What does civilization mean to you, and what would its ending bring to the world?
We are the cause of a world that's gone wrong. Nature will survive us, we've been wrong after all. We are the cause of a world that's gone wrong. Wouldn't it be great to heal the world with only a song?
We [americans] self-regulate ourselves, we self-censor ourselves a lot in this country instead of having someone else censor us so we can blame them. That's not good, either.
I've got my own studio, and I've got four- to five-hundred unreleased tracks. I've got stuff that's electronic, orchestral, jazz, I've got rock, I've got metal, you know, I don't have polka.
People always ask me 'do you think there should be more bands doing political music?' and I say 'absolutely not.'
With most of the songs and music that I've composed, irrespective of the myriad videos made, I was always careful not to overly define the experience, leaving room for people to internalize things for themselves, making their experience more integral.
You can say a lot more with a poem than you can with a song, but with a song you can really be more powerful with it. You can express it a lot more powerfully.
Science has failed our mother Earth.
As long as people are living their truth or their vision, whether they're activists or not, that's the important thing.
Nations are like people. Once you understand the interactions between nations, it's easy to understand why things are done, in terms of foreign policy, in a certain way. But nations are not like people in the sense that we are cumulatively represented by others - and their interpretations of what our interests are may not be the same as what they really are. And that's what's dangerous, even in a democracy.
People think our music's very aggressive or angry or whatever, and it's just the opposite, really... I like laughing. And I like being really calm before a show, and smiley.
As an artist, you never want to write the same song again, you always want to challenge yourself to writing in a different way.
People get so attached to a position which they identify themselves with that they just spurt it out, but they can't really give you a viable reason why they feel that way.
Political statements are usually more direct, and it works with the upbeat music as well, for some reason, the directness of your statements.
I hate injustice, and I can't help but speak against it. But I don't want to get involved in politics.
I think that the memory of Armenia's genocide opened my eyes at an early age to the existence of political cynicism.
I really feel like civilisation's already over. It's not ending but it's already done. We're all addicted to the concept that humanity equals civilisation and that's not the case. We need a global conversation to be able to decipher how we can live from this point forward. We have to redefine our relationship with our environment.
When I was younger, I was listening to a lot of Armenian music, you know, revolutionary music about freedom and protest. In the 70s I was listening to soul and the Bee Gees and ABBA, and funk.
The next song I wrote in Paris years ago in a dream. So I didn't really write it, the universe wrote it. And that's what I believe about music, I believe it belongs to the universe, it comes from there and it's this beautiful energy that we share that transcends normal flash existence and that we inspire each other through.
The best way to do that is to pick up a new instrument or an instrument that you don't typically write on and see where it takes you. Whether it's using an acoustic guitar, or piano, or electronics as tools, all of these lead to creating different types of songs and I used all of these methods for this record.
I think as consumers Europeans are a lot more artist loyal irrespective of the genre of music or the type of project or the collaborative effort, and Americans are more media-loyal, because they need to be fed that media to know what's going on, because we're so inundated with promotion and marketing and everything that's going on - advertising.
I think music is an intuitive force. It's this beautiful wave that connects all of us and inspires us, and I think music has the ability - when you listen to a song, you're not immediately thinking about the lyrics or what's going on in the mind of the writer, you're feeling the song.
I think I might write a book. I like writing. People have asked me if I would get into politics, but I think I feel a lot more effective being a representative of truth through the arts.
I think the gift of music is it's intuitive capability. I think music is a powerful medium because it co-inspires. It inspires the artist who then inspires the listener, and it's a back-and-forth process. Because it's intuitive, the truth has to be defined intuitively. It can't be preached, it can't be pushed. It's got to normally go across organically and make someone feel something, and that's the power of music.
A lot of pop music is based on trying to make people remember it so that they'll buy it. To me, it was not about that.
