Win Butler Quotes

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.

Being in a rock band, I feel a certain responsibility to have a weird haircut. I mean, who else gets to do that?

Music is made by individuals. Some artists will be very politically overt in their songs, some will be more subtle. You have to be true to yourself, true to your nature.

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

I think of hip hop as a mass media, radio, MTV thing. It’s been extremely relevant over the last 10 years and rock music is just not anymore—-a tear rolls down my cheek as I say that.

Whenever you do anything or say anything, you're opening yourself up to criticism. But that's okay.

What I miss [about church] is being forced to be in community with people that aren't the same as me.

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

I think you have to want to be really famous. It's a lot easier to sabotage your career than to have a career to sabotage.

I just wanted to make something in the world and worry about the rest of it later and not get too caught up in rules.

Major labels just lost their way. It's like the housing bubble. They lost a sense of the fundamentals.

Songwriting is reliant on inspiration, which ideally you don't have that much control over. Songs kind of half make themselves, and then you have to finish them.

Actual patriotism has to do with loving a place enough to try and improve it.

I find myself a lot more open to bands if I just hear their song. It gives you an opportunity to engage with the thing itself and not be overwhelmed by everything else that surrounds it.

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 try not get too self-aware when writing lyrics.

I don't think the emotional quality is the defining quality of the music but it's definitely something that people have picked up on a lot

I think filmmakers all secretly wanna be musicians and all musicians secretly wanna be filmmakers.

A lot of artists write about the same things their whole career.

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 love my iPhone it's great to have a camera around all the time.