My mother was into folk-rock when I was little, so I think of folk-rock as the norm from which everything else deviates. Of course, that's completely preposterous, but that's how I grew up. What is the norm by which to judge wordiness? I think I'm less wordy than Madonna.
Stephin MerrittI would say that the evocative qualities of music are usually put there in post-production in the reverb. It's really not much about the musicians as the engineering. It's post-production that's being done by the musician at the time.
Stephin MerrittWhen 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.
Stephin MerrittI can imagine lyrics becoming better written by smart machines rather than stupid musicians. Songwriters generally have nothing to say. They may as well be replaced by machines.
Stephin MerrittIf 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.
Stephin MerrittI 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.
Stephin Merritt