Courtney Barnett Quotes

I never had a magazine, I never listened to a certain band. Actually, I was listening to bands from the '60s and '70s with my dad, so I knew more about The Beatles than I did about what was topical in my life.

I wouldn't know any newer bands. We're past the pimple stage.

My mother's sister married a man from Barbados, and my cousins were raised in Barbados. So we traveled down there, they came up every summer for camp, and I started paying attention to their music. And that was the first place I ever remember hearing reggae and liking it.

I lost a boyfriend over Elmore James. You know that moment when you send mixtapes at fifteen? He sent me pop hits, and I sent him Elmore James, and I never heard from him again.

Usually, I think you have most of your musical influences locked down by the time you're 16.

I can't wait to start something up myself that is actually about giving unsigned bands the exposure they deserve, especially when they travel so far to play the smallest gig they've ever played in their lives.

I think my iTunes is a kind of strange and embarrassing mix of show tunes and artists that I have no perception of whether or not they're huge or not, you know? I'm the kind of person who doesn't realize that The Arcade Fire is a big deal, but then I expect everybody to know Cocoon, and people tend to not know Cocoon.

I think I skipped a lot of music, like when I was 17 or 18. I didn't know about a lot of new bands because I was so immersed in older music.

The effect hip-hop had on me was enormous. I was exposed to it by happenstance. My father worked at a radio station in New York called WKTU Disco 92. It was the first radio station in New York City to play disco in the late '70s.

I always like to get local music when I'm in another country.

Most white Americans only discovered the blues with the British invasion.

You can't argue that hip-hop rots away the moral character of kids or rots their brain and still see middle-class white kids going to college who are listening to hip-hop. Going on to become healthy adults listening to hip-hop.

When I was a kid, there was so much talent outside of recorded music.

My cousin used to make fun of me for liking stuff like C+C Music Factory. I didn't have any tapes; I just liked their song on the radio. We liked that because that was what we had access to.

I'd go over to friends' houses and ask them to put on some Howlin' Wolf, and they wouldn't know what I was talking about. Then, when they would come over to my house, I'd play them some blues. Their parents wouldn't let them come back. The blues were still called 'race records' back then.

But I feel like I developed my own love for hip-hop and rap music by myself. Just growing up and hearing new things. As you grow up, you begin to listen to new music that this kid is listening to, then you begin to like your own music, and start discovering it yourself.

When I was growing up, I was surrounded by people that were listening to a lot of pop music.

I don't think I ever heard music playing when I was younger, other than the radio. My parents got me a Walkman and stuff like that, but I was always way more into listening to music than they were.

I would watch movies and listen to music that you wouldn't think a child would listen to.

I first was introduced to really, I guess, underground electronic music when I was in middle school.

Nirvana was happening when I was 14, kind of the perfect age. Growing up in Anacortes, Washington, it was close enough to Seattle that it seemed like a local thing.

As you get older you lose interest in what you hear on the radio. But you can't be like that, you have to enjoy what's going on.

I think your musical tastes are largely shaped at a young age by your parents, as they're in charge of what's on in the car.

The youth is hungry for good music; I feel responsible and glad that I can be an agent who can mentally, emotionally stimulate them to listen to music outside of cinema.

Even a Menno sheltered from the world knows not to stick her tongue into the mouth of a boy who owns an Air Supply record. You might stick your tongue into the mouth of a boy who owned some Emerson, Lake and Palmer, but you would not date him on a regular basis, or openly.