy with me. But sometimes I feel my convictions are so great that it would be compromising the truth if I didn't do that. So sometimes it's a struggle to say, "This is what I think; this is what I believe, and if you don't agree with me, oh well." The hardest thing for people to accept is the gay-affirming issue. It's hard for people to agree to disagree on that one.
I feel sometimes and in some ways like Linda Romanoli and Monica Velour; I feel marginalized because I'm in my fifties. If you went online and you look at some of the blogs, which one can do on a lonely night, it's pretty startling what people will say about you just because you're in your fifties.
I always just try to write the best songs that I can at any given time, and sometimes those songs are for me, and sometimes they're for other people. And that's to be evaluated after the fact.
I'm definitely seeing more and more new people at shows, which is exciting. It's nice for me, because it's a fresh start. I don't feel as obligated to play old favorite songs - it feels like I'm free to try new things because I'm meeting people for the first time. But there's a lot of people who are showing up and they know all the words to the first album and they're requesting songs from the second album.
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