Quote

I have complicated feelings about nostalgia. I think that sometimes it can be dangerous. It can airbrush the truth, or fictionalize the truth, which leads to the worst kind of sentimentality. But I'm also a sentimental person who feels quite a bit of nostalgia.

Will Sheff

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Will Sheff
Age: 48
Born: 1976
Born: July 7
Guitarist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Songwriter
New Hampshire
United States
Thinking
Feelings
Sentimentality
Truth
Nostalgia
Also
Sentimental
Person
Leads
Sometimes
Complicated
Feels
Dangerous
Kind
Worst
Think
Quite

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If you were a performer that only had an acoustic instrument, back in the day you couldn't hide behind your guitar pedals or the production or the vibe. There was performance and then there was the song, and that was all that you had.
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I wanted to be a filmmaker, actually, when I was in high school and college. But I just decided it would be more expensive to do, so I sort of decided music would be more fun.
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When your head is smashing into the concrete you don't have question about whether it's a real sensation. And ultimately, that's what's going to unmake us all - smashing up against the physical reality of death and decay, and being unmade.
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There is a definite difference between live shows and the recordings. The recordings are for all time, hopefully, so you do want to bring across layers of subtlety. But the live show is this primal experience that everybody's having at the same time, that the recording can at best try to imitate or duplicate.
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I'm not pro-life. I'm very emphatically pro-choice.
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People think that because they've seen your name in print, you're rich. I assume that. But all it means is that there was some intrepid interviewer who bothered to give you a call.
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When you're a songwriter, people wonder about your personal life and the meanings behind the songs, and that can feel pretty invasive, so you become protective about your inner world.
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I was never a kid who dreamt of being a performer. I started singing the songs because nobody knew who I was or cared at all. If I wasn't going to sing them, nobody was going to sing them, so I had to step in and fill that role myself.
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I always think it's far more admirable to confuse people than it is to reassure them.
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I was always one of these people who is irrationally moved by stupid pop songs.
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When people downloading records for free you start to think, Is it worth spending all this money to make a record sound good, especially if it's going to end up as an mp3? But I can't drive myself too crazy thinking about that. On one level, being involved in art is all a quixotic thing to begin with.
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What's funny about my voice is, no matter what I sing, I sound like I'm really sad. I don't even mean to do it, it's just something my voice has. I think that's one of the reasons why Okkervil has been dubbed as really mopey - I have this tone to my voice that sounds like that.
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If you're going for things that are really terrible ideas you have to really have all your faculties about you to get away with them without being crucified. The best rock music gets away with something, somehow, that it shouldn't be allowed to get away with.
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Songwriting is an emotional medium, and rock and roll is an emotional medium.
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There's something really special about childhood. When you're a kid, you're at your most creative, and you're very plugged into your imagination and emotions. But when you get older, you're encouraged to dance around your feelings and disengage, and I think it's crucial to fight that.
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Culture dictated from above is the enemy of folk music. Whether it's stuffy classical music or pre-engineered pop where somebody's paid tons of money to make sure that everyone hears this song a certain number of times a day - that feels like the opposite of folk music.
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In a lot of ways, the way you're making your bread and butter is off people who aren't necessarily who you're writing for.
Will Sheff