Top 35 Alex Kapranos Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “There’s a difference between expectations and aspirations.”

— Alex Kapranos

2. “I have always been fascinated by the concept of the villain and the hero being in one person.”

— Alex Kapranos

3. “The best songwriting comes from being as creative as you can and editing it down to the good bits, essentially.”

— Alex Kapranos

4. “You really only understand whether a song’s good or not when you properly play it out in public for the first time.”

— Alex Kapranos

5. “I didn’t grasp the basic principle of being a promoter, which was: Put on music but also generate an income. I was on the dole most of the time.”

— Alex Kapranos

6. “Just because you can leap off a drum kit doing a scissors kick while hitting a chord, people expect you to be an extrovert socially. But I’m not always comfortable with the idea of small talk at a party.”

— Alex Kapranos

7. “I think in the world of indie music there’s this sort of false modesty.”

— Alex Kapranos

8. “People’s musical tastes are fickle, and music can be a fashion.”

— Alex Kapranos

9. “Why play a chord when you can play one note?”

— Alex Kapranos

10. “I’m not a food critic, and I’m not really an authority to write anything on food.”

— Alex Kapranos

11. “Men behave very oddly in the company of attractive women.”

— Alex Kapranos

12. “There are loads of bands I’d love to produce.”

— Alex Kapranos

13. “It’s easy to be lazy when there’s food lying around backstage or there’s a fast-food joint a couple blocks away. But if you walk a little further, ask around a bit, of course there are exciting things to discover.”

— Alex Kapranos

14. “No matter what you do, if you’re trying to create something new, your environment has a massive impact on you.”

— Alex Kapranos

15. “Maybe ‘Can’t Stop Feeling’ and ‘Turn It On’ we’ll just release as singles. It’s a thing The Beatles used to do which I really loved, the idea of releasing something as a single completely on its own.”

— Alex Kapranos

16. “Boredom or being sick of what you’ve done before is a big part of being in a band.”

— Alex Kapranos

17. “There’s a character that I play onstage, and I can’t let him loose in the supermarket when I’m buying my beans on toast.”

— Alex Kapranos

18. “Surely every band wants to be a pivotal point in history.”

— Alex Kapranos

19. “Being in a band didn’t buy me my beans on toast!”

— Alex Kapranos

20. “It doesn’t matter how adventurous you want to be, you’ve still got to contain your identity.”

— Alex Kapranos

21. “Glasgow’s not a media center. When you’re there, when you’re hanging about, you feel quite detached from musical movements or fashions or anything like that. You do feel quite alone, in a good way.”

— Alex Kapranos

22. “Ambition is sneered at by some bands. It seems like a pretty good thing to me.”

— Alex Kapranos

23. “It’s very rare that a song falls from your mind complete.”

— Alex Kapranos

24. “I’d rather eat a cow-pat on a bun than a bloody McDonalds.”

— Alex Kapranos

25. “A lot of food criticism has a similar flavor to it, and I’m probably going to write about it in a different way.”

— Alex Kapranos

26. “Although they might not admit it, I think girls are very aware of the impact that they’re having. But they never feel it themselves, and it’s impossible to explain. It’s like trying to tell a blind person what yellow is.”

— Alex Kapranos

27. “You can only begin to be great when you embrace a sense of your own ridiculousness.”

— Alex Kapranos

28. “Traditionally, lots of vagrants and unemployable characters wind up working in kitchens.”

— Alex Kapranos

29. “I want to make music that will make the blood surge in your veins, music that will get people up and dance.”

— Alex Kapranos

30. “A lot of bands have the enthusiasm kicked out of them by playing really dreary pub venues that just churn bands through.”

— Alex Kapranos

31. “Boho to me is a first-year student who’s just discovered the tie-dye shop.”

— Alex Kapranos

32. “If I was a fan of someone as a teenager, then it’s OK for me to feel completely in awe when I meet them.”

— Alex Kapranos

33. “If success had come along when I was 17 it would either have killed me or sent me completely mad.”

— Alex Kapranos

34. “Of course, there’s a certain type of person who feels that anything which becomes mainstream has to be rejected immediately. And that’s part of the indie-alternative snobbery and hierarchy and elitism.”

— Alex Kapranos

35. “I think a lot of bands are creatively knackered when they come off tour.”

— Alex Kapranos

36. “Cinema, which is influenced by every single part of life, is direct and reaches you immediately. And writing – the best writing is complex ideas communicated concisely. And music – if it’s a good tune, make sure people can bloody hear it.”

— Alex Kapranos