“I don't remember things initially when listening to music. Like, I don't remember where I first heard a song, I don't have nostalgic attachment to a song in that it reminds me of such and such a time or place. I think I probably did experience that somewhat when I was not a full-time, professional musician, but I don't think music works that way for people who are in it constantly.” PeopleThinkingWayFirstsRememberSongHeardListeningMusicianAttachmentListening To MusicNostalgic Author:Stephin Merritt
“You know, most love songs are not cheesy and corny. Most love songs are complaints, I think. Or about unrequited love, coming at it from some oblique angle. Only the ones that say "I love you" over and over are the cheesy, corny ones that people complain about” PeopleThinkingSongLove YouComplainingUnrequited LoveCornyUnrequitedCheesySay I Love You Author:Stephin Merritt
“I don't think there are any clichés I try to avoid. As soon as I spot a cliché, I go for it. I feel like clichés are the most useful thing in songwriting. They're the tool on which you build all the rest of the song.” ThinkingTryingSongSongwriting Author:Stephin Merritt
“If you want to write a love song, you need to not try to write it for a particular person in a particular situation. It needs to be vague, otherwise you're going to fall into trap after trap of trying to rhyme with somebody's name. Keep it vague.” WritingTryingSongFallSituationRhyme Author:Stephin Merritt
“I write songs by sitting around in bars, so drinking songs are a little obvious. It's surprising that I don't write entirely drinking songs, since I am, in fact, drinking while writing the song. Drinking and love are the two principal sources of pleasure outside of music. There's only so many sources of pleasure, really. That's about it. Well, there are other arts as well. But none of them are as pleasurable as music, on a physical level.” WritingArtSongPleasureDrinkingObvious Author:Stephin Merritt
“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.” TryingSongLove YouRhymePop Song Author:Stephin Merritt
“Yeah, except that when I write pop songs I have pretty strict constraints that I impose on myself. 69 Love Songs is a constraint. That the titles have to begin with "I'"s is a relatively strict constraint. Charm of the Highway Strip is all travel songs. And I am free to change the plot slightly to accommodate something that happens to rhyme conveniently.” WritingSongRhymePop Song Author:Stephin Merritt
“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.” SongNot SurePop Song Author:Stephin Merritt
“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.” ThinkingImportantSongDifficultUglyPop Song Author:Stephin Merritt
“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."” WritingSong Author:Stephin Merritt
“If the songs were in lumps, then you would expect to understand what was going on in the plot. Which is not a realistic goal. And also the instrumentation is different for every show, so it's more varied sonically. And people are free to make up their own plots, of course. There are pretty dense and complicated plots, and they're simple songs.” PeopleDifferentSongGoalSimpleComplicatedRealistic Author:Stephin Merritt
“Okay, a truly great song is a song that makes its own aesthetic intentions clear and then lives up to them and exceeds them in an interesting way. Alright?” SongInterestingOkayIntentionAestheticAlright Author:Stephin Merritt
“If you start out with a song sounding like Britney Spears, and you end up with a song sounding like Pauline Oliveros, you'd better have pretty good liner notes explaining what on earth you mean.” MeanEarthSong Author:Stephin Merritt
