Bradford cox quotes

I'm real critical of myself. I think a lot of what I've done is boring indie rock. I didn't intend it to be that way, but somehow milk gets added to everything.

My entire education in music was in reading interviews with bands like Stereolab and finding out about Brazilian music or a Romanian composer. You expose yourself to what people you look up to admire.

It's made me cynical at a young age to see how overlooked certain groups I've admired are.

I'm tired of watching attractive people trying to be ugly, struggling for authenticity. Why not be yourself?

I'm working on one of the projects at a time and I'm the zone of that project. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this, and I might experiment with it in the future, but I'm not a fan of just random assemblages of songs at the moment.

You think about people like Elvis, Kurt Cobain, or the Beatles, who grew up without privilege and needed a certain validation through peoples' acceptance, or admiration from their peers. And money is part of that, but it always comes too late.

Unlike the rest of everyone I hang around with, I don't drink, so I remember what happened after shows. And I have never hit on anyone after a show, I'm not that kind of person. Even if I was attracted to someone, I'd be too shy.

Talk to Arto Lindsay and I'm sure he's tired of people asking him about DNA; he's probably really into what he's doing now, which is good stuff. I guess I probably feel like that. But I'm obviously not comparing myself to someone as iconic as that.

Audiences tend to dig the earlier stuff by any given musician, and the artists themselves always tend to prefer the thing that they're doing now.

Sometimes, I do have something to say, so I'll sit there and I'll write a song to someone - and then I just throw it away because it makes me cringe.

I used to be a lot more engaged on an improvisational level than other people. I was always on tour and always had a guitar in my hands, and when I went back home, my battery was at full charge. I had a lot of energy to get off, just impulses that I could draw upon.

I'm interested in acting as much as I'm interested in gardening. I want to garden, eventually. I want to learn how to do a lot of things. I've always wanted to learn how to paint, too. I'd like to try everything, but music is my reason for living.

When I started having a couple of beers and loosening up, I realized how many years I had wasted going back to my hotel room alone when I could have gone and just had a beer or two.

I have really low self-esteem, and it's not easy for me to put myself on an album cover.

Everything I do is 100% automation, which means I'm just doing it live.

When I got hit by the car, I became depressed. As a result, I've been on antidepressants and I feel like I have no sexuality left. People complain about that side effect, but I love it. I feel outside of society.

People say 'I don't want to die alone!' But you know what, honestly? I don't want to die with a bunch of people looking at me.

I've been going through a lot of... stuff. I need some space, which people were very kind enough to give me, and I feel really gracious about that. Nobody forces me to do things or say things or do interviews.

I've been used for writing rhythm guitar chords for a long time because it's so easy to play and chords just sound good on it.

I want to satisfy the listener, exactly. I want to entertain the audience. I want the people to leave the show with the feeling I used to leave shows with when I was young, and I couldn't get over it for another three or four days after it. I just kept reliving the set in my mind.

That's what culture is based on, the passing down of a certain narrative by imitation.

I think people are intimidated by me, and I don't know why. Sometimes even my own bandmates can be intimidated, or irritated, by me.

I don't like the sound of my own voice. And, for people I don't know, their impression of me is what they read on the internet, and they're so far off a lot of the time. I think people are intimidated by me, and I don't know why. Sometimes even my own bandmates can be intimidated, or irritated, by me. I come across as arrogant somehow. In reality, I've probably got the lowest self-esteem of anybody I know, which has really been rubbed in my face lately in personal situations.

You're always as a musician trying to shock yourself or create music that's maybe even too weird for your own taste.

The first thing I think I ever played in public, aside from singing in church, would have been - and this is a true story - when I was about nine or 10 years old, I was obsessed with Twin Peaks. I played the theme from Twin Peaks on a little tiny Casio keyboard. People politely applauded. I just fell in love with that song and thought it was very heartbreaking.

A lot of bands wanna do something new all the time and never repeat themselves, but I'm not so interested in that. If I feel like I can do it better the second time, I'll give it another shot.

When money and fame happen too late, it's like pouring kerosene over a fire of self-loathing.

I think the younger kids need to realize there's this whole forgotten 90s that people don't really talk about.

I need punk rock. It's the medicine for me, but it's bitter and sickening. If you don't need it - if you're happy and healthy - run toward that.

For me, experimenting involves traditionalism.

When young groups put out albums, they're always forced to go through this cycle of touring and talking and flaunting and posturing and peacocking. Nobody makes me do that anymore.

I know so many people think my music is quite influenced by Animal Collective, but honestly I think maybe the factor is that we're both influenced by the same stuff.

A song like "Walkabout", it's totally imitative. The goal of that song was to make people happy, and I've never really made a song to make people happy before. I really genuinely wanted people to listen to that song and have their spirits lifted.

The sober guy is always going to have this air of arrogance or self-righteousness, but it's not my intention. I just knew that if I drank, I'd have a drinking problem.

As a homosexual, my job is simply to sodomize mediocrity.

Musicians and artists are not... it's not like politicians or something where you can't really affect them. There's not like this separate caste system where it's like, "I'm the musician, you're the audience. Never the two shall meet." It was a case where it was like, "Hey, you know what? I'm on your level, man."

We didn't have MTV, and I was desperate for something. You know, you're young, you want something off the beaten path. And Twin Peaks was like, surrealism on network TV.

I'm not the guy in the dress with the blood and the unrequited gay whatever - which, according to my psychiatrist, my gayness is a form of narcissism but you'll have to ask him about that.

People roll their eyes and say, "Oh god, he's not rich or famous." I say it's relative. I mean, look at me: I'm 115 pounds and I grew up without money. To me, I'm rich because I don't have to worry about paying rent. I don't think about money now.

I like playing at public schools. I like when there's more of a diverse audience. I'll play wherever people want to hear my music, and I'll be glad and grateful for the opportunity, but I'd rather not play for a bunch of white privileged kids. I'm not meaning that in a disrespectful way; you go where people want to hear your music. So if that's where people want to hear me play, I'm glad to play for them. But I'd rather play for an audience where half of them were not into it than one where all of them were pretending to be into it, for fear of being uncultured.

I don't leave my room, and all I am surrounded by are guitars and equipment, y'know? It's not always the best place to be.

I don't think you should make music to make music, just to show that you can. That's the opposite of vitality.

Everybody just needs to realize that when you write something you're just in one mood. I was told I needed to write it and it was overdue; I don't even remember what day it was.

The Internet nowadays is all sensationalism, and it's just terrifying when you're actually experiencing it as a person.

We all come back to our little worlds.

I don't know if I have any real aspirations to be an actor. It was just something I was asked to do in sort of a friend way. And I thought, Why not?

When I do a record, it sounds more punk and raw. Or it will sound louder, or it will sound more shocking. Or mind-boggling. I'll be trying to figure it out, but once I've got it figured out I'll be like, I know this; I know where this came from. I think art is most interesting when the intention is not clear.

I feel very strongly about the subject matter in The Dallas Buyer's Club - about AIDS and people fighting illnesses, and fighting for survival against bad conditions.

I want to build an audience that's willing to follow us in whichever direction we might choose.

Unfortunately it's hard for me to be a fanboy for anything these days just because I see so much music. And it's not a namedropping thing, but there's just not that many people in this certain small little genre world we live in that I don't know or am not acquainted with. And I like them all; I get along with pretty much everyone. It wouldn't be unusual to see a thousand collaborations at some point.

I see a lot of people doing an "'80s thing" who weren't even born until the '90s.

I like my solitude, and I'm a strong-willed person; I'm a very hard-to-be-around person sometimes, I guess.

A lot of Appalachian music has a certain haunted, foggy feel to it; a certain sinister quality. And that transcends who is singing it. I think it's good if an artist can represent some kind of culture that they either aspire to ignite, or that they themselves experience.

You don't need to drink if you have emotional problems.

I don't like the sound of my own voice. And, for people I don't know, their impression of me is what they read on the internet, and they're so far off a lot of the time.

I don't have the capacity to write stuff consciously. When I do, it's really awful.

When I go on a nostalgia trip it's not aesthetic. For me it's about trying to recapture the smell or the feeling of something that I've experienced in the past personally.

What could be more experimental than me writing a straight up love song?

The same people that always think I'm pretentious will think I'm pretentious, and the people who relate to me will continue to relate to me.

I realized I had written maybe, I dunno, the first ever asexual love song. Where it's really just about a fear of dying alone - you need contact, you need love, you need empathy. You need this relationship but if there's no sex involved, people act like it's not a legitimate relationship.

I collaborate a little bit with different aspects of my own mind. I kick my own ass instead of kicking other people's asses.

I'll be honest with you, one of the things that frustrated me the most out the record leak thing, it had nothing to do with record sales - I mean, that's a joke. Has anybody looked at how many records anybody sells anymore? If you're not Jay-Z, a record leaking isn't going to affect you. It was just really personal.

I read a lot - surveys of vernacular music. A lot of it is the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music, which I've loved since I was in high school. They had it at the library and I always thought that was interesting, even when I was into punk and stuff. Just the history of storytelling and the amount of melancholy a lot of old music has.

If you're not Jay-Z, a record leaking isn't going to affect you.

I've always said I write albums; I don't write random songs and then sort them out.

I refuse to put myself into a situation in which I have to face some kind of "I'm losing it" kind of thing. I'm not "losing it"; it's changed. What it is is changing.

I always write the first and last song of an album first, and then the middle just kind of happens.

I've always been interested in writing from other people's perspectives and other gender perspectives.

All music is devotional, whether it's devotion to products, face washes, creams, plastic. Everybody is devoted to something.

I've got this thing where I always kind of diss the older stuff and favor the newer stuff. I mean, it's not just my thing; every artist or musician is like that, I guess.

I was trying to write a song based on a story in a random book of Puerto Rican short stories that I found in a thrift store. I thought it was really dark, and so I tried to interpret it. I've always been interested in writing from other people's perspectives and other gender perspectives.

I don't have anything to prove.

You read about that Black Lips/Wavves fight as a spectator and you're like, "Oh man, I'm gonna pick a team to be on! I'm gonna put my two cents in as my status update on my Facebook page" or something. Not to sound like an anti-technology person, but it's just a real drag that people live their lives that way.

It was like I was asking for attention, but I didn't really want attention.

I think teenagers just don't have the persistence to pretend to like something they don't anymore. I used to do that - make myself like stuff that didn't immediately appeal to me. When you're 17 and checking out John Cage records from the library. It's not like it's got the hooks of a Ramones record, or a Beach Boys record. But at the same time, you're like, I know there's something in here that I'm supposed to understand. And then eventually you find it.

When you listen to the Anthology of American Folk Music, or anything like that - a compilation of garage bands from the Northeast in the early '60s - you're not necessarily listening to the band and thinking about the lead singer, or the story of the group, or the context or the mythology of the group. You're just listening to the song and whether or not it has a hook.

You gotta have friends, and it's really hard to have friends that don't operate on the same schedule as you or do the same kind of things you do, because they don't understand it. And then you realize that your friends - your real-life friends - it's not that they become fanboys of you but they become more interested in what you're doing than how you're doing.

I don't think it will ever be lessened. Because I always move on to something else - and the music that I listen to, that I ingest, is a lot different than what I put out. I'm always becoming obsessed with the next phase of my musical vocabulary.

Contrary to popular belief, maybe, I'm a really friendly guy, I guess, and I really like meeting people. And I'm not really super impressed even if you're my hero; I can just rap with you and we can hang. I'm not gonna like sit there and bite my lip and ask questions about certain songs - okay I might do that once or twice. But it's just, like, two people hanging out.

I'm obsessed with five different things a day. It's like lightbulbs in a Christmas light chain.

I am asexual. A-sexual. I read somewhere, maybe on Facebook, where somebody said something like, "I heard Bradford was gay, but then I heard he was bi." Then somebody wrote, "No, I heard he was asexual." And then somebody said, "That's bullshit - he totally hit on my friend after a show."

I've been going through some personal things that have stirred up a lot of old wounds.

I was only in the public eye because I was annoying. You know how neurotic people may ask for one thing when they may really want another thing? It was like I was asking for attention, but I didn't really want attention.

I want the music to be heard as close to when I made it, as much as possible. I don't want to get into some "future of the music industry" thing, or where I stand on digital this or that, but I think it's ridiculous that a lot of people in the industry plan so far ahead that it makes a lot of improvisation impossible and makes a lot of people's expectations fixed and not fluid.

I'm more into Neil Young and radical honesty.

In reality, I've probably got the lowest self-esteem of anybody I know, which has really been rubbed in my face lately in personal situations.

Unfortunately it's hard for me to be a fanboy for anything these days just because I see so much music.

Usually I'm not really conscious of what's going on. I don't have a lot of memories onstage. At all.

I'm a really friendly guy, I guess, and I really like meeting people.

You're always as a musician trying to shock yourself or create music that's maybe even too weird for your own taste. In my case it's kind of weird because I started out being known more for ambient things and ambiguous music, but what's experimental for me is the more traditional structure. For me, experimenting involves traditionalism.