Matt Berninger Quotes

I'm trying to figure out how to record at home because I have a tiny house and a seven-year-old and my wife also works at home. So I can't work in the house because she's trying to write, so I pitched a tent in the backyard. I'm literally trying to record in the tent.

I'm doing a little freelance work, and I think everybody's trying to take their minds off rock and roll for a little while and get some perspective.

I don't want somebody telling my daughter who she can marry, or what she can do with her body. That's what was at stake.

Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave know best. Although I wear a lot of jeans, I've been told that Nick Cave doesn't own a pair and wouldn't be caught dead in denim.

I usually always think of characters and sometimes the characters are a little bit invented, so it's nice to give these invented, blurry, personas an actually name. It makes me get closer to them or something like that. But they're not all real, they're weird amalgamations of reality.

I watched R.E.M. connect with the back row of a 50,000-seat venue.

Live on coffee and flowers. Try not to worry what the weather will be.

The same song can have drastically different feels and personalities just by changing some minor things. A different drumbeat or some vocal overdub could completely transform the song.

I'm not saying I'm not a moody guy sometimes, but I think I have a pretty normal balance.

A song is a song and, if I am emotionally connected to do it, whether it is sad or not sad, I am going to chase that song.

I love to make songs out of some of those shadows - you know, some of the things you lie awake thinking about, social anxieties and romantic insecurities and all that stuff.

My favourite store? Seize Sur Vingt in New York. They make most of my suits, and they are really cool people.

The lyrics are what I work on the hardest, but I'm not trying to make a perfectly clear message or anything like that. In fact, I'm usually trying to avoid saying something too directly, because usually that rings false anyway.

Not all the songs are real events, but I do write about stuff that is close to my heart and it comes out one way or another.

I've never had so much fun being back at my job sitting in front of my computer. Compared to 10 months on the road, going home and sleeping in my own bed every night is really nice.

A lot of the lyrics I write involve images that just swing the song in a way that feels really good to me and there isn't a literal explanation. They're not riddles for the listener to solve.

When it comes to lyrics, I just write down a lot of things, and only a very tiny fraction of it, I think, is any good.

Once you do have a child, you want to talk about every detail of it. And it is really boring to all your friends, and it should be. I was really worried about even going there at all.

The truth is, I'm pretty lighthearted.

I live in a city sorrow built
It's in my honey, it's in my milk.

Usually, writing lyrics for me is like bleeding drop by drop from the forehead.

At first, when 'Boxer' came out, people were a little let down, and we worried that it might be the end for us. But then it began to grow on people. 'Boxer' bought us our creative freedom.

You gotta lean towards the things that make you like yourself. Forget everything else.

I do a lot of editing and switching around and putting little pieces together to get the right mood and personality, and it takes me forever to get a song finished.

It's not hard to connect with the music on an emotional level and get inside the songs. It's odd, very vulnerable, and slightly embarrassing to be standing and singing and playing music in front of a bunch of strangers.

There are records that you just sink into. They coincide with what you're going through and become an ally. If our records do that for people, that's the greatest compliment I could ever receive. That's one of the reasons making music is so important to me, because there's a very strange emotional reach. For me - more than books or movies or other things - music is like a mainline to your heart.

The last thing you want to do is write songs about being in a band.

The song 'Humiliation' is kind of about what if, outside of a dinner party or something, I was blown up by a drone missile, out by the pool. What an embarrassing way to go.

A lot of my lyrics are approximate meaning without me knowing why they sound right.

I focus on the words and then I have fun putting together the music after.

A suit is a sign of respect.

Music has got a community vibe to it that pulls people together, and those communities are different in different places.

Sometimes you have to wear what you want.

I don't play an instrument. I pretend. I try to.

I became at peace with the darkness or the personality that I have. I am usually pretty funny and happy.

Somehow, you realize you can kind of do anything in music. You don't have to be good at a certain thing; you can just do whatever you want.

Lyrics need to be good, but they don't need to be obvious right away.

I never sit and fill a journal with lyrics. Most of the time I'm trying to write a feeling, not a story. I'm not necessarily trying to describe the details of a place or event so much as the feeling of the thing. It is a kind of weird alchemy that is elusive until it feels right.