Paul Westerberg Quotes

For the last three years, I've been working on 'Bromst,' and that's all that encompassed my brain. And now that it's out, it will change the way that I think musically.

I didn't want to be a one-hit wonder. I really wanted to make albums that had a different aesthetic every album and a different sound.

I think there is quite a continuity over my 25 years of doing music, and I'm always trying to break away from it.

I've been making music for a long time, since I was very young, but at the same time, I'm still exploring what works for me. I feel like I'm just starting out.

I feel like bands should be growing, living, functioning entities and to crystallize a band into a single album, and for that to be a touchstone - I understand it from a fan's perspective but I also feel like it's a little bit misleading in terms of the way bands actually function.

Every time I write a song my approach changes.

Our approach makes it so if you hear a said song of ours in 2003 and then you hear it again in 2009 it's probably evolved and changed a good bit, and hopefully for the better.

What I'm hoping is that every album I'm going to do will give my audience something different, and that they'll grow as I do.

I want to be the kind of artist who keeps pushing on every album. I don't want to settle on a sound.

But, on the other hand, if Schubert were alive today, he would find even richer fields to plow.

I've definitely grown and evolved as a person, as an artist, you know. Just in terms of my style, my taste, my influences, everything... That's a part of being an artist I think.

I just wanna make more music, legit music as opposed to keeping the same constant thing. I wanna show growth in the music, pretty much.

We always try to make each record a snapshot of the band at that time.

I've tended to look at my albums as research and development. I was just trying to get someplace new on each one.

The music is the same if you go all the way back to the first albums I made or the middle or whatever. The thing that's different is the lyrics.

The whole 'Djesse' project is, like, the paramount example of something that has evolved alongside me creating it. It started as one album, and then I realized that I had too many ideas for just one album.

I think that the only goals that we try to set for ourselves is to evolve musically.

I think if you're a creative person, then you're always kinda looking to move things along - 'Where else can I go? Where can I take this?' From painters to photographers - anything creative in the arts - if you're a true artist, I think you'll always look to do something else. 'Where else can I go with it?' Do you know what I mean?

I think most musicians know if they make the same record twice, even if they say they don't.

My hope is to continue to make new music and go with the flow. I think I'll always be creative. I want to keep making good music, put myself into positions where I need to rise to the occasion of playing in front of an audience, and continually get better at what I'm doing.

You can never go back to the first two albums in a career.

Music is a work in progress. On a record, it gets frozen in time. And it's oddly unnatural.

I think it was Duke Ellington who once said that we're always most pleased with our current record. I mean, you have to assume that you learn from one, and you do something better next time.

I can see that if this was an album done 10 or 15 years ago we could see we were moving on to some place else.

What I was going for in the first two albums I didn't necessarily achieve. Because I was young and because it was my first time out. And the second album was such a 'quickie' sort of 'Let's just get it over with!' But the kind of music I make, there's a lot of subtlety in it. And I think it takes a couple of listens to actually really get it.