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Basically, no one else gives me any opinions on lyrics. I don't ask for them. If they did, I would listen.

Stephen Malkmus

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Stephen Malkmus
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: May 30
Guitarist
Musician
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Songwriter
Santa Monica
California
Stephen Joseph Malkmus
Else
Giving
Lyrics
Would
Opinions
Basically
Listen
Gives
Opinion
Asks

More quotes by Stephen Malkmus

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I'm thinking, I'm singing like Ozzy Osbourne, but I don't sound like him enough, ever.
Stephen Malkmus
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I don't really know where the songs are coming from often. Many of the best things I made up were just off the top of my head.
Stephen Malkmus
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It's just a compulsion to create something new and stay busy. I don't know how to do anything else. It was never exactly right. Those records came out in spite of their flaws. And because of their flaws they were good.
Stephen Malkmus
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I'm not sure if you can blame everything on the American way of life, but the United States are big. So, if you have a lot of people there, the percentage of stupid people is bound to be higher.
Stephen Malkmus
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Well, you know, it's a younger person, and it was maybe an effort to be a little more sincere and adult about the lyrics occasionally, which is a good thing. It's nice that it's not too self-conscious like some of our lyrics could be.
Stephen Malkmus
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I really do think everybody can sing.
Stephen Malkmus
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The best I do, if I'm just playing around and riffing in a fantasy world, and then I'll write something down. Hopefully I write it down.
Stephen Malkmus
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It's normally in the morning, just playing around. And I'm not saying everything I make is great, but that's what I do. I can't even remember how I wrote stuff.
Stephen Malkmus
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I would just imagine there's a criticism for just about everything, if you want to take something down. No one's invincible. The Jicks are a work in progress and we don't think everything we do is the bee's knees or something, we're just trying our best to get turned on by what we're doing.
Stephen Malkmus
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Obviously songs and musicians mean a lot to people.
Stephen Malkmus
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Something taken off the page can sound great, I guess. Usually it doesn't. It seems like lately Pitchfork is trying to champion lyric writers more.
Stephen Malkmus
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Like the song Stereo, to me that's like, kind of hip-hop in that slacker way. There's some slackerisms mixed in with that stuff, but it wasn't really conscious, I guess. When things would get more typical rock'n'roll that was my fallback to go to those kind of lyrics instead of the alternatives.
Stephen Malkmus
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A good voice isn't so important. It's more important to sound really unique.
Stephen Malkmus
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I just don't think people listen. I mean, they can't listen to a whole album closely without checking their iPhone or wanting to skip to their favorite song, or putting something else on, practically. That's why the zone out is a good thing.
Stephen Malkmus
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Despite my own doubts of being marketable or crushworthy, my goal was to write a record of peppy pop songs, hopefully without annoying anybody.
Stephen Malkmus
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I guess the majority of people who want to ban certain musicians are the ones who are so proud of everything America stands for.
Stephen Malkmus
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What we're doing now, it's usually more based on records that I've bought or a projection of what I can do well now and the inner dynamics of playing with the people I'm playing with, Janet Weiss and Joanna Bolme, what we come up with. What works for us doesn't, like, have that much relation to the past.
Stephen Malkmus
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What producers did was mostly recording in the studio, so it never changed our sound just that much.
Stephen Malkmus
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Some people, they've had a lot of fun, even if it was dumb fun and a shitty body of work.
Stephen Malkmus
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I never decided to start singing, to be a singer.
Stephen Malkmus