Will Oldham Quotes

Quotes about:

• I think records and music are more appropriate and more respectful of the human soul than the churches are. And more respectful of the needs of humans to communicate with the aspects of themselves that are neglected by language.

  Will Oldham

  Thinking, Soul, Church

  Will Oldham (2012). “Will Oldham on Bonnie "Prince" Billy”, p.50, W. W. Norton & Company

  45 Copy quote

• I think that what trips up a lot of great musicians is that they become involved with too many things that aren't where their strengths lie.

  Will Oldham

  Lying, Thinking, Musician

  "Ode to joy" by Kitty Empire, www.theguardian.com. January 25, 2007.

  44 Copy quote

• Sometimes we need to tell ourselves that we're not going to do certain things, just in order to stay sane.

  Will Oldham

  Order, Needs, Sometimes

  4 Copy quote

• I still make music. I still write music and I record music, I just don't trust music promotion [and] distribution right now enough to record a new set of diligently worked-upon compositions. I do trust the audience and the audiences very much.

  Will Oldham

  Writing, Records, Promotion

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• It is more rewarding to be complicit with scarcity than excess.

  Will Oldham

  Scarcity, Excess

  "The Pretender". Interview with Kelefa Sanneh, www.newyorker.com. January 5, 2009.

  7 Copy quote

• I make the songs and part of making them is singing them. But what you hear is not me. It's the song. It's through me.

  Will Oldham

  Song, Singing

  "Still voice, distant life" by Sean O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. November 16, 2002.

  4 Copy quote

• When you're listening to a recording, you're supposedly listening to some aspect of the past in the present as you travel slowly into the future, but you also know there's a very strong likelihood that the future of that recording, whether you made it or whether you're listening to a Led Zeppelin record, is going to continue probably far beyond where you are.

  Will Oldham

  Strong, Past, Listening

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Then little writings and recordings that thankfully continue to come up. I'm in this kind of wonderful, kind of awkward, off-putting, and strange position where there's nothing I want to do more than continue to make music, but the ways that I do things are not in tune with how I can do them commercially.

  Will Oldham

  Writing, Awkward, Tunes

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Cities are made for enemies to destroy.

  Will Oldham

  Cities, Enemy, Made

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• Whenever I see something that looks like it could be good - whether it's on vinyl, CD or cassette - if it's not too expensive, I'll take a chance.

  Will Oldham

  Cds, Looks, Chance

  4 Copy quote

• One thing that the Internet has created is the sense that information is at your fingertips, when it's really only a very, very limited, specific, and slanted kind of information.

  Will Oldham

  Kind, Internet

  Source: www.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

• I want to be successful and I want people to hear the music and I want to make money at it, but if it isn't what you do, eventually it seems like that will cause you to not be able to do what you do. If you did that for a couple years, you would just become someone else, which is fine, I guess...but I don't want to become someone else. I want to do what I enjoy and what feels right.

  Will Oldham

  Couple, Successful, Years

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I write a song to be recorded. And to some extent to be performed, but definitely more to be recorded than performed, because the recording will last longer than a performance.

  Will Oldham

  Song, Writing, Lasts

  Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. April 14, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

• It's nice to be able to backtrack and not be embarrassed by the music you used to listen to.

  Will Oldham

  Nice, Able, Used

  8 Copy quote

• The songs are not meant to be real life. They're meant to have a psychic - rather than a factual - bearing on the listener. It's rare that a song grounded in reality moves me because I don't feel like I'm getting the whole story. Songs are made to exist in and of themselves, like a great James Jones or Robert Louis Stevenson novel - they're not autobiographical, and yet there's a reality in every single page. It's real life of the imagination.

  Will Oldham

  Song, Real, Moving

  4 Copy quote

• Sometimes it will be for more money than I've ever been offered before. I mean, am I an idiot again for not doing that?

  Will Oldham

  Mean, Idiot, Sometimes

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I don't think that word - the word pirate - has any real meaning. Or it's something that's had meaning imposed on it.

  Will Oldham

  Real, Thinking, Pirate

  4 Copy quote

• I don't like the idea of being surrounded by hidden things; people you can't see in buildings and cars.

  Will Oldham

  Ideas, People, Car

  52 Copy quote

• I don't usually read reviews. I usually read the interviews, just because I figure it's a good way to try to do them better if I ever have to do them again.

  Will Oldham

  Trying, Way, Interviews

  Interview with Ryan Schreiber, pitchfork.com. September 1, 2001.

  6 Copy quote

• I have a mantra that kind of explains my feelings on this subject, which is, "The past is the present is the future." When you're recording something, you're making something that will exist in the future.

  Will Oldham

  Past, Feelings, Kind

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think everybody works from a defensive position, for the most part, in the film industry.

  Will Oldham

  Thinking, Film, Position

  Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. April 14, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

• I do not want a personal relationship with my fans. Or to do anything that encourages them to think they have one with me. They can have a personal relationship with my songs. That's fine, but they don't know me.

  Will Oldham

  Song, Thinking, Fans

  4 Copy quote

• I think that America in general is piratical. Every time we accept a paycheck for doing almost nothing, allowing us to live above the poverty line, we're engaging in piracy.

  Will Oldham

  Thinking, America, Lines

  4 Copy quote

• As it turns out, as an adult I can have a very unpleasant, fierce and unforgiving temper at times. But I don't think I had that when I was a kid.

  Will Oldham

  Kids, Thinking, Adults

  19 Copy quote

• I need to go someplace faraway that doesn't have telephones and doesn't have a record player and doesn't have movie theaters and people walking down the street in order to not do anything.

  Will Oldham

  Player, Order, People

  Interview with Ben Tausig, www.dustedmagazine.com.

  16 Copy quote

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