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People think of songwriting as a very personal thing: A guy gets up there with an acoustic guitar and he sings his heart out, bares his soul.

Craig Finn

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Craig Finn
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: August 22
Musician
Singer
Boston
Massachusetts
Guy
Soul
Heart
Acoustic
Thing
Acoustics
Think
Sings
Thinking
Guitar
People
Gets
Personal

More quotes by 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
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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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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?
Craig Finn
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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.
Craig Finn
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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.
Craig Finn
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The critics and hardcore music fans, those are the people you have to get to first, so we're really happy about it.
Craig Finn
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It's good to have some kind of California in there. It's almost always appropriate. It's appropriate on a sunny day or late at night. If you grew up on the Grateful Dead, which I certainly did, you listened to 10 million bootlegs. But you realize that American Beauty has some really tight, well-arranged songs that aren't meandering.
Craig Finn
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One thing I have a tendency to do is not write choruses, or write choruses that have different words. The first chorus will have different words than the second chorus.
Craig Finn
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One of the things is my process requires a lot of repetition. I can probably drive people crazy because I'm interested in playing a song twenty times in a row.
Craig Finn
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Just looking into something kind of analytically can give a lot of ideas.
Craig Finn
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If I'm stuck, I'll sit down and read. That's a big thing.
Craig Finn
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I'm not only a songwriter but I'm a massive music fan and I love going to shows. It's different than reading a book.
Craig Finn
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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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I don't have a problem rhyming bar with car - I do it all the time - but sometimes it doesn't feel right.
Craig Finn
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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.
Craig Finn
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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.
Craig Finn
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I've written a lot about drugs and alcohol. I wouldn't say it's because we've gotten bigger or anything, but I kind of feel a little bit done with it. There are other things to talk about.
Craig Finn
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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'.
Craig Finn
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I think you want to write a song that's like the songs you are into.
Craig Finn
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I made a decision at some point to live a nontraditional life. I've become like, the opposite of a consumer. I just want freedom. I don't want stuff. I don't want clutter. I just want to be able to move freely. I want to be good to the people I love. But I don't want stuff. I just want, you know, love and big ideas.
Craig Finn