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The music starts as being way separate from the lyrics, and I write - I have notebooks that I fill with drawings and just words, and stuff that I've written.

Zachary Cole Smith

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Zachary Cole Smith
Age: 40
Born: 1984
Born: November 7
Composer
Guitarist
Model
Singer
Songwriter
New York City
New York
Words
Drawings
Write
Notebook
Stuff
Lyrics
Music
Fill
Writing
Separate
Way
Starts
Drawing
Written
Notebooks

More quotes by Zachary Cole Smith

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It's this funny thing now: You sign up to be a musician because you want to write music, but you don't spend your time writing music. Instead, you go around the world selling the music you've already made.
Zachary Cole Smith
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I didn't want the lyrics to be about specific things in my life, I wanted them to be about generalised experiences I'd had. So when I'm writing about relationships or somebody leaving you or something, a lot of lyrics are partly about failed relationships I'd had, but they were also about my Dad, and being abandoned as a kid.
Zachary Cole Smith
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I don't know if there's anything that would surprise people, because I don't think that anybody knows anything about me at all. There's not much out there. I think I'm going to come out with a pretty dark and troubled record, and it might upset some people.
Zachary Cole Smith
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All I'm trying to do is make music that people like and that makes people happy.
Zachary Cole Smith
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The touring band is DIIV, and the songs are always written with them in mind. But the new record is going to be more me.
Zachary Cole Smith
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I wanted to show a different side of ourselves. I wanted to see in what ways I could explore something new. I felt like working on a double record would give people a lot to have.
Zachary Cole Smith
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Nobody really wanted to do that one European tour. For one, it was budgeted to lose money. They would've made something, but I would've lost a lot of money.
Zachary Cole Smith
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To be told that you're the voice of your generation is such an incredible amount of pressure, and I haven't faced that. Maybe by the time our third record rolls around, I will. My goals are to be a band like that in five years. At the moment, though, I can't really relate in any sense to the scale that Kurt Cobain fame has reached.
Zachary Cole Smith
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I've already had a hard time dealing with some of the trappings of success and turned to some pretty stereotypical escape routes - ways of escaping my own reality and falling into some pretty clichéd situations.
Zachary Cole Smith
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Somebody who knows all about how to make the record, or how to make records, they know how to work the EQ and they know how to work the stuff, but they don't know what I want it to sound like. So it's just easier for me to do it myself.
Zachary Cole Smith
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A record is worth 10,000 live shows.
Zachary Cole Smith
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I've tried to be clear about who I am, and be as open as possible with the press, and speak extremely candidly and openly about stuff. I feel like in almost every instance, it's completely backfired, and I feel like people have all these kind of absurd ideas about the way I think about myself, and my own self-identity.
Zachary Cole Smith
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Drugs are fine for you alone at home, but when it comes to being a family, which a band is, it just messes everything up.
Zachary Cole Smith
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There's positive attention and there's negative attention - negative attention is easy, positive attention requires actual hard work.
Zachary Cole Smith
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I don't think fear necessarily is a core human emotion, but I do think fear of death is something that is at the core of every person's existence.
Zachary Cole Smith
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Obviously there's so much about me on the Internet that you can turn against me, and you can make me into any person you want.
Zachary Cole Smith
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Generally, I think people are just going through the motions now. There's so much stuff that people are doing today that has already been done. I kind of like that new Savages record, but I don't know why they take themselves so seriously.
Zachary Cole Smith
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I spent my life working before I started band. I worked construction, landscaping. I worked in kitchens, cleaned dishes. I worked demolition.
Zachary Cole Smith
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I'm like part of the Kurt Cobain school of writing lyrics, which is the syntax of the words is more important than... is where it all comes from.
Zachary Cole Smith
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[YSL creative director] Hedi [Slimane] is a music-obsessed guy. I might've originally met him through Sky.
Zachary Cole Smith