Aaron Dessner Quotes

I make records all the time. But making records is not quite the same as getting them to the audience.

U2 albums never get finished. They just get released.

I want a hit. I don't think anybody spends 12 months writing and recording an album, making something cool, and says, 'Great, I hope this doesn't sell.' I don't understand that mind-set. I want hits: a big bunch of them.

I plan to make records as long as people wanna keep listening to them.

The hardest part about the music industry for anyone is getting into the ears of the world.

I can reach the mass audience if I come from different perspectives on every song.

You need a platform upon which to release an orchestral record, otherwise it's just going to be an obscurity.

If I cut an album now and sell it for ten bucks, I can put seven dollars and fifty cents in my pocket.

We had an EP out and all of a sudden we find record companies are interested in us, and we're thinking, 'Oh, that's really nice, but we don't think we're ready for it.'

I don't spend much time listening to the records when they're done. Usually I let go of it. Especially in the Eighties and Nineties - they were like product, almost.

I tested the waters on producing a record, but I'm more of a creative guy. I can't get into minute details.

I don't believe in the philosophy of stumbling across hit records.

I know that when I make a record like The Delivery Man as a contrast to even Il Sogno, this is going to reach a wider audience, because it communicates in that very direct way.

I've never worried about how a new release will be received. I simply try to do the best I can and leave the rest to the gods. The music industry in those terms is something I loathe and detest. It conjures up images of a gigantic factory spewing out parts of the machine.

A single is really quick, man. You can get it out, and in two months have it on your merch table. And albums can take a really long time. But when you get done with an album, it's a lot more fulfilling.

I never thought of myself as capable of stirring up - generating - the actual drumroll for a record, you know, all the press.

I'm gonna put out another album and then another album after that. And then I'm gonna put out a mixtape, and then I'm gonna put out another ten songs, and then I'm gonna put out a hundred more songs and a thousand songs after that.

It doesn't take a year to sing a song. Takes a year for people to figure out how to market it.

The desire to hit a big home run is dominating the music business.

I have a solo deal with Columbia Records. So it's about, do I want to release an album, when can we do it, what kind of album should it be, how should it be released and marketed and what's the right timing? Do I have time to do it? It's all about questions.

You make your music, then you try to find whatever audience is out there for it.

I applaud the effort it takes to put a record together.

I like the idea of working in an album-sized chunk, you know, and I never looked at Nine Inch Nails as a project that would be a hit-driven, single-based kind of thing.

Unless I've got Katy Perry on the cover of my CD, it's going to be tough to sell a lot of records.

I'm working on my new album right now. Hopefully to get that out at the top of 2005, January 2005.