Phil Elverum Quotes

I want to create songs that will last across time.

A cello was there 400 years ago and will still be here in 400 years.

In many ways, I think about the possibility that there could still be a Yes in 100 or 200 years from now, just like a live symphony orchestra.

What I'm most pleased about is that there's no particular decline. The songs I wrote 40 years ago are no worse and no better - there's a consistency.

That's the thing about music: It's forever. Hopefully, you captured a moment musically that has a timeless quality people will find relevant to their lives at any point. That's the whole idea about what I love about art and music.

We're just not going anywhere. Our songs are here to stay.

Ultimately, what I want is for my songs to outlive me: I want my songs to keep being played even after I'm gone.

My goal was always to be involved in music that would outlive me. And maybe that's actually happening.

I want to write music that will outlive me.

I want to make music that stands the test of time.

I don't think I ever write songs involving politics, because they get dated way too quick. Any view you have can usually be made into something more general, and that can stand throughout time.

I'll probably be 80 years old and still performing. Music is like fashion, it changes. But some things will always be the same.

Pop changes week to week, month to month. But great music is like literature.

Lynyrd Skynyrd has always been about writing songs and talking to people through them. That's what we do, and that's what we'll keep doing for as long as we can.

I am happy that I could collaborate with poets like O.N.V. Kurup and Yusufali Kechery in my career; they wrote meaningful lyrics, which made my songs last longer.

I'm a songwriter. So I'm OK. But when I wrote "Stand By Me" as a song and to know that the song will probably be here for hundred and hundreds of years to come, it's great, you know. And it was just simple lyrics.

Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams. All of them are different styles, but those are the songs that make the times. They're the songs that last through time.

Years from now, after I'm gone, someone will listen to what I've done and know I was here. They may not know or care who I was, but they'll hear my guitars speaking for me.

I know when somebody's heard my music. I can hear it in their music.

I've come to realize that you live on through recordings; they're like a musical diary, a window into somebody's soul.

A song is only as strong as its foundation, and when it comes so naturally in any setting, those are the songs that will hopefully outlive you, maybe even outlive the next generation of You.

If our music survives, which I have no doubt it will, then it will because it is good.

The classic, quote/unquote, craft of songwriting still works; it still is relevant.

It's much easier to be successful than it is to be relevant. The tricks won't keep you relevant. Tricks might keep you popular for a while, but in all honesty, I don't know how U2 will stay relevant. I know we've got a future. I know we can fill stadiums. And yet with every record, I think, 'Is this it? Are we still relevant?'

I would rather be remembered by a song than by a victory.