Caroline Polachek
Being a musician, there aren't that many ways for me to consciously use a more strategy, math-based part of my brain.
Well working by yourself, especially when no one knows about it, is totally liberating because it's very impulse-driven. You work when you want to work. You work when you can work. No deadlines. No conversation. No compromise. No help.
But I never imagined that I could ever have a career in music. I always thought it was like a mafia, that you had to sell your soul and know the right people and be in the right place.
Low' was probably the album that influenced me more than any other, because of how it combined humor and impressive, glamorous, driving energy with this totally surreal soundscape production.
As soon as we wrote the beat for 'Romeo,' I knew it was a running song. I was thinking about it in terms of the body. What do you want to do? It's not a song you want to dance to.
I was into music from a very early age, and I was also - I don't really talk about this that much - really into horses. I learned a lot about rhythm and about voice from that.
Growing up, I was so compelled by artists whose looks were inseparable from their music. Bjork was my hero.
Before I play a show, I put on lavender oil - it's sort of a ritual.
I almost gave up on 'Door' so many times. I couldn't crack it. It started out as a simple song with just a chorus-verse-chorus. I felt like it needed to transform more.
I've definitely been in that situation many times - staying in a relationship longer than I should. I think there's so much of your identity that comes from a relationship.
I think that's a big trope in pop music: the blaze-of-glory breakup. It's not one that I particularly identify with, but it's definitely possible.
I used to obsessively draw. I was really good at it.
Yes, when I come up with ideas on my own, it's almost always a melody, just as often an instrument or bassline as it is a vocal. But it is a single, linear, monophonic thing. Something you could hum or whistle.
But synthesizer music has been accepted as emotional for long enough that it isn't a huge reach, conceptually, to think of a fake voice as 'emotional', especially since there's a human composing it.
'Ashes Of Love' has much more hot-blooded vocal than what PC Music is known for, and a much harder production than what I usually do, so I was fully prepared for people to hate it.
Success will come. Or it won't. But I think you can only make a go at it in a big way by fully being yourself and taking risks. People can feel risks.Collection: Being Yourself
I'm gonna really enjoy bringing out the catsuit once in a while.Collection: Enjoy
You know how some trees have those ear mushrooms that just grow off, and you could live on one of those mushrooms and not realize that there was stacks and stacks of others? That's how I describe music scenes in New York. That's one of the trippiest things about living here - just how many parallel universes there are that you can be completely unaware of.Collection: Tree
No one goes to BrooklynVegan to read about content, they just go for drama. It's a tabloid, the scum of indie.Collection: Drama
Don't say yes to everything. Learn how to say no, because people respect a no.Collection: People
When I was 10, I would hear songs like "I Love You Always Forever" by Donna Lewis on the radio, and I want to make stuff that a 10 year old might hear coming out of the radio and think, "Yeah! I love this!"Collection: Song
Do not be precious about your music within your own world. Try everything you want to try; just because it exists doesn't mean it's done.Collection: Mean
You'd have to be kind of a bonehead not to feel pressure.Collection: Be Kind
I was really inspired by this feeling of mania, a caricature of myself that I look down upon and see negatively.Collection: Feelings
When you meet someone, a friend, who's living out on the road, or living semi-homeless, or leading their life in a radically different way, it makes you think about your own life in a really critical way and feel completely disoriented.Collection: Thinking
Radio is so cutthroat, but I do feel like the music industry is structured so differently than it used to be. I'm amazed and in awe of artists who can build a parallel universe that's so big and clearly defined that the mainstream finally has to pay attention.Collection: Artist
I think all the songs [at Moth] are about different things, but if we were to speak about it as a whole, it's really about, it's about joy, and about sensuality and vulnerability and also fun, energy, living in New York in 2015, being out of control, wanting to be in control, failing! It's a sort of story of our lives.Collection: Song
The only thing that deeply frustrates me is the slow speed [of major labels]. The more people involved, the slower the pace.Collection: People
It's a lot different being a hip-hop artist. You just show up with a piece of paper with your words on it, say it in the mic, then you leave and some other guy does all the music.Collection: Artist
The music industry has completely restructured itself in the last couple of years because it hasn't been making money. Labels are signing bands they trust as artistic entities, instead of cash cows. They're signing bands because they believe that the bands have tastes beyond anything they could concoct themselves.Collection: Couple
Everyone in our generation lives in a world where you're surrounded by all sorts of music all the time. People's tastes are made of combinations of genres.Collection: World
I saw this wide-eyed girl with big ears and a pink nose who's too excited. I wanted that part of myself to sing lead.Collection: Girl
There's this corporate machine giving us a chance to access radio - though there's no guarantee.Collection: Giving
Playing to bigger audiences at festivals got me in the mindset of writing music that I would sing to a crowd.Collection: Writing
Brooklyn is a hub; people move to Brooklyn because of what's already in Brooklyn.Collection: Moving