A Quote by David Longstreth

I never really thought of music as a particularly social thing. I experienced music through recordings as opposed to concerts. It just makes you think about the way things are put together, the way things are written as opposed to the showbusiness of something onstage, so no regrets there.
I am very aware now that music is a business, but there is also a way to go about making music that is true to yourself as opposed to doing, you know, just going through the motions and making things that would just be commercially successful.
Some people who make music are instantly very savvy about how they can get their music to communicate in a larger way. For me, the music was always first, and I put a lot of time and effort and thought into making the recordings. But everything else around it, all the things that were necessary to have a career in pop music, I was completely ill equipped to handle.
I love writing with really experienced producers and co-writers who open my mind to things I never would have thought otherwise. We may think the same way about something, but they might say it in a way that I never would have thought to say it.
Image and music always works together for me. I think they're equally important and I've always done things in a way that people remember them by, but I don't set out to just shock people...because that's very easy, a lot of people could do that, I just like to do things the way that makes me happy really. And sometimes that's too much for certain people, but, you know, I try to push the envelope to make the boundaries wider as far as what you can and can't do in music.
It's really important for me that the people who listen to my music get something that can hopefully help them get through whatever they're going through. Music is the only thing that's able to help sooth my soul in that way, and my goal is to always put things out there that that do the same thing for other people.
I've always been a fan of vinyl. There's something about the ritual of it. Something about it holds its gravity, for some reason. Sometimes you'll put on music and the music fades into the background. But when you take that vinyl out and put it down, the music becomes the conversation as opposed to being the soundtrack to it.
We definitely classify things in order to get closer to what we believe in - so it serves a purpose to really think about one style of music, and to understand the shades of delineation between similar artists. But yeah, it's really nice to listen to something the way most people listen to music! Just to enjoy it, without having to put it in context.
Music is a really powerful way for me to catalyze all kinds of things. It's always been the cure. Through music, I've healed all the wounds I've had and celebrated all the good things in life. Through music, I turn things, good or bad, into energy.
I think that when we're looking at things when we're right in the center of things, as opposed to being a bit unmoored from what's going on around us, we see things through a kind of dulling lens of convention, and there's something about extreme emotional experiences that gives us a heightened clarity, I think, of thought and of feeling.
If you have words and want to write music for them, the words hit you with a feeling which you can't really describe in words, and so what you do is to put music to them and in this way you make contact with the words, through the musical thing. It happens when two feelings come together and they do something together and they compliment each other.
I think I was quite lucky in that I went to an all-girls school. I was never put in an environment where I had to be the other - the woman as opposed to the man - all the way through my education. I was never made to feel that way at home.
The world in books seemed so much more alive to me than anything outside. I could see things I'd never seen before. Books and music were my best friends. I had a couple of good friends at school, but never met anyone I could really speak my heart to. We'd just make small talk, play soccer together. When something bothered me, I didn't talk with anyone about it. I thought it over all by myself, came to a conclusion, and took action alone. Not that I really felt lonely. I thought that's just the way things are. Human beings, in the final analysis, have to survive on their own.
I think live music is really, really important. And I think it's very important to do together. It's much more fun to play to music together than the one person listening to their lone iPod Shuffle. I think it's an amazing way to build community and have children do things that are funded that's not a videogame.
For me, writing music is a way of processing the world. It's not a concrete thing, as in, "This piece is about giraffes." It's much more of an emotional sort of thing. I want people to find something out about themselves through my music, something that was inaccessible before, something that they were suppressing, something that they couldn't really confront.
For me music is pretty personal. I generally listen to it alone, and I've never been a lover of concerts. So I don't think I really bond with other people over music. That's not unique to music for me, either. I feel that way about film, television, art, everything. I read a book alone, so why wouldn't I listen to music alone?
For me, music is sort of my passion, more so than being an actor. I just never tried to make a career as a musician. It was just something that I did on my own time, just for me. I had written a lot of songs, but I don't really record a lot of music because, for me, it's the same way as a poet: I write to get things out. It's sort of cathartic.
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