Kevin Abstract Quotes

I decided at 15 that I didn't want to be one of those artists that gets up and sings love songs they don't mean. I decided that I was going to be me to the fullest extent, that my songs were going to reflect relationships I've had, things I've been through, and even the stuff I'm embarrassed about.

As a composer, I'm basically trying to represent myself through my music in an honest way.

If I'm not writing songs about things I've actually been through, it ruins the idea of making music to me.

Music is something that should speak for itself, straight from the heart. It took me a long time to understand that.

The most personal thing about me is my music. The most honest, pure thing in my whole life.

You do your best to tell your own story, in the most specific way, and then you hope that that travels well, when it's done with heart and honesty.

I don't think I could write about something I've never experienced or felt; all my songs are about things I've been through.

I have never been able to separate - nor have I wanted to - my personal love and desire for truth, passion, and understanding from my lyrics.

All my music is autobiographical, and that's the reason why people like my music. They know when I'm saying something on a song, I mean it. It comes from a real place and captures the realness in my life.

All my songs are where I am.

A lyric has to mean something to me, something that has happened to me.

'Birdman' came from a very beautiful side of me, from a part of honesty and surrender about things.

What's the point of a song if you can't be honest?

When I look at the majority of my own songs they really came from my own sense of personal confusion or need to express some pain or beauty - they were coming from a universal and personal place.

A work will only have deep resonance if the kind of darkness I can generate is something that is resident in me already.

It's warts and all in my songs, and I think that's why people can relate to them.

Recording is more autobiographical than acting. It's me - either how I'm feeling then or once felt at some point in my life. It's all me.

I don't really see how any song can not feel contrived if it isn't honest, and how could I write honest songs if I don't write about stuff going on in my life and how I'm feeling?

I can only speak for myself and my own music, because that is what I am most familiar with, and I write about things that I am living or experiencing.

Anyone who wants to know who I am can just read my lyrics - I've always written about who I am.

I'm not afraid to use my personal experiences and put them into a song. I think that's when you get the best stuff anyway, when it's real emotion.

What most people know about me, they know through my music. This time, I've tried to open that door as wide as possible. These songs are a giant step closer to who I really am and what my music is all about. Hence the title.

You don't have to be singing specifically about things that are going on in your life, but because of the nature of music, because it is this incredibly emotional phenomenon, everything that you are feeling or experiencing is relayed in the music you put out.

If I'm writing strictly for others, how does that show what I'm experiencing or thinking? I just got to a point where I realized I could be as personal as I wanted to be and people could relate to those situations if they so choose.

I'm self-deprecating, but I'm an artist, too. I have to write new songs to chronicle stuff for myself. I write a song like 'Middle Age' or 'Responsibility' or 'I Just Work Here,' and it's about how bleak life can be. But it's real.