Bradford Cox Quotes

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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'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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

For me, experimenting involves traditionalism.

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."

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

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.

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

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

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