Conor Oberst Quotes

It's very important to me that every person takes away their own meaning from a song, and it's why I don't always love spelling out what a song is about for somebody.

Some people try and tell you what the songs are about and it bores me to death.

It's better for the listener to interpret their own meanings to the music.

My favorite song is called 'Reachout.' There are so many different stories told in that song. I think anyone who listens to it will gather a different meaning, but each answer is true. I also like the sound of it, period - there are a lot of classical influences.

That's my favorite part about songwriting, the way you write a song, and someone else might hear it a different way.

I make my songs slightly abstract so that people can interpret them their own way. I think that's a lot more special, so you can hear a song and think, 'I feel exactly that way,' even if it wasn't written for that feeling.

I can't say what people use the experience of listening to songs for, but I would never tell somebody what it is supposed to mean. That defeats the purpose of making it. Hopefully, whoever connects with it connects with it in their own way, and it can mean whatever it is supposed to mean to them.

Artists are like messengers. A song is authored by you, but its interpretation is owned by other people. And you have no control over that.

I don't really like to explain my songs.

How we absorb music is unique. I know what I do. When I'm listening to music, I tend to find myself in a song. That's what really makes you connect is if you feel what that song is saying.

I always like to leave art and music open to interpretation.

I think in some ways, it can do a listener a disservice to explain a song. I think I'd rather leave a little room for people to put themselves in it.

I don't actually like explaining the meanings of my songs, because I think people can take away more from it if they use their imagination.

I get the lyrics of a tune and interpret them my way.

People relate to songs so differently. No matter what it's about in reality, people create their own meaning behind it and connect with it on their own terms.

The great thing about a record is it frees your imagination; it gives your eyes a rest and lets your mind wander. There's the special thing that each record can mean a different thing to every person listening to it.

After talking to people and meeting them every day, I realize that a song can be written from one perspective with an objective in mind. What is crazy about it is that many different people can take one song a totally different way. That is so cool, since music is a universal thing and a very personal thing.

I don't expect everyone to get something deep out of it. Some people can just listen to the music, or get their aggressions out, but I think with any great painting or movie, album or whatever it is, it's better if people can take what they need from it. That they're not forced to get some particular message.

Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.

And I like to interpret music. So I think it's all interpretive.

When I was little and I was introduced to Led Zeppelin, I didn't know what a zeppelin was or who Zeppelin was or what the machine was. The real meaning is whatever feelings and memories you attach to the music.

All music has to speak in some form or other.

'My Life' is not an autobiography. It's just music.

Music means different things to different people and sometimes even different things to the same person at different moments of his life.

The video forum for me has been a source of great consternation because once you start projecting a look to a song, it robs the listener of their ability to adopt that song and make the lyric their own.