Will Oldham Quotes About Songs

Quotes about: Songs

• I had a lot of time to myself, and I would listen to a lot of music, mostly music that I knew fairly well and had a relationship with. And I'd think, well, what is it that I've never been able to do that this person or people are able to do with this song? Why haven't I been able to do it, and what can they do that I wish I could do? And then I'd try to do that. I'd start each day getting into the songs, and I'd think about how I might get closer to this music that I love, but haven't been able to make before.

  Will Oldham

  Song, Writing, Thinking

• 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

• 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.

• It's good when someone says, "Would you write a song for this purpose," or "would you record a song for this purpose," or "would you help me realize this song," again, for this purpose.

  Will Oldham

  Song, Writing, Purpose

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• 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.

• I've never done a video where I feel like the images have anything to do with my song, except in the most vague way possible, because I feel like the song is its own complete thing. But ideally, a song is a complete sphere like the Earth, where if you were an alien with a huge, huge finger, you could stick your finger into the middle of the ocean and make an impression on it. It’s not an impregnable sphere, but it is a sphere.

  Will Oldham

  Song, Ocean, Done

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Writing songs is a profession; so it's not an attempt to take things from my interactions with other people and for some reason give them to a total stranger to listen to. I find it offensive to hear other people do that.

  Will Oldham

  Song, Writing, Interaction With Others

  Will Oldham (2012). “Will Oldham on Bonnie "Prince" Billy”, p.5, W. W. Norton & Company

• A record is something that isn't real or true. It's like cinema. It's a construction of something hyper-real and surreal and unreal all at the same time. You make a space that doesn't really exist. One of the big joys of being in this line of work is building the recorded versions of the songs.

  Will Oldham

  Song, Real, Space

  Interview with Mike Powell, pitchfork.com. October 10, 2011.

• I feel much more physically connected to my voice, and I like the physicality of the voice, and how the voice can physically occupy a song.

  Will Oldham

  Song, Voice, Feels

  Source: www.thewire.co.uk

• The less people present in an urgent situation that a moderately high stakes recording session can create - the less people there are in the room - the more openness there can be. These songs share that as well, in addition to just the obvious, basic starkness.

  Will Oldham

  Song, People, Rooms

  "Will Oldham’s Fourth Dimension". Interview With T. Cole Rachel, www.interviewmagazine.com. February 10, 2016.

• When I listen to little fourth-dimension artifacts, they're like they were made as time capsules in the first place. You know that when you're writing the song and recording the song, you're already sending a message to the future listener, whoever and wherever and whenever that will be.

  Will Oldham

  Song, Writing, Messages

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• 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

• My dream many years ago would've been to continue to write and record songs in record/album form for years to come, but now records aren't what they were then - and so it doesn't actually feel very good to make a record of songs.

  Will Oldham

  Dream, Song, Writing

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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