Conor Oberst Quotes

Jesus, music has always been my first love. I use music in my work because it's the fastest way to an emotional place. You hear a song, and that memory comes right back-- you're there... Making music is immediate, and it's all about you. If you're playing guitar, the feeling comes through-- the way you bend the note, the intensity with which you hit the strings. With making films, although it's real emotion, it's false emotion. You're lying.

I know not every song has to be a powerful message.

I feel there is always room for good music. I want to reach people's soul with my lyrics through whatever vessel God chooses.

I feel connected to every song on this record [ 'Modern Vampires Of The City' ], but yeah I think there's something special about 'Young Lion'. It's pretty different from any song that we've had before because the vocals are kind of between two different very simple instrumental piano melodies and it's almost like something that we call a vignette, it's sort of like a miniature.

I don't want to sing boring pop songs - I want to sing songs that are meaningful to me.

The end of all good music is to affect the soul.

A composer knows that music is written by human beings for human beings and that music is a continuation of life, not something separated from it.

There's certain songs that you're gonna record that you hope to touch people and change lives, and there's certain songs that you know that are not going to be that serious.

There's a great energy and drive that takes precedence in a lot of rock and pop. It's about making a strong visceral connection. That's something that I think great classical music can have, too.

I want to touch people's lives with my music and my lyrics.

It's a unique thing, and it's probably the thing I love most about songs and music - their ability to connect in a human way.

I make music for people to relate to and to connect with me. I want to tap into different emotions.

I feel there is a song for every occasion, and India is a land full of music.

You need music that is compelling and intellectual, but you also need music that just feels good and you can laugh about and dance to, and I think I'm trying to marry the two in some way.

When it comes down to it, it's all about good music and what makes people react. That wins over everything else.

The whole deal with my music has been the emotional quality.

The reason I connected with music was because of the stories that people were telling and making me feel when I listened to a song.

You cannot have black music without something soulful in it, whether it's lyrically, how it's performed, or how it's expressed.

For some producers who are technical-minded, making the song sound good is easy, and getting the emotion into the song is harder.

AI as a tool in music-making is fine, but it's always going to be the humanity in music that makes people want to listen to it.

Even if a song has shallow lyrics, there's something that you feel, regardless of what their lyrics are.

I do gravitate towards the sad songs because I find them to be more of a challenge for me from a writing perspective. There are things about those songs that do touch people in a way that a fun song can't.

Piano playing consists of common sense, heart and technical resources. All three should be equally developed. Without common sense you are a fiasco, without technique an amateur, without heart a machine. The profession does have its hazards.

All which isn't singing is mere talking... and all talking's to oneself alone but the very song of (as mountains feel and lovers) singing is silence.

I know a tree feels it when the wind blows through it. It probably goes, 'Chhhhhh, this is wonderful.' And that's how I feel when I'm singing some songs. It's wonderful.