Conor Oberst Song Quotations

To me, a political song is also a personal song. Most political activism has been driven by empathy for other people and the desire for a world that's less divisive. Even if songs aren't overtly political, they can make a listener more empathetic.

To outsiders it probably seems like splitting hairs, but to me, Bright Eyes is a simply the collaboration between myself and Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott. What you hear is definitely the sum of all our ideas and represents all three of us. But I still write the songs myself.

Pronouns really don't matter in a song - 'I' or 'he' or 'she' or even subscribing a lyric to an inanimate object.

When I try to explain to people the big influences in my life, or at least when I first started, the most important ones were my friends who were also writing songs and were typically four or five years older than me.

It's very strange when people get so focused on what a song means, what actual events inspired a song. That gets people really excited for some reason... But that's what's great about music - however people interpret it, whatever they see, is what I want to be there for them.

If there's a song that stops meaning anything to me, then I'll quit playing it.

To finish a song is the best feeling in the world.

When you write a song, the goal is not to convey the details of your life. You should write a memoir or something if that's what you're going to do.

Each song [Desaparecidos] has a seed that it came from. We're trying to take that and broaden it out and make it resonate with people.

And your eyes must do some raining if you're ever gonna grow / When crying don't help, you can't compose yourself / It's best to compose a poem, an honest verse of longing / Or a simple song of hope.

Every time I finish a song... most of the time it's in my own head, like this sounds too much like a Townes Van Zandt song, or whoever. I realize there are so many melodies and chord progressions in pop and rock music that are so similar that you can kind of trace it back to other things. Most of the time it's just in your head.

I think there's a weird self-affirmation thing that happens in popular music in general. It seems like every song I hear on the radio is like, "Listen to me roar!" or "This is my fight song!"

We're going to sing about things that matter to us. The balancing act is to present these ideas but also make the music exciting and sort of fun enough that even if you're not paying attention to the lyrics, you might still like the songs anyway. That's the idea.

My dad, who plays guitar and piano and was in cover bands, along with my older brother, Matt, taught me guitar and stuff. I started writing acoustic songs and playing by myself in 7th grade.

For a song I was bought Now I lie when I talk With a careful eye on the cue card. Onto a stage I was pushed, With my sorrow well rehearsed. So give me all your pity and your money, now (all of it).

I think different musical collaborators bring out different qualities in my songs and I like that.

I understand why people get desensitized and roll their eyes when they hear a protest song, or even a politician making some flowery speech. It doesn't really change anything.

Since the songs were written over a five-year period, I think these are little snapshots. Some people call it political or topical, but I think each song is self-contained. I think it fits together as a picture of the last half-decade of time.

I try not to think about the idea of reaching more and more people, because once you get in that mindset, I think you lose the point of why you're doing it in the first place. Still, the best feeling I ever get is when I finish a song, and it exists, and it didn't exist before, and now it's there, and it makes me feel a certain way.