Top 80 Andrew Bird Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “I’m coming from a place that’s more experimental and indulgent already, so for the last 10 years, it’s been more like, “How can I defend my own sensibilities by writing a nugget of a little catchy pop song?” That’s how I’m stretching myself, by writing something really simple.”

— Andrew Bird

52. “I have some irrepressible pop impulses to write an appealing, concise song. And I also have some irrepressible kind of restlessness as well, and I need to keep myself interested. When I’m left to my own devices, there’s a struggle.”

— Andrew Bird

53. “The way I work, I’m not a confessional singer-songwriter.”

— Andrew Bird

54. “I haven’t had that many people onstage for a while, and I’m looking forward to that. They’re all such creative musicians in their own right. They’re all complete individuals. They’re not just a pick-up band. They all have their own thing going on.”

— Andrew Bird

55. “I don’t write poetry and then strum some chords and then fit the words on top of the chords.”

— Andrew Bird

56. “Sometimes the word dictated the melody.”

— Andrew Bird

57. “People who are thinking about your music almost as much as you are, that almost never happens.”

— Andrew Bird

58. “I’m just trying to get my body in shape so that I can handle it. It’s a very physically demanding thing. I’ve been doing it for 16 years, so I know what I’m going into now. I’m trying to stay calm and not panic.”

— Andrew Bird

59. “Some of your best songs come from a desperate attempt to escape, so sitting in an airport for hours I can just start pulling out little fragments of songs from my head. A lot of times a melody will just occur to me and be my companion for a couple of months.”

— Andrew Bird

60. “I create little challenges for myself, like, ‘Okay, whatever you do in this song, you’ve got to somehow work in Greek Cypriots,’ or something like that.”

— Andrew Bird

61. “When I start asking my friends, “What do you think this means?” And it leads to way more interesting conversations than what it actually ends up meaning in the dictionary. Like “apocryphal,” for instance.”

— Andrew Bird

62. “What you see with your eyes when you’re making music is going to have a profound effect on what you hear.”

— Andrew Bird

63. “There’s been this perception that Europeans still hold on to, that they discover the real talented ones in American culture and give them proper credit and that’s not true anymore – it used to be. A lot of jazz musicians would get respect in Europe.”

— Andrew Bird

64. “I think when I was pretty young I got really into the tone of my instrument and I remember just playing one note for an hour to just kind of feel the resonance of the violin.”

— Andrew Bird

65. “Songwriting requires some sort of ceremony to even get the process started, and it can be somewhat arbitrary.”

— Andrew Bird

66. “The orchestra’s an amazing instrument, but I don’t want to just arrange my songs for it. I think that might be kind of boring and a little bit overdramatic, perhaps. I’m still just having too much fun doing it my way, for the time being.”

— Andrew Bird

67. “There’s always a tension between wanting to write a really concise, instant gratification type song that gets under your skin the first time you hear it, and wanting to really stretch out. I think it’s a healthy tension.”

— Andrew Bird

68. “The instrumental record is a bit subtler. It’s the kind of stuff on sound check, when I first pick up my violin and start to play, the kind of melodies that just pour out of me. Some of them sound very classical. Some of them sound experimental, polyrhythmic loops that I make.”

— Andrew Bird

69. “Most of the songs that I appreciate are lyrically vague.”

— Andrew Bird

70. “I really believe there’s more honesty in one live show than there may be in my whole output.”

— Andrew Bird

71. “There’s a lot of interesting words, nomenclatures, in science.”

— Andrew Bird

72. “A good espresso to me is a little bit salty; you just become used to a good taste. Anytime I go into a new place and they don’t clean their machine properly or the water temperature isn’t right, it tastes awful.”

— Andrew Bird

73. “I think life is a wondrous thing. I’m happy to try pretty hard.”

— Andrew Bird

74. “Songwriters can sort of get away with murder. You can throw out crazy theories and not have to back it up with data or graphs or research.”

— Andrew Bird

75. “The idea of writing songs because you’re depressed and you need to communicate it somehow, that isn’t really true for me.”

— Andrew Bird

76. “The earth almost looks like it’s packed down and dense from so many feet treading over it.”

— Andrew Bird

77. “There’s songs that could either be taken as a conversation between two people, like “The Privateers,” or “Why,” from a much earlier record. Or “Glass Figurine.” That’s my version of a relationship song.”

— Andrew Bird

78. “I don’t like super-descriptive modern fiction. I like, “Here’s what was happening in 1582 all over the planet.” Then that gets my imagination going.”

— Andrew Bird

79. “When I’m onstage, I’m completely comfortable, and I feel very vital and alive.”

— Andrew Bird

80. “All the folks I play with come from jazz backgrounds or at least appreciate spontaneity within the parameters of a pop song.”

— Andrew Bird

81. “I write a lot more when I’m happy, because you’re hopeful, you’re motivated.”

— Andrew Bird

82. “If you take a little time, let’s say three weeks off, after recording a song, and you listen to it every other day, you’re just going to know eventually.”

— Andrew Bird

83. “The problem is, when you’re working with orchestras, you only get the orchestra for about two hours before the performance to pull it all together, and that doesn’t sound like a real collaboration.”

— Andrew Bird

84. “I put a lot into my records, and I won’t release anything I’m not totally thrilled with.”

— Andrew Bird

85. “No, it’s not dissatisfaction that inspires me to tinker with my songs, it’s just restlessness.”

— Andrew Bird

86. “Music as a social conduit has always been important to me.”

— Andrew Bird

87. “The melodies come out so strong that I’m like, “Oh, crap.” It’s really better if they could both be kind of able to compromise, but the melodies, even more recently, they come out very fully cast and formed.”

— Andrew Bird

88. “With digital sound just becomes simply information, not the sum of its parts.”

— Andrew Bird