Benjamin Clementine Quotes

Every song brings back memories, like I remember where I wrote all these songs. 'Universal Heartbeat' was my apartment in New York City. 'My Sister' was at my apartment in Boston. I remember places and I remember what I was thinking when I wrote it.

A lot of times when I'm performing a song, it tends to take me back to where I was psychologically as the lyric was being written.

For 'Regulate,' I was at home, and I came up with it. I was listening to Michael McDonald's 'I Keep Forgettin'.' It was a record that I always loved, from being a kid and my parents playing it when they had their company of friends over. It was a record that just stuck in my head, and it just felt good.

I'd listen to all the stuff that was going on around me and drift off into my fantasies about it. My fantasies have fuelled all the songs I've ever written.

Most people remember being 4 objectively, as if they're seeing a movie of a 4-year-old. But me, if you ask me to think about when I'm 4, I can feel myself being 4, and I am there, looking out through my 4-year-old eyes.

I cry whenever I watch an emotional scene that I did, just because it brings me back to that moment. It's like, I remember being there; I remember feeling what I felt. It's really weird, right?

I think I'm most proud of my family right now. I'm more into that then I've ever been. It also gives a new area to draw from in creativity with my songs.

Sometimes I'll come up with a lick that I really love, and I'll try to put the right words to it for years. Suddenly something comes to me that works just right.

I imagine a child. That child is me. I can reconstruct and vividly remember portions of my own childhood. I can see, taste, smell, feel, and hear them. Then what I do is, not write about that kid or about his world, but start to think of a book that would have pleased him.

I believe in working with songs that have personal value for me.

The song 'Try Too Hard' I wrote when I was 10 or 11.

I'm just writing less of my own music lately - I go in and out of phases a lot. Sometimes there are these accidents that just sort of happen, that are kind of waiting around the corner. I guess Modest Mouse was one of them.

A lot of the songs that I wrote during 'Pt. 1' and 'Pt. 2' are the first songs that I ever wrote that sounded like that. I was in this phase - a certain creative space in my life - personally and musically.

You never forget where you were when you write a song; it's a very proper memory, so I knew exactly where I was and what I was doing for each track. It was like going into a time machine.

It'd be nice to feel that claustrophobic feeling or the anxiety that the film Melancholia produces, but for me I look at it and think about what I was doing that day, where we shot it... It's kind of like a weird memory. It's more a photo album of memories than being able to feel connected to myself. It's not easy to do.

It's like I'm stuck in a time bubble. Memories keep coming back, and of course, memories are a huge part of literature and cinema, from "Stand by Me" to "Blade Runner."

You can't write a song out of thin air you have to feel and know what you are writing about.

When I listen to Airplanes record, it takes me back. I remember a lot of my thought processes when I was 20 or 21, writing those songs and recording that record. I wonder what I was thinking when I was trying to say a particular thing. I hear some of the weird little nuances in the recording; I can hear what the room sounded like. I remember what it smelled like. I can remember sitting up in guitarist Chris Walla's bedroom and for the first time in my life having this realization like, "Maybe I can do this. Maybe I can make music that in some capacity people will enjoy and come see me play."

I don't really care about how good a song is, I only want them to reflect what I felt when I was writing them

All the best lyrics are written in ten minutes.

If I come across an issue, or something I feel strongly about, and I happen to think of a song that would go in that direction, then I do it. But that's not what I start out, necessarily, to do. Sometimes I may have an idea for a song - "Well, I'm going to write about a thing.

It's one of the craziest feelings to be on stage and know that you were sitting on your bedroom floor when that song came to be and now there's an arena full of people singing it.

Certain songs have been written years apart, but they have a natural continuity to my mind.

It varies, I don't think there is any one set way of writing songs or coming up with ideas, it comes in so many ways you know.