Nate Ruess Quotes

The last time I really got into new music that wasn't heavy metal was probably like... TV on the Radio? I think that was it. That's the last time.

I wouldn't mind seeing The Smiths reform. That would be cool.

I love music, particularly Radiohead, TV on the Radio, The XX and Tribes - they're a great new band from Camden and well worth a look at.

I kinda learned to sing singing to Echo and the Bunnymen songs and Smiths songs: Morrissey would be a big favorite.

The first music I ever got into was the '80s alternative bands that my brother listened to, like The Cure and The Smiths and R.E.M. and Fugazi. I can remember specifically saying The Cure was my favorite band back in second grade.

I guess my music taste is pretty predictable: I like new indie rock stuff, older stuff.

It's just like music when you reckon it up. It's like listening to Pavement it's just The Fall in 1985, isn't it? They haven't got an original idea in their heads.

Guided By Voices was huge when I was 16. Then I got into the Beatles, then classical music, Beethoven.

I like alternative music, so I like to hear new bands.

The Strokes are one of my favorite bands... And there's this band called Future Islands that I love.

I listen to everything: The Pixies, The Beatles, The Avett Brothers.

I really love Grimes, Niki & the Dove, stuff like that.

When my first record came out, it was in the middle of the real Muse, Keane, British thing, and that beat-driven thing wasn't really that cool at the moment.

I'm not an '80s fan. I'm more '70s New York pre-punk kind of thing, and I guess I grew up with '90s grunge, post-punk pop music.

I will always love the Clash, because I loved them so much when I was fourteen, and I love how you can start a conversation with almost literally any dude about the Clash.

The music I love listening to is more of the Jack Johnson, Ben Harper, Dido, Jewel, Nora Jones, Joss Stone, a bit more of that organic live-instrumentation feel.

I was real into Devo, Pavement, Captain Beefheart, and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

I'm actually in my 22-year-old son Jason's band, After Midnight Project. The music is like Coldplay-ish rock.

Sigur Ros make beautiful music. Bloc Party are fantastic and exciting and innovative.

They use all of the music that I did in the '50s, '60s and the '70s behind people like Tupac and LL Cool J. I'm into all that stuff.

A lot of the music I listen to is indie rock. It's not on the radio.

I absolutely think the Seattle grunge sound was instrumental to my music education.

Live are a really good band. I like Stone Temple Pilots, Radiohead I love. Even Oasis.

The band Grizzly Bear, I think they're excellent. There's a beauty and a musicality there that I wish would have been in vogue in the late '80s, when I was forming bands.

Band of Skulls is joining Cage the Elephant as my new musical caffeine.