Win Butler
I had a somewhat religious upbringing. Not strict, but it was there, and I'm kind of thankful for that. If you grow up just watching MTV, that's its own form of religion, and it's not even based on happiness or communal responsibility. I mean, try to construct a worldview out of that.Collection: Thankful
Funny songs aren't usually that good. Like Weird Al and maybe a couple of Beatles songs, but it's kind of hard to bring humor into rock music in an interesting way.Collection: Humor
Everyone has their own talents. It's up to the individual to see what you can actually do.
We're exposed to ideas everywhere. The world is full of ideas. I think that television is a pretty powerful medium in that regard.
I'm not practising, I don't go to church, but what I got from it was a sense of belonging to something bigger. What I really miss is being forced to be in a community with people that aren't the same as you. Then, you really have to work through the ways that you're different.
I studied the Bible and philosophy in college, and I think in a certain sense that's the kind of stuff that still makes my brain work.
I love my iPhone; it's great to have a camera around all the time.
The film 'Black Orpheus' is one of my favorite films of all time, which is set in Carnival in Brazil.
I was really sick of bands just ignoring the audience as a posture in rock music. And I think we fed off each other in terms of trying to engage the audience, not in a hammy way, but actually trying to be aware of the space that you are playing in and trying to connect in some way through the music.
A lot of people get really stuck in this idea that everything's been done and there's nowhere left to go.
Usually, I think you have most of your musical influences locked down by the time you're 16.
I feel like I'm kind of a bit of a sponge in a way. Like, if people around me are going through things, I find it very hard not to be empathetic.
The cliched rock life never seemed that cool to me.
Our music may sound big emotionally, but that's more to do with the playing, the level of musicianship and the full-on energy. Often, the lyrics are often quite small and focused.
I think there's some pretty amazing language in the Bible.
Whenever you're talking about meaning, basically... I think a lot of the human experience has to do with trying to understand what things mean, and there's not really any tools to do that unless you're thinking about it in a more spiritual or philosophical realm.
I found out a lot of stuff through MTV, and I didn't even have cable, I just saw it at friends' houses. But my culture in junior high was totally influenced by it.
I never really felt super-Texan. It wasn't like I was unhappy, but I wasn't superhappy.
The idea of peer critique, of talking about each other's art - I just found it so useless.
I'm not someone who can dance to a song I don't like.
The idea of dancing to bad house music is something I could never get behind.
I'm not a good hipster - if I let my moustache grow for weeks, it just looks like I have dirt on my face. I'll never have a glorious handlebar moustache.
I don't like to talk about other bands in interviews.
I grew up in a somewhat religious family. My dad's family isn't religious at all, but my mom's side of the family is, so I was exposed to church a bit.
If you think about it, if you've ever been to a Catholic service, it's practically a laser light show. It's very dramatic, very theatrical. The outfits they wear, it's all designed to be impressive.
My parents live near the ocean, and I've spent a lot of time walking through the water at night, being around the water.
The work that Partners in Health do in Haiti benefits the whole world.
The music in Haiti is all tied up in voodoo and African rhythm, and so there's this funny thing: go to a voodoo ceremony, and then go to a Catholic church and tell me which music you liked better, to which one the music is more integral.
When I was living in Boston, I worked in this store that played the college radio station. I had to listen to it all day, and I didn't care for most of it.
It seems like the record industry made so much crazy money in the 1960s that everyone wanted to get in on it. Now it's just become very corporate. So all of these people who despise music end up being in charge.
The Flaming Lips have been on Warner Bros. forever, and certainly everything I heard growing up was on a major label in some way, from the Cure to Radiohead to Bjork.
It's a lot easier to sabotage your career than to have a career to sabotage.
My favorite English teacher in high school showed me 'Brazil' when I was 15, and it blew my mind. It's one of those movies that's revealed itself in different ways as I've gone back to it over the years.
Being in a rock band, I feel a certain responsibility to have a weird haircut. I mean, who else gets to do that?
There are so many bands that I'm kind of aware of through media about them, and it ends up filtering my experience of the actual music.
Years ago, in order to stay sane, I had to really make an effort not to think about how people view us. There's just so much noise, positive and negative, and not much good comes out of thinking about it.Collection: Thinking
Whenever you do anything or say anything, you're opening yourself up to criticism. But that's okay.Collection: Criticism
Music is made by individuals. Some artists will be very politically overt in their songs, some will be more subtle. You have to be true to yourself, true to your nature.Collection: Song
It would get really alienating, to have my face be the face of a cause. So much just comes down to the songs. I just want to give us the opportunity to write great songs. Even our work in Haiti is limited by how good our songs are. We just need to get rid of as much of the bullshit as possible, so we can have a life, so we have something to write about.Collection: Song
I think of hip hop as a mass media, radio, MTV thing. It’s been extremely relevant over the last 10 years and rock music is just not anymore—-a tear rolls down my cheek as I say that.Collection: Thinking
A lot of artists write about the same things their whole career.Collection: Writing
What I miss [about church] is being forced to be in community with people that aren't the same as me.Collection: People
My favorite English teacher in high school showed me 'Brazil' when I was 15 and it blew my mind. It's one of those movies that's revealed itself in different ways as I've gone back to it over the years.Collection: Teacher
I think filmmakers all secretly wanna be musicians and all musicians secretly wanna be filmmakers.Collection: Thinking
If I was a cabinetmaker or a commercial fisherman, it would be the same question - how to connect to my world. The job we do affords us the opportunity to have people listen to what we say. But a lot of people have a similar situation: They're trying to find a way to do some good.Collection: Opportunity
The film Black Orpheus is one of my favorite films of all time, which is set in Carnival in Brazil.Collection: Black
I don't think the emotional quality is the defining quality of the music but it's definitely something that people have picked up on a lotCollection: Emotional
I think there's some pretty amazing language in the Bible. The thing that's always been interesting to me about religion is that compared to the more modern spirituality, the West Coast pseudo-Buddhist thing that people go for these days, actual Buddhism and Islam have been looking at these philosophical questions, at really hard questions, for a long time. There's a lot of stuff that philosophy doesn't talk about, and in the secular world, a lot of times, people don't talk about these ideas, and that was always really interesting for me.Collection: Philosophy
A lot of stuff is dark in a way, but unless you're really looking at a situation for what it actually is, it's hard to be hopeful - or meaningless to be hopeful about it unless it's actually based in a real possibility.Collection: Real
There's this idea, particularly in pop music and a lot of these pop father/manager types, that you're selling the person instead of the song. You basically want to create something that the fans relate to because it's exactly like them. So there's a lot of art that's made to be in the image of the audience, but then the audience is imitating this version of themselves. It's a really weird cultural feedback loop, and it's kind of strange to watch. It's a new thing since I was a kid, really a different thing.Collection: Song