Aubrie Sellers Quotes

I wanted to be a composer before anything else. And my sister was listening to Led Zeppelin in the other room! When I heard that, it was a game-changer.

Tori Amos had a major influence on how I craft words in a song. Until I heard 'Little Earthquakes' all my lyrics used really obvious analogies like rain for tears.

Every time I write a song my approach changes.

There were lots of songs that were on 'It Still Moves' that I had written, and we had played - rehearsed, but also played live a couple of times - that could've gone on 'At Dawn', but we always knew we wanted to make a record that was more quote-unquote 'rock n' roll.'

Most of my collaborations, certainly post - Howard Ashman but even with Howard, are music first.

Lemaitre has been one of my inspirations ever since I started making music.

I've learned and grown as a songwriter.

I ran to get my cassette recorder and sang 'We Got the Beat' into the recorder to document it. I knew I had written something special. It took two minutes. I didn't labor on the lyrics. It's a simple song, which goes back to the '60s, when I had my ears glued to the radio for the Stones, the Beatles, and the Beach Boys.

We wrote the songs we wrote - we took from our own experiences, melded it together, and wrote what became 'Appetite For Destruction.'

A lot of our songs are based in reality but imagined or using fictional characters as a way to write about something. I think inspiration comes from anything and everything, and it's filtered through our brains, and it comes out sounding like our band.

I was driving home and thinking about what rock and roll should be about. 'Adventure and Trouble!' I thought. I sang the song first and then added the chords later.

I became a melodic writer after 'Gunn.'

I'm just writing less of my own music lately - I go in and out of phases a lot. Sometimes there are these accidents that just sort of happen, that are kind of waiting around the corner. I guess Modest Mouse was one of them.

You can't help but have ideas when you're inspired musically.

We all like all of that, from 'Rubber Soul' to 'The White Album' and all of that, but even before, we were into that theatrical element of things. We didn't want to do a 'Sgt. Pepper's' thing.

The closest things to an influence would be people like Charlie Watts or Al Jackson. But I didn't really listen to drummers; I basically played what I thought was needed for the Ramones.

When I did 'Hand Cannot Erase,' I didn't have a specific singer in mind.

A lot of the songs that I wrote during 'Pt. 1' and 'Pt. 2' are the first songs that I ever wrote that sounded like that. I was in this phase - a certain creative space in my life - personally and musically.

If you make modern rap music, how do you write without ripping off anyone else? It's just about having a distinct voice in your songs.

We travel so much as touring musicians and artists that sometimes, when you hear a great song that you really think could be on your project, you go ahead and record it instead of try to write it.

When you start a rock n' roll band, you've gotta fake it till you make it. You begin by doin' what you love- and what you love is usually what some other people have already done. It just depends on how much of a fool you make of yourself along the way to finding your own sound, assuming you find it.

I usually have a song in my head. I'm thinking music, I'm thinking lyrics. Music helps me get to those moments. The moments between the moments.

I'm pretty self-conscious, so I tend to work in a way where I say what I need to say and get out rather than revisit things. It's kind of a collage style. I realized that it had more emotional weight that way. I'll always be in the developmental stages as far as being a songwriter.

This is the city that taught me how to write all of these cool songs. Yeah, you guys definitely need a royalty.

When I made Illmatic, I was trying to make the perfect album. It comes from the days of Wild Style. I was trying to make you experience my life. I wanted you to look at hip-hop differently. I wanted you to feel that hip-hop was changing and becoming something more real.