Quote

I really want to write a novel. A few years ago I went so far as to do the cliché thing and rent this house in upstate [New York]. I still have the story, but I got 15,000, 20,000 words in and it was like, This is falling apart. I can't figure out.

Craig Finn

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Craig Finn
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: August 22
Musician
Singer
Boston
Massachusetts
Years
Fall
Apart
Really
Write
Figure
Like
House
York
Stories
Figures
Stills
Novel
Upstate
Still
Went
Clich
Writing
Story
Rent
Thing
Words
Falling

More quotes by Craig Finn

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I don't have a problem rhyming bar with car - I do it all the time - but sometimes it doesn't feel right.
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My style of lyric-writing is very specific and has a lot of details, and I think people react most to that.
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I think you want to write a song that's like the songs you are into.
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I really like narrative songs, but I wonder if that's a thing for some people. Once they've heard the story, do they really need to hear the story again?
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If you wait four or five years between records, it better be a masterpiece, you know? And if you keep putting them out, you're saying, 'Hey, here's 10 more songs'.
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I'm not a horror movie guy, but I think the guy that did Saw, or maybe House or something, he was saying you love that age as a storyteller because a nineteen-year-old is still dumb enough to make really bad decisions, but he's allowed to be out on his own.
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The Catholic influence just comes from being raised Catholic, going to church every Sunday, being confirmed, going to church on holy days. So it's coming from where I am. It serves the purpose of having people who have a base or foundation where they know what's right.
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It's really easy, in a band, to overstate - you feel like everything you do is different than the past. I think this is just another Hold Steady record, but at the same time, there is some evolution. Like, How can we make this chorus bigger? What do we want this to sound like?
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Sometimes things reveal themselves to you a little bit. I think it was Joan Didion that said, We write to find out what we're thinking. And sometimes that happens.
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An album doesn't mean as much to a lot of people now, compared to just songs.
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You can't get every girl you get the ones you love the best.
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I've tried to write songs for other people and it usually requires them singing it and then changing the phrasing. I can put a lot of words in a song, and one of the reasons is, I'm not that good of a singer, so I don't hold a lot of notes.
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Just looking into something kind of analytically can give a lot of ideas.
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As a writer, if you have something on a page, you can start moving it around and get something you like. But if you have a blank page, it's just gonna be a blank page.
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The Replacements are the foundation for a lot of what came after in alternative and college rock. Let It Be is their best record and has the most diverse collection of songs. Some pop stuff, some heavy stuff, and some real moments of beauty like 'Sixteen Blue' and 'Androgynous.' It's a record I always go back to.
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I think, Trump ran a very nostalgic campaign. There's an idea of like, to put it bluntly: What if it was like before all our kids got strung out on drugs? You know, what if it was like that? Make America like that.
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Ironically, when I was playing in my first band, I would deliberately not write down any lyrics. I have a really good memory and I would just keep them in my head.
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There's this moment sometimes, when you do a crossword puzzle and you have the one really long word. And once you get that, the whole thing kind of comes into focus. Sometimes it's just working things over in your mind and then finding that one line that kind of ties the song together, and now it works. It's a puzzle of sorts.
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I think having a coach or an editor or whatever the novelist's producer is could help. If you finish a chapter and you turn it in to him, and he or she said, That was pretty good, it might go better. Maybe that's what I'll try to find.
Craig Finn
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Springsteen on that record started writing less about having your wind in your hair and turning the radio up and more about being dragged down by adult things. Regular people trying to get ahead. A little less mythical and romantic, and more real. It's a really spectacular record for that reason.
Craig Finn