Agnes Obel
I don't have the feeling of being motivated by anger, revenge or frustration.Collection: Anger
I really believe it's not bad to look back within music. I don't mean retro, but using your own memories to make a song because our memories are what make us who we are.
The orchestral or symphonic music never interested me.
The piano and the singing are two equal things to me - maybe not inseparable but very connected. You can say they are like two equal voices.
Sometimes I feel like a melody doesn't have anything to do with me, but it's just something that comes, is accumulated from me playing on the piano, and then this little creature just appears.
My parents were very relaxed about music.
I wish my parents had been more strict and made me learn more instruments.
I don't have a classical-music mentality. I haven't been taught that way, and it doesn't fit my character, either.
I'm very happy that I got introduced to music only as something you got pleasure from.
Even though music is something I travel around doing, it is also a very private thing. A sort of escapism.
I used to get very nervous before a concert. It's okay when you are in a band. You can kind of disappear. But when it's just you... yes, that was difficult. I would not say it is easy now. But when you do it for a long time, you do learn to cope.
I love Denmark. But it is a very safe place, and it is easy to let the state look after everything for you.
I learned that music should be fun and should be a way to express yourself - that there aren't really any rules.
What I discovered in Berlin was this immense freedom because it felt like you could start any kind of project and nobody would care... and that's what I sort of adopted to my own.
With 'Philharmonics,' I had to do a lot of interviews, and it was like I was corrupting something. In many ways, I've said everything in the song. And either I can't go back to what it was because it's changing when I play it, or I still haven't figured out what the song is about.
It's always difficult to know if a song needs more than piano, and I worry about my tendency to go in a sparse direction.
When I was in bands, I always liked the demo best.
Everything that has a spare piano is 'like Satie' and everything with strings is 'filmic,' Sometimes I get annoyed when they say my stuff sounds 'like Satie'. No, it doesn't. At least, I don't think so.
Feelings such as loneliness, longing or love are sometimes hard to put into words; maybe that's why we all love music, because it resonates with something we can't share.
When I started working on my own music, I didn't have the chance to record in a big music studio, so I had to record everything myself.
I love the conversation between film and music.
I've heard from other artists that people are a little bit more reserved in Northern Europe, which comes across at concerts, where the audience may be quieter. So this means less hecklers, but maybe it also means that people may not be as open about how they felt. I'm not so sure this is especially true of Denmark, but it's what I've heard.
The best thing about Berlin was that I got to be surrounded by people who pursue their ideas for themselves.
I don't have a daily routine at all.
I'm not into having a pedigree dog.
I have a difficult relationship with jazz. My parents really love it, and I went to a school where jazz was considered the best thing ever, so I had to leave it be for a long time. But now I'm rediscovering it. I'm approaching jazz in a different way.
My mum is a big collector of art.
When I'm flying, I really like to listen to piano music. Something impressionistic, loud and beautiful. Flying can be such a claustrophobic experience, it's nice to open that up a bit with music.Collection: Beautiful
I learned that music should be fun and should be a way to express yourself, that there aren't really any rules.Collection: Fun
On the last album, I didn't want to disturb the melody with too many stories. This time, I wanted to know if I was able to create images with words, with the sound of words.(...) I think that’s a good thing when the one who is listening, is feeling it in a different way that the one who creates. We are all listening with different perspectives.(...) I don’t want to impose my subjectivity to the listener.Collection: Thinking
There was a band very early on in our class, and I played in that band and as a teenager, I continued. It was more from my own relationship with the instruments at this time, figuring out the instrument and then having to learn different pieces that I really got into music. I really discovered the almost transcending power of music. And I think that is why I am so into it.Collection: Teenager