Courtney Barnett
What's funny about the slacker thing, people project an image of what they think a musician is: young, slack, unemployed - like a really romantic idea of a poet, writer or musician - which isn't really true a lot of the time. I don't reckon you would know anything about me if I wasn't moderately hard-working.Collection: Romantic
I really want a Christmas in New York one year, when it's snowing. Like, it's Christmas morning, and you have a fight with someone, and you run down the street, and it's snowing, and you can't find them.Collection: Christmas
Artists thrive off each other, and when you see other people doing cool stuff, it inspires you to do cool stuff.Collection: Cool
I think everyone's so scared of other people judging them.Collection: Thinking
There's lots of interesting stuff happening in the world. Lots of good and bad things, and there's interest in music still, which there always will be, which is always a good thing.Collection: Interesting
I liked the idea of being a photographer, just that you take this one picture of this one thing that'll never happen again - it's a bit weird when you think about it.Collection: Thinking
Once you write and record a song, it becomes everyone else's song.Collection: Song
I don't know anything except being female, so I don't know the opposite of it.Collection: Opposites
I think even though things are changing a bit, we still kind of tend to grow up with girls being like, 'Don't be too loud, don't be too rude, don't be too naughty,' or whatever, to act a certain way.Collection: Girl
The first song I wrote was called "You" and it was a love song about somebody who didn't even exist. I remember them all because I used to always write terrible poetry. I keep all my notebooks.Collection: Notebook
I've never liked songs that are about writing, or struggling to write. Maybe it's because it's too relatable to me.Collection: Song
It's easier to be angry. It's harder to be positive and happy, I reckon.Collection: Being Positive
I definitely grew up on a lot of American bands. I didn't really know that there were any decent Australian bands until I was around 20.Collection: Band
The music, I think, is just as important as the lyrics; it portrays the emotion of the song. I play the kind of music that I want to listen to.Collection: Song
It was cool at the rock camp - girls could just be themselves and they could be silly, they could roll around on the floor playing guitar.Collection: Girl
I try to take notes of things that happen that I think are important or interesting or just little tidbits here and there that happen in life. And some of it's even just one line or like a saying and I just go off that.Collection: Thinking
I don't like to overcook songs.Collection: Song
"On Script" is one of my favorite songs I've ever written. I'd just been jamming on it one day, and again I was struggling with lyrics. I'm still figuring out what it's about. I've seen a couple of reviews that are like, "It's about the monotony of playing the same songs every night," because I say, "On script every night/Like a well-rehearsed stage show." It's not about that at all, but I find that funny, how people project what they think about me, or songwriters in general.Collection: Song
Smoke Ring for My Halo was the first album I bought of Kurt's Vile, and when I first listened to "Peeping Tomboy" I was really depressed and unemployed. But the lyrics are, "I don't want to work. I don't want to sit around all day frowning." I was like, "Ah! Yes!"Collection: Rings
I think that a good song is catchy, and a great song is not catchy - but it has a deeper meaning.Collection: Song
When I was a teen, or like 18 to early 20s, I used to go to festivals all the time. I'd save all my money.Collection: Festivals
Festivals are always fun. I went to a lot when I was younger and had money to go to them. I like playing at festivals. They're always kind of like a big, crazy circus.Collection: Fun
If I'm not touring I'd just be at home, just driving - I'm kind of at a loss for how that stuff works.Collection: Home
I don't really feel like a rock artist, but I guess in the small category of the world of music genres, that's where I fall in because I've got a guitar.Collection: Fall
I grew up listening to Nirvana, and then went through some bad 90s pop stuff - a lot of Australian one-hit wonders.Collection: Listening
If I make a wrong decision, I worry what might have been. I stress out over very insignificant things.Collection: Stress
An album is a thing you take time out and go work on.Collection: Albums
I started writing songs when I started learning guitar.Collection: Song
I reckon that growing up, listening to so much different music, I think over time I just kind of sucked it all in and it probably comes back out through my music.Collection: Growing Up
I've never really had a certain style of music in mind that I make, or am really adamant on how something should sound, but I like the process of not knowing, of just seeing what happens and what comes out.Collection: Knowing
I try to write a lot and my process is kind of back and forth. I procrastinate a lot so when I do sit down to write, I'm pretty lazy at it. And it's such a frustrating thing sometimes - writing - when you don't do it all the time, you get that thing in your head that you have nothing to talk about and you can't write songs.Collection: Song
Every time I write a song it feels like it could be the last one I do, or it always feels like a fluke.Collection: Song
People should be free to take whatever they want from music and I think that over time I realized that different people always find different things in my songs, which is really good.Collection: Song
I think that if people get my music, then they get what my message is.Collection: Thinking
Sometimes I have something stuck in my head and that directs the rhyme that I'm writing with.Collection: Writing