No matter how naturally gifted you are, it's your passion that's going to make you better and maybe touch some people.
If you know what kind of music somebody loves, then you can kind of figure out why they do what they do.
Broken Bells reminds me how much fun I have making music.
I'm obviously really opinionated, but as a producer, you don't necessarily want the person you're working with to try to impress you - you want them to just be themselves. Then you can edit or mess around with what they've come up with. But you have to allow the artist that space.
All I do is listen to music. It's a weird thing. It's like I have so much catching up to do. I've always been over my head. That's just the way I work best, you know. Like when you're studying for school you think, "I can only study when I have to study the night before." That kind of means you're lazy or you're a procrastinator, but for me with music it's a similar thing. It's like I've been over my head for most of my career so to speak.
I've had nightmares about having to kick people out of my band because they've said that they don't like the Beatles. I'd wake up and turn to them and say, "You like the Beatles, right?"
I was thinking that people have to believe you're crazy in order to take you seriously as an artist.
In the end, I think musicians know that getting up in the morning and making music you love doesn't necessarily mean that you deserve billions of dollars or worship from anybody.
If you're 22 years old and you can't believe you're even in the position to have a career making music, the first thing you're going to think is: Maintain. Don't lose it. And that's precisely what causes you to lose everything.
Some people have been listening to the Beatles their whole lives; I didn't discover them until I was 18 years old. As a result, I'm still very affected and moved by their music - maybe in a way that's different from someone who grew up around it.
When I dont have a good time making music, I think of quitting a lot. I really do. I can create something else. Ill do something else.
I started out really making music in my dorm room, and it wasnt really producing or anything like that; it was you making something.
If you're wandering the streets, talking in gibberish, nobody ever asks you to change anything about your art because there's no context for people to look at what you do.
What affected me the most about the Beatles was that they were the biggest band in the world and they could have done anything they wanted.
I have ideas all of the time from the beginning, but they never really wind up turning out like I thought they would.
I find that the kinds of music I’m drawn to are those that a lot of people take for granted.
A big part of making an album is that you want to have enough material - you want to have enough stuff for people to hear and know that it represents you.
I have no shame in making music that maybe, if you listen to it long enough, you'll realize you've heard this or that part of it before.
The musicians themselves don't seem to know enough about why they're in the positions they're in, so they're afraid to lose those positions.
Going back and forth between wanting to be respected artistically and wanting to move people is its own challenge.
Even with artists I love, only about a third of their music is what really hits the sweet spot for me.
