Win Butler Quotes

Music is made by individuals. Some artists will be very politically overt in their songs, some will be more subtle. You have to be true to yourself, true to your nature.

Songwriting is reliant on inspiration, which ideally you don't have that much control over. Songs kind of half make themselves, and then you have to finish them.

Funny songs aren't usually that good. Like Weird Al and maybe a couple of Beatles songs, but it's kind of hard to bring humor into rock music in an interesting way.

If you think about it, if you've ever been to a Catholic service, it's practically a laser light show. It's very dramatic, very theatrical. The outfits they wear, it's all designed to be impressive.

I think filmmakers all secretly wanna be musicians and all musicians secretly wanna be filmmakers.

I'm not practising, I don't go to church, but what I got from it was a sense of belonging to something bigger. What I really miss is being forced to be in a community with people that aren't the same as you. Then, you really have to work through the ways that you're different.

Our music may sound big emotionally, but that's more to do with the playing, the level of musicianship and the full-on energy. Often, the lyrics are often quite small and focused.

A lot of artists write about the same things their whole career.

It's a lot easier to sabotage your career than to have a career to sabotage.

When I was living in Boston, I worked in this store that played the college radio station. I had to listen to it all day, and I didn't care for most of it.

I feel like I'm kind of a bit of a sponge in a way. Like, if people around me are going through things, I find it very hard not to be empathetic.

I grew up in a somewhat religious family. My dad's family isn't religious at all, but my mom's side of the family is, so I was exposed to church a bit.

While there are so many beautiful Baroque churches and it's a beautiful artistic tradition, it almost gets hideous and grotesque if you push it further. You can take something beautiful and overdo it.

Being in a rock band, I feel a certain responsibility to have a weird haircut. I mean, who else gets to do that?

Everyone has their own talents. It's up to the individual to see what you can actually do.

Whenever you're talking about meaning, basically ... I think a lot of the human experience has to do with trying to understand what things mean, and there's not really any tools to do that unless you're thinking about it in a more spiritual or philosophical realm.

My favorite English teacher in high school showed me 'Brazil' when I was 15, and it blew my mind. It's one of those movies that's revealed itself in different ways as I've gone back to it over the years.

I try not get too self-aware when writing lyrics.

The idea of dancing to bad house music is something I could never get behind.

When I was younger, bands helped me connect to part of my humanity; bands that had nothing to do with anything political helped to form me. There's a correlation in that: If people can connect to music, maybe they can connect to each other.

I don't think the emotional quality is the defining quality of the music but it's definitely something that people have picked up on a lot

I don't like to talk about other bands in interviews.

I studied the Bible and philosophy in college, and I think in a certain sense that's the kind of stuff that still makes my brain work.

I love my iPhone; it's great to have a camera around all the time.

We're exposed to ideas everywhere. The world is full of ideas. I think that television is a pretty powerful medium in that regard.

I was really sick of bands just ignoring the audience as a posture in rock music. And I think we fed off each other in terms of trying to engage the audience, not in a hammy way, but actually trying to be aware of the space that you are playing in and trying to connect in some way through the music.

It seems like the record industry made so much crazy money in the 1960s that everyone wanted to get in on it. Now it's just become very corporate. So all of these people who despise music end up being in charge.

I think of hip hop as a mass media, radio, MTV thing. It's been extremely relevant over the last 10 years and rock music is just not anymore - -a tear rolls down my cheek as I say that.

The film 'Black Orpheus' is one of my favorite films of all time, which is set in Carnival in Brazil.

The idea of peer critique, of talking about each other's art - I just found it so useless.