Words matter. These are the best Teddy Thompson Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Internet radio stations like KCRW do take you everywhere, yet that’s just one of a hundred small things you have to do to succeed. It used to be, if you just got on the cover of ‘Rolling Stone’ and a spotlight on ‘The Tonight Show,’ that was enough.
I was obsessed with country music when I was a kid, and it’s definitely had a huge influence on the way I write songs. I was always attracted to songs that had a brilliant pun or a clever turn of phrase, but came from a dark, bitter place. As a writer, I’ve always gravitated towards that feeling.
People think unless you have loops and electronics and so on, you must be in your 50s. I quite like a lot of things that have loops and sequencers, but I couldn’t really be bothered.
I come from a place where there’s a lot of musical families.
I went to a boarding school when I was 13, and it was a very arty school, so there was an opportunity for a lot more. I joined a band and so on. We would do concerts at school, and I would play cover tunes and thought, ‘This is really great.’
I think I’m too cynical for L.A. My sense of humor doesn’t go down well here, which probably affects my love life. I need to have a laugh track following me around so people know I’m trying to be funny.
Most artists never get a chance to be Picasso, but that doesn’t mean you would stop painting.
Even for the people in the business who are real music lovers it’s really about putting things in the right boxes, and my style doesn’t fit into a box.
My understanding of this life is that you tour and play for years and years, have some longevity and a steady career. That may sound boring, but I always thought that was less depressing than being a one-hit wonder.
My goal when I started out was to get to the point where I could tour a lot and make a living, which means getting paid enough to hire my own band, travel and end up with a bit of money, but I’m still nowhere near that point. Because I didn’t have a band and fan base when I started, I did everything backward.
I love the sad songs with their maudlin, self-deprecating, almost funny lyrics. As an Englishman, they make a lot of sense.
I came from a folk-family background. Although we weren’t really the all-singing, all-dancing-around-the-piano folkies or anything like that, there is that idea of singing and playing with your parents and your family and your cousins.
You just have to make sure you’re writing about something that’s true. It has to be honest and it has to have a real emotion behind it, regardless of where it’s coming from.
To say how you would react if you were really storming the charts and had people running around after you… who’s to say how any of us would deal with that.
For a long time I was trying to be poppier and younger. I didn’t want to be on public radio or do any of that stuff for older people. Then I realized that that is exactly what I listen to.
