124 Quotes by Jeff Tweedy

I always think its easier for me to write without thinking about the strict meter that’s required for songs and song structures and things like that. It’s much easier to just write on the page.

Your ego wants to conceal your insecurity and your fear. And that’s why it can be such an unwelcome intrusion when we’re trying to create or perform. You need your human frailty to be at least somewhat visible if you want to connect on an emotional level.

I always listen to records that I’ve been a part of with a grain of salt.

I became a songwriter not when I composed that perfect couplet, or experienced the right amount of pain. It’s when I realized that whatever I wrote, even if it meant gutting myself in front of strangers, letting all those raw emotions come flooding out, making a fool of myself with my own words, was exactly what I always wanted to do with my life.

But when we experience pain or trauma, we’re acutely aware that something is wrong. You want answers. “What is this? How do I get rid of this? Why is this happening to me? I don’t want this.” That’s why so much art, and music, in particular, becomes a great commiserating balm for pain. Joy doesn’t need to be audited. We’re just grateful to have had it at all. But pain, goddammit, we demand to know Who’s responsible for this?

I’m very, very suspicious of anybody that finds a belief system that they feel can explain it all, for themselves or for anybody else.

I don’t really feel like you’re making a record unless you pay attention to it.

It’s rooted in things that maybe older people or people my age remember as being rock music. But at the same time, I don’t think we’re stuck in the past or retro. I think we’ve tried to push ourselves and experiment with what we can call Wilco music.

Writing songs has always been hard and easy. It’s not always easy when you want it to be, and then sometimes it’s just like turning on the faucet. That’s just the nature of it.