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I always start with the lyrics, because starting with the music means the words will be bad.

Dan Bejar

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Dan Bejar
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: October 4
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Songwriter
Dominion of Canada
Daniel Bejar
Start
Words
Means
Music
Mean
Always
Lyrics
Starting

More quotes by Dan Bejar

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Generally, if you could picture a bunch of rock and roll momentum behind a song and it was particularly melodious, maybe the Pornographers would do it. If it was kind of moody and more lyrical, then maybe it would be a Destroyer song. Anything that's really lyrically driven I would keep for Destroyer.
Dan Bejar
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I don't banter with the audience, cause I don't have anything to say to them, and I'm not feeling any sense of ease or camaraderie when I'm on stage.
Dan Bejar
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I used to struggle a little bit with the idea of how to separate singing from acting and entertaining.
Dan Bejar
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I can't fool myself into thinking that musically I don't need other people, whether it's as a foil or just to come in and make real the ideas that are kind of vague and wispy in my head.
Dan Bejar
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I force myself to care about the music end by wrestling with it for years.
Dan Bejar
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I'm probably more into a more spacious, even meditative, quiet delivery of singing.
Dan Bejar
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I like putting common expressions next to uncommon expressions. I'm sure in Poetry 101 there is a name for it, but it seems like you usually go one way or the other in rock music.
Dan Bejar
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I like playing music. I don't always like the feeling of people looking at me. I don't think I'm, like, a natural performer, but I'm getting better.
Dan Bejar
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I knew what real instruments I wanted and, in some cases, who I wanted to play them. I had started listening to a lot of ambient music and jazz and I wanted to incorporate stuff like that, too.
Dan Bejar
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It never really interested me in the past but, for the first time, I wanted to make a pop record. I thought a good way of doing it would be to make songs that didn't really make sense to me as songs songs that I couldn't just sit down and play in front of someone and then get them to play over it.
Dan Bejar
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I don't really listen to rock music anymore. But were I to write a song that sounded like it could be a rock song, I'd probably give it to the Pornographers, and I'd be excited to try to make it work.
Dan Bejar
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People say I write specifically about nothing in particular. I don't know about the latter part, but I think the first part is really important in conjuring up a voice that works, or at least the illusion of a voice at work.
Dan Bejar
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Most musicians don't write about being a musician cause most musicians aren't writers.
Dan Bejar
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I'm just a sucker for new-agey synth sounds and instrumentation. I wasn't really thinking of soft rock, but I know that kind of quiet-storm format uses a lot of these sounds.
Dan Bejar
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Even though people like to say Destroyer [albom] is gibberish and all that, I usually know exactly what I'm saying at every single moment.
Dan Bejar
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I'm more focused as a singer and hands-on with music and more exacting, and less trying to furiously fit a thousands thoughts into a four minute song.
Dan Bejar
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Kaputt was just a record that did really well for us, and therefore our record label and our booking agent said that we should go out and take our message to the world.
Dan Bejar
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It's actually really stereotypical that someone should be 40 and mellow out, but I think it's more about trying to conjure up a different intensity in my head, one where I'm more focused as a singer and hands-on with music and more exacting, and less trying to furiously fit a thousands thoughts into a four minute song.
Dan Bejar
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I've never had any kind of work ethic. I've never sat down with the intention of writing a song.
Dan Bejar
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I actually do see rock and roll as pop music. I think the distinction I was making was that I was going out of my way to have a very consistent approach to production, where nothing kind of punctures the reality - or, I guess, the fake reality - of the album and what you're listening to from beginning to end.
Dan Bejar