Recording Decision Quotes

I didn't want to record 'I Think We're Alone Now,' because I thought it wouldn't show that I could actually sing.

'TTM' started off being a feature. A producer wanted me to just hop on the beat, like a Diplo type of thing. When I recorded the song, I liked it a lot, and I figured, instead of them paying me to do this, I'd rather just use this for my project, and we can just get money together.

Actually, for 'Family & Loyalty' I wanted Drake on the track but he was about to go on tour for his Scorpion album, so timewise it wasn't going to work.

When I finally stopped [singing], he had been saying, like, the last day or so, he'd been saying, now, I think we should put this one in the album. So without him saying I want to record you and release an album, he kept - he started saying, let's put this one in the album. So the album, this big question, you know, began to take form, take shape. And Rick [Rubin] and I would weed out the songs.

I know how important '36 Chambers' is, and it inspired me to record 'Lifted.'

I never excluded any genre on my first record.

I really didn't have any plans to record prior to doing My Own Best Enemy.

So, when I got the contract for my album, even though it was an English record, my manager insisted on making sure we would record in Spanish as well, and it worked out really well for me.

When the label came to me to say, 'would you like to do another record,' I said, 'Well I got these sixteen songs sitting here, so let's do it.' And that was pretty much it... I never stopped writing, it's just the way that the business is now; you just try to find a different model.

I did not want to make the widow record. I still haven't made the widow record.

If I were to do this over I'd play a lot more shows before I made a record.

I'm not gonna ever announce that I'm going to do an album again. Waking up with that on your head almost doesn't allow you to make the best album you can.

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.

So it was just a case of getting a bunch of songs that I had been writing for years but hadn't recorded together, and the result was My Own Best Enemy.

I'm 23, and if I wanted to release a record when I was 17, I could have released a record, but I'm really glad I didn't.

I played 'Eruption' two times for the record, and we kept the one that seemed to flow ... there's a mistake at the top end of it whenever I hear it, I always think, Man I could've played it better ... but I like the way it sounds. I'd never heard a guitar sound like that before.

I wouldn't record any song that I didn't like.

I always try to write the best song I can in the moment, and those songs are often going to end up on Death Cab for Cutie records. I don't set out to write a solo song or write a band song. I just write, and where that songs ends up is kind of TBD.

The only reason why I made solo records was because I got so obsessed with politics, and that is quite personal. I don't really philosophically believe in solo records.

Love Me Do, the first song we recorded, John was supposed to sing the lead, but they changed their minds and asked me to sing lead because they wanted John to play harmonica.

Even though we didn't actually record it as the Move I had already written a song called 'Dear Elaine', which I subsequently put on the Boulders album. I thought at the time that was probably the best song I'd written.

I never want to record something that I'm not proud of just because I think it might be a big hit. There's no positive about that because if you record a song you hate and it's a big hit, then you're singing a song every night that you hate. And if you record a song that you hate and it isn't a hit, then you sold out for no reason.

I'm not comfortable doing a covers album.

I have made that one of my policies never to play anything that I've already put on record.

It was only supposed to be on WCW compilation; on that wrestling compilation. And for that I thought it was good. And then we threw it on our record as well.