Win Butler
I studied scriptural interpretation, which is more about how people get meaning out of texts, looking at stuff in the Old Testament - Muslims, Christians, Jews, different interpretations of the same texts.Collection: Christian
I think you have to want to be really famous. It's a lot easier to sabotage your career than to have a career to sabotage.Collection: Thinking
I just wanted to make something in the world and worry about the rest of it later and not get too caught up in rules.Collection: Worry
I find myself a lot more open to bands if I just hear their song. It gives you an opportunity to engage with the thing itself and not be overwhelmed by everything else that surrounds it.Collection: Song
Songwriting is reliant on inspiration, which ideally you don't have that much control over. Songs kind of half make themselves, and then you have to finish them.Collection: Song
When I was younger, bands helped me connect to part of my humanity; bands that had nothing to do with anything political helped to form me. There's a correlation in that: If people can connect to music, maybe they can connect to each other.Collection: People
Major labels just lost their way. It's like the housing bubble. They lost a sense of the fundamentals.Collection: Labels
While there are so many beautiful Baroque churches and it's a beautiful artistic tradition, it almost gets hideous and grotesque if you push it further. You can take something beautiful and overdo it.Collection: Beautiful
I try not get too self-aware when writing lyrics.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: College
I always find live shows on film kind of boring. Even my favorite ones, I kinda zone out for most of it. It's just so different seeing a band in the flesh and then watching a film of it, even if you have a hundred cameras and it's shot from every angle. There's just a communal, visceral thing that never translates very well.Collection: Different
Once I got to know what's been happening historically, it's pretty impossible to un-know it. Like right now, there's the outbreak of cholera in Haiti, and people see that as a news headline, but I know there's half a billion dollars of aid that one senator is putting a hold on, that the Red Cross has raised half a billion dollars but has only spent $200 million.Collection: People
I think when you've been in a band for a really long time, sometimes you don't appreciate what's good about yourself. It's easy to play something and get too focused on some small detail. It's helpful to have somebody around who can say, "No, that was good." Just so you don't get too lost or forget what you do. You need somebody you really trust who has great taste.Collection: Thinking
In the UK, tons of records are now sold in grocery stores, because there are no record stores - it's iTunes or the grocery store. And almost every band that had an impact on me was on a major label. There's value in people actually hearing things, as well.Collection: People
There's an obligation to let people know where their money is going, so the tour has an educational aspect, mostly as a way to thank people. But the most practical use is to raise money and do the research to figure out the proper ways to spend it. You want to make sure that the money doesn't just go somewhere where it does more harm than good.Collection: Educational
There's the idea that you have to know how to solve the world's problems in order to feel that something is morally wrong. I'm always back and forth between optimism and depression about the situation.Collection: Optimism