Craig Finn Quotes

Sometimes people come up and say, "You have this line in this song and it meant a lot to me." You don't always remember that line as the one. You're putting part of your human being on the page so people are going to have different responses - the other humans are going to connect with different parts.

As a writer, if you have something on a page, you can start moving it around and get something you like. But if you have a blank page, it's just gonna be a blank page.

Some people I've talked to have had really an interpretation of this record as being nostalgic. But in some ways, when we were writing Stay Positive, I was really obsessed with age. I kept saying it was a record about trying to age gracefully. This record, I think actually was us aging gracefully.

I think when you are doing a song you're trying to give people enough details that they connect.

I think, Trump ran a very nostalgic campaign. There's an idea of like, to put it bluntly: What if it was like before all our kids got strung out on drugs? You know, what if it was like that? Make America like that.

You are hearing this song, and you're 16, and it's a song about love, or a girl. And then maybe there's a girl at school that you like. So you're going to be thinking about that girl. That song is sort of about that girl. The songwriter doesn't know that girl, obviously. He wrote it for something else. But there's the specific meaning with the universal again.

I've tried to write songs for other people and it usually requires them singing it and then changing the phrasing. I can put a lot of words in a song, and one of the reasons is, I'm not that good of a singer, so I don't hold a lot of notes.

The more you release records, in some ways it takes pressure off you.

The critics and hardcore music fans, those are the people you have to get to first, so we're really happy about it.

I am a really obsessive music listener, and I would look for clues.

You can think of a number of bands where the first record is by far their biggest record. And that must be hard for people to recapture. Hard for people to live with.

The point of being in a band, for instance, isn't to get big; it's about enjoying playing shows.

I was really obsessed with age. I kept saying it was a record about trying to age gracefully.

I really want to write a novel. A few years ago I went so far as to do the cliché thing and rent this house in upstate [New York]. I still have the story, but I got 15,000, 20,000 words in and it was like, This is falling apart. I can't figure out.

When people hit on feeling a certain melancholy or elation, it's a really exciting moment. I think making that connection is the goal, and what makes something great.

I definitely hope to continue to release records at an accelerated pace.

People think of songwriting as a very personal thing: A guy gets up there with an acoustic guitar and he sings his heart out, bares his soul.

So maybe it’s just a part of who we all are, and always were. My worry now, though, is that we are starting to nurture these neuroses of ours, and treating them like pets. That can’t be a good thing.

I can still sing most Eagles songs, even though I never bought a record and never liked the band.

I think you want to write a song that's like the songs you are into.

At forty-one, now I think it would be really cool to have an A&R guy say, "You know what? I don't think you've got this album sequenced right."

I don't really pursue writing songs for other people. I guess one of the things I always think about is a good line in a song should be something I can hear myself saying.

The Catholic influence just comes from being raised Catholic, going to church every Sunday, being confirmed, going to church on holy days. So it's coming from where I am. It serves the purpose of having people who have a base or foundation where they know what's right.

If I'm stuck, I'll sit down and read. That's a big thing.

I'm not a horror movie guy, but I think the guy that did Saw, or maybe House or something, he was saying you love that age as a storyteller because a nineteen-year-old is still dumb enough to make really bad decisions, but he's allowed to be out on his own.

The idea of anyone collecting compact discs just seems bizarre to me.

I don't have a problem rhyming "bar" with "car" - I do it all the time - but sometimes it doesn't feel right.

If we enjoy what we're doing, we shouldn't really need a break. It's fun for us to play music. It's our livelihood, but I don't look at it as a job. It doesn't seem to me to be a problem to constantly be doing this.

Words and music together create powerful, powerful things.

There are nights when I think that Sal Paradise was right / Boys and Girls in America / Have such a sad time together.

Sometimes things reveal themselves to you a little bit. I think it was Joan Didion that said, "We write to find out what we're thinking." And sometimes that happens.

My wife is very happy about me keeping all my music in my pocket.

You can either go to the gym because you want to lose weight, or you can go to the gym because you like how it makes you feel when you're running.

My big thing is to get onstage sober. Whatever happens from there happens. But you get onstage drunk and it's not going to be good. It takes a while. I have to sing a lot, so I can only drink so much. So most nights it's fine; even if I drink as much as I possibly can, I can't get that drunk.

When you get into rock 'n' roll myths, like that Rod Stewart blew his whole band and had to get his stomach pumped, it's ridiculous, but everyone's heard it.

I made a decision at some point to live a nontraditional life. I've become like, the opposite of a consumer. I just want freedom. I don't want stuff. I don't want clutter. I just want to be able to move freely. I want to be good to the people I love. But I don't want stuff. I just want, you know, love and big ideas.

Heaven Is Whenever - the Christian version of reward, the ultimate reward of heaven. I guess what I'm trying to say is this is happening every day. We're blessed always. There is struggle and there is suffering in our lives, but understanding that is part of our lives - a part that just is. Suffering is a part of the joy of life.

I think the biggest thing - and this I think is true of songs but also of movies and books and art in general - is when you have this moment where you hear a song or whatever and you say, "Hey, I've felt that exact way as a human being," and there's no easy way to describe it.

You can't get every girl; you get the ones you love the best.

Before I had a driver's license, and I lived in the suburbs of Minneapolis and went to high school and came home - I could ride my bike around or get a ride from my parents, but my world was pretty small, limited. Like anyone at that age, I only knew things I could get to.

If we enjoy what we're doing, we shouldn't really need a break.

I think making the songs is to put strength in the community in some way.

An album doesn't mean as much to a lot of people now, compared to just songs.

I graduated high school in 1989, and there was no alternative rock radio, and there wasn't really good college radio you could get on a car stereo. Once you get a car at that age, you're spending all the time you can away from home, sometimes just driving around aimlessly. Listening, or not even listening, but subconsciously soaking up this classic rock barrage.

I really like narrative songs, but I wonder if that's a thing for some people. Once they've heard the story, do they really need to hear the story again?

There's this moment sometimes, when you do a crossword puzzle and you have the one really long word. And once you get that, the whole thing kind of comes into focus. Sometimes it's just working things over in your mind and then finding that one line that kind of ties the song together, and now it works. It's a puzzle of sorts.

I guess the drinking and the drugs are interesting to me because the way we use them and our society uses them, we kind of manufacture highs and lows.

There's a lot of ways to be honest that don't necessarily involve absolute facts being true. I think that's something I absolutely try to do.