A Quote by James Bay

Some of my songs are about the feeling you belong somewhere else. But there's also something grounding about coming from a small town. — © James Bay
Some of my songs are about the feeling you belong somewhere else. But there's also something grounding about coming from a small town.
I was the weirdest kid in this small town in Washington. I was the only person who was from somewhere else, so I think they just didn't understand it... They said I was a weirdo or that I didn't belong there. That was the hardest one when people said I didn't belong there.
Just having the pain of being alive without anything else, whether it's good or bad. There's a lot of serious songs on the record, you know. That song is just about feeling like a fish out of water, feeling like you don't belong on the planet sometimes.
I never dreamed about being an actor, because that was out of reach. Coming from a small town that was big in farming, and also big in clothing factories, you don't dream about being a professional football player or an actor.
I like the idea about somewhere there being a world... somewhere there's a world that I don't know about. But also, that somewhere, there was once something that disappeared.
I have written quite a lot of songs about dealing with my feelings surrounding the disease. I have written songs about the fear and anxiety I have around my disease, and the fear of it coming back. Some of my songs might seem like relationship songs, but are more about my relationship with that struggle.
Capitalism does what it does and money doesn't belong to anybody. It just stays in someone's wallet for a while, then it goes somewhere else. It always goes somewhere and it is always about to go somewhere.
I was born in a very small town in North Dakota, a town of only about 350 people. I lived there until I was 13. It was a marvelous advantage to grow up in a small town where you knew everybody.
I think there is something special about living in a small town. Everyone knows your business and there is an intimacy you don't get in a large town.
I think if you sing a song for the first time to your mom and dad, or your friends, and they go, 'That's pretty cool'-if you're playing at the local bar somewhere, or the coffee shop, singing songs, or if you have a gig somewhere and you're singing your own songs, I think that's some version of making it. ... It's not just about having commercial success; it's about having a great life.
I hear people say they're going to write. I ask, when? They give me vague statements. Indefinite plans get dubious results. When we're concrete about our writing time, it alleviates that thin constant feeling of anxiety that writers have - we're barbecuing hot dogs, riding a bike, sailing out in the bay, shopping for shoes, even helping a sick friend, but somewhere nervously at the periphery of our perception we know we belong somewhere else - at our desk!
There is something very unstabilizing about not knowing where you're coming from or where you're going. There's something very romantic about it, because you have this search for the unknown. But at the same time, some­times I'm like, "God, if I were to die tomorrow, where would I like to be buried?" I wouldn't know. That's kind of a heavy thought, but it's a fact. You don't know any­more where you belong.
We don't want to be simply wandering about without some kind of reason, we want our presence here to have a purpose, and that we are not going to end here, we are going to proceed somewhere else, and also that we didn't begin here, that we began somewhere else and all that living, all that elaborate account of our presence seems to be quite basic to our nature and so this is what literacy taps into.
I'm not in show business because I don't have to go to the meetings, I'm just not a part of it, I don't belong to it. When you "belong" to something. You want to think about that word, "belong." People should think about that: it means they own you. If you belong to something it owns you, and I just don't care for that. I like spinning out here like one of those subatomic particles that they can't quite pin down.
There will be slow songs, sad songs, happy songs, songs about boys, and songs about being who you are. I'm making sure I'm happy with all of the songs, because if I am not happy with them, I can't expect anyone else to be, you know?
I always lived by railroads, and I would find places to just look at the horizon, and I always expected there was something somewhere else. And sometimes I think that's more a metaphysical somewhere else rather than just to get out of the town.
I've been in bands since I was about fifteen, so there are probably quite a lot of terrible teenage songs kicking about somewhere. I'm not sure what it was about to be honest, I think it was probably just something along the lines of teen angst.
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