{"author":"David Byrne","author_id":"David+Byrne","total_quotes":48,"quotes":[{"text":"I pick up a copy of Newsweek on the plane and immediately notice how biased, slanted, and opinionated all the U.S. Newsmagazine articles are. Not that the Euro and British press aren't biased as well--they certainly are--but living in the United States we are led to believe, and are constantly reminded, that our press is fair and free of bias. After such a short time away, I am shocked at how obviously and blatantly this lie is revealed--there is the 'reporting' that is essentially parroting what the White House press secretary announces; the myriad built-in assumptions that one ceases to register after being somewhere else for a while. The myth of neutrality is an effective blanket for a host of biases.","author":"David Byrne","tags":["213","bias","media"],"id":1782,"author_id":"David+Byrne"},{"text":"Real beauty knocks you a little bit off kilter.","author":"David Byrne","tags":["real","you","little "],"id":11790,"author_id":"David+Byrne"},{"text":"It was a uniform that signified that one was a kind of downtown aesthete; not necessarily nihilistic, but a monk in the bohemian order.","author":"David Byrne","tags":["fashion","music"],"id":18540,"author_id":"David+Byrne"},{"text":"According to the science writer Philip Ball, when it was pointed out to musicologist Deryck Cookethat Slavic and much Spanish music use minor keys for happy music, he claimed that their liveswere so hard that they didn’t really know what happiness was anyway.","author":"David Byrne","tags":["david-byrne","how-music-works","music","slavic-peoples","talking-heads"],"id":28303,"author_id":"David+Byrne"},{"text":"The mixtapes we made for ourselves were musical mirrors. The sadness, anger, or frustration you might be feeling at a given time could be encapsulated in the song selection. You made mixtapes that corresponded to emotional states, and they'd be avaliable to pop into the deck when each feeling needed reinforcing or soothing. The mixtape was your friend, your psychiatrist, and your solace.","author":"David Byrne","tags":["emotion","feelings","mixtape","mixtapes","music"],"id":28357,"author_id":"David+Byrne"},{"text":"Sometimes it's a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.","author":"David Byrne","tags":["love"],"id":41495,"author_id":"David+Byrne"},{"text":"Presuming that there is such a thing as 'progress' when it comes to music, and that music is 'better' now than it used to be, is typical of the high self-regard of those who live in the present. It is a myth. Creativity doesn't 'improve.","author":"David Byrne","tags":["creativity","music","progress"],"id":69444,"author_id":"David+Byrne"},{"text":"But at times words can be a dangerous addition to music — they can pin it down. Words imply that the music is about what the words say, literally, and nothing more. If done poorly, they can destroy the pleasant ambiguity that constitutes much of the reason we love music. That ambiguity allows listeners to psychologically tailor a song to suit their needs, sensibilities, and situations, but words can limit that, too. There are plenty of beautiful tracks that I can’t listen to because they’ve been “ruined” by bad words — my own and others. In Beyonce's song 'Irreplaceable,' she rhymes 'minute' with 'minute,' and I cringe every time I hear it (partly because by that point I'm singing along). On my own song 'Astronaut,' I wrap up with the line 'feel like I'm an astronaut,' which seems like the dumbest metaphor for alienation ever. Ugh.","author":"David Byrne","tags":["funny","lyrics","music"],"id":75321,"author_id":"David+Byrne"},{"text":"I like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.","author":"David Byrne","tags":["body","emotional","bass "],"id":110065,"author_id":"David+Byrne"},{"text":"Music written by teams makes the authorship of a piece indistinct. Could it be that when hearing a song written by a team, a listener can sense that they aren't hearing an expression of a solitary individual's pain or joy, but that of a virtual conjoined person? Can we tell that an individual singer might actually represent a collective, that he might have multiple identities? Does that make the sentiments expressed more poetically universal? Dan eliminating some portion of the authorial voice make a piece of music more accessible and the singer more empathetic?","author":"David Byrne","tags":["death-of-the-","music","songwriting"],"id":114157,"author_id":"David+Byrne"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":48,"pages":5,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}