Win Butler Quotes

The cliched rock life never seemed that cool to me.

The idea of dancing to bad house music is something I could never get behind.

Usually, I think you have most of your musical influences locked down by the time you’re 16.

Funny songs aren’t usually that good. Like Weird Al and maybe a couple of Beatles songs, but it’s kind of hard to bring humor into rock music in an interesting way.

I think there’s some pretty amazing language in the Bible.

I grew up in a somewhat religious family. My dad‘s family isn’t religious at all, but my mom‘s side of the family is, so I was exposed to church a bit.

It’s a lot easier to sabotage your career than to have a career to sabotage.

I feel like I’m kind of a bit of a sponge in a way. Like, if people around me are going through things, I find it very hard not to be empathetic.

The film ‘Black Orpheus’ is one of my favorite films of all time, which is set in Carnival in Brazil.

We’re exposed to ideas everywhere. The world is full of ideas. I think that television is a pretty powerful medium in that regard.

I had a somewhat religious upbringing. Not strict, but it was there, and I’m kind of thankful for that. If you grow up just watching MTV, that’s its own form of religion, and it’s not even based on happiness or communal responsibility. I mean, try to construct a worldview out of that.

I’m not someone who can dance to a song I don’t like.

I love my iPhone; it’s great to have a camera around all the time.

Whenever you’re talking about meaning, basically… I think a lot of the human experience has to do with trying to understand what things mean, and there’s not really any tools to do that unless you’re thinking about it in a more spiritual or philosophical realm.

When I was living in Boston, I worked in this store that played the college radio station. I had to listen to it all day, and I didn’t care for most of it.

I studied the Bible and philosophy in college, and I think in a certain sense that’s the kind of stuff that still makes my brain work.

The idea of peer critique, of talking about each other‘s art – I just found it so useless.

I’m not practising, I don’t go to church, but what I got from it was a sense of belonging to something bigger. What I really miss is being forced to be in a community with people that aren’t the same as you. Then, you really have to work through the ways that you’re different.

It seems like the record industry made so much crazy money in the 1960s that everyone wanted to get in on it. Now it’s just become very corporate. So all of these people who despise music end up being in charge.

My favorite English teacher in high school showed me ‘Brazil’ when I was 15, and it blew my mind. It’s one of those movies that’s revealed itself in different ways as I’ve gone back to it over the years.

Our music may sound big emotionally, but that’s more to do with the playing, the level of musicianship and the full-on energy. Often, the lyrics are often quite small and focused.

The Flaming Lips have been on Warner Bros. forever, and certainly everything I heard growing up was on a major label in some way, from the Cure to Radiohead to Bjork.

My parents live near the ocean, and I’ve spent a lot of time walking through the water at night, being around the water.

If you think about it, if you’ve ever been to a Catholic service, it’s practically a laser light show. It’s very dramatic, very theatrical. The outfits they wear, it’s all designed to be impressive.

I was really sick of bands just ignoring the audience as a posture in rock music. And I think we fed off each other in terms of trying to engage the audience, not in a hammy way, but actually trying to be aware of the space that you are playing in and trying to connect in some way through the music.