Win Butler Quotes

People never ask people doing serious music, 'Do you ever think about doing funny music?'

I want to be taken seriously as the type of musician that plays stuff like an electric rake. I mean, how seriously do you take someone like Spike Jones? They take him pretty seriously - a really good musician who made a great contribution in terms of humor, which is part of what I try to do too.

I think the world is ready for some rock 'n' roll. Some real time guys that play their own instruments, write their own songs, and sing the music and have a good time doing it.

There's a long tradition - certainly with country, but in all kinds of genres of music - to have humorous lyrics. Certainly with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and, if you look at country, Roger Miller and Jim Stafford.

My parents have always had a great sense of humor. And I really appreciate good humor in songs, witty lyrics that sneak up on you and then you listen again, and say: 'That's so funny.' John Prine's songs have always had this really witty tone.

There are a lot of songs that would ostensibly be a good candidate for parody, yet I can't think of a clever enough idea.

So we used to look for funny songs, and learn them and play them. And we used to play them in pubs.

To me, the musical is best when it's a musical comedy. So if you have a very, very funny show, and very good, funny songs, that's what the musical does best.

I always make fun of KISS because I don't particularly think their music is anything.

The movie Spinal Tap rocked my world. It's for rock what The Sound of Music was for hills. They really nailed how dumb rock can be.

I think hip-hop does a very good job of infusing comedy and humor and wit into music, a lot more than other genres.

Cheech and I used to call ourselves musicians; we never called ourselves comedians. We were musicians that were funny.

It's very difficult to be funny musically. I think I achieved It with 'The Pink Panther.'

Everyone needs an escape, whether that is through music or humor. My personal escape is through both of those things so I thought why not combine them? But not in a cringe way, I don't want to make parody songs. I just want my music to have a humorous edge to it.

When Jack Black and I started Tenacious D, there were about two seconds in the beginning when we thought maybe we'd have a go at serious music. But we quickly abandoned that when we realized that everything we did tended to come out funny.

Singing rock n' roll - they called it singing for the devil. But we all wanted an opportunity to compete in the music industry, and that was the opportunity.

We're a rock n' roll band. We're more music and rock n' roll than politics.

We're the court jesters of rock.

I've always considered rock 'n' roll, the music and the dancing, an art form.

If I could do a sort of comical musical, that would be everything!

Rock and roll reaches people because it's honest and doesn't shy away from the issues.

We thought Queen were quite tongue in cheek.

Music can be witty, but it's not funny unless it's conceptually funny.

I'm not sure a lot of us in the music business or in rock 'n' roll are given credit for irony or humor.

We're a rock band. We're proud of it. We're not an art band, a noise band, or an extreme band.