Quotes by Stephin Merritt

Stephin Merritt

That seems like one of the differences in expectations of “serious” and “popular” music that you can actually depend on the liner notes to explain yourself? Yeah. Whereas in popular music you depend on photo shoots. A hardcore band who looked like Duran Duran would have to depend upon those liner notes.

Expectations

Hardcore

Serious

The adventure is when people don’t know what they’re doing at all. Like, I think that the first pop band to use synthesizers as their main instrument and take it seriously was probably Silver Apples. And they sure didn’t know what they were doing, and they sure don’t sound like anything else.

Adventure

People

Thinking

There are only so many instruments you can layer on top of each other that aren’t perfectly electronically programmed. “Long Vermont Roads” just cannot be performed live, because it’s just too cluttered if it’s played by humans. Synthesizers stay out of each other’s way in a way that hand-played instruments never can.

Long

There are so many clichés in the world, especially in music, that it’s a never-ending creative font to just bring two of them together and let them interact.

Creative

Together

World

There’s a whole kind of melancholy that you can only attain with reverb. That’s an example of a technology introducing a whole new meaning.

Kind

Melancholy

Technology

There’s already a great deal to do writing the songs. And if I were completely in control of it, nobody would be able to say “this song doesn’t work.”

Song

Writing

Well, hardcore is so much about the body, in that you have to play as fast as possible. I’m not sure it can be ironized. You can’t play faster, though I suppose that with the help of electronics you could play faster. Yeah, if you sped it up, that could ironize it.

Hardcore

Helping

Not Sure

Well, there are certainly original things to say. But I’m not sure that a pop song is the appropriate format to say them in.

Not Sure

Pop Song

Song

Well, things hold up even if they sound dated. It can be very difficult to listen to 80s pop songs with really, really gigantic smashed drum sounds. You just want to turn that gated reverb down on the snare. It sounds wrong now. It sounds amateurish. And ugly. But at the time it sounded state-of-the-art. So yeah, I think it’s important not to sound state-of-the-art in a way that anybody else is going to sound. Or you’ll quickly sound like yesterday’s state-of-the-art.

Important

Song

Thinking

When you’re making a singular pop song, you don’t really need any subject matter. You just sort of say, “Uh, I love you.” And then you try to figure out some rhyme for that, and there never is one.

Love You

Song

Trying

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Adventure

Art

Attachment

Block

Boring

Car

Chinese

Creative

Criticism

Done

Doubt

Drinking

Earth

Engineering

Expectations

Fall

Feelings

Hardcore

Helping

Important

Impression

Intention

Interesting

Judging

Kind

Lone

Long

Love You

Mean

Melancholy

Mother

Music Is

Musical

Musician

Not Sure

People

Percussion

Pop Song

Quality

Records

Rhyme

Say Anything

Serious

Simple

Smart

Song

Stupid

Surf

Technology

Thinking

The Future Blueprint

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Quotes by Stephin Merritt

Stephin Merritt

There are so many clichés in the world, especially in music, that it’s a never-ending creative font to just bring two of them together and let them interact.

There’s a whole kind of melancholy that you can only attain with reverb. That’s an example of a technology introducing a whole new meaning.

There’s already a great deal to do writing the songs. And if I were completely in control of it, nobody would be able to say “this song doesn’t work.”

Well, hardcore is so much about the body, in that you have to play as fast as possible. I’m not sure it can be ironized. You can’t play faster, though I suppose that with the help of electronics you could play faster. Yeah, if you sped it up, that could ironize it.

Well, there are certainly original things to say. But I’m not sure that a pop song is the appropriate format to say them in.

When you’re making a singular pop song, you don’t really need any subject matter. You just sort of say, “Uh, I love you.” And then you try to figure out some rhyme for that, and there never is one.

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Topics by Stephin Merritt

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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