Matt Berninger Quotes & Sayings

It's not hard to connect with the music on an emotional level and get inside the songs. It's odd, very vulnerable, and slightly embarrassing to be standing and singing and playing music in front of a bunch of strangers. — Matt Berninger

I'm trying to figure out how to record at home because I have a tiny house and a seven-year-old and my wife also works at home. So I can't work in the house because she's trying to write, so I pitched a tent in the backyard. I'm literally trying to record in the tent. — Matt Berninger

I've never quite felt totally comfortable up on stage. I've gotten more comfortable, but drinking wine is a crutch that gives me a little courage. It helps me lose a little bit of the self-consciousness and the awareness of how awkward it is standing on a stage with lights and a bunch of people looking at you while you sing love songs. — Matt Berninger

A person with grace is somebody who's socially graceful or is a classy person, but sometimes you just feel the opposite of that, and you just feel like a jerk and a loser and a weirdo. — Matt Berninger

A song is a song and, if I am emotionally connected to do it, whether it is sad or not sad, I am going to chase that song. — Matt Berninger

I love to make songs out of some of those shadows - you know, some of the things you lie awake thinking about, social anxieties and romantic insecurities and all that stuff. — Matt Berninger

The same song can have drastically different feels and personalities just by changing some minor things. A different drumbeat or some vocal overdub could completely transform the song. — Matt Berninger

I focus on the words and then I have fun putting together the music after. — Matt Berninger

Somehow, you realize you can kind of do anything in music. You don't have to be good at a certain thing; you can just do whatever you want. — Matt Berninger

I've never had so much fun being back at my job sitting in front of my computer. Compared to 10 months on the road, going home and sleeping in my own bed every night is really nice. — Matt Berninger

When it comes to lyrics, I just write down a lot of things, and only a very tiny fraction of it, I think, is any good. — Matt Berninger

Once you do have a child, you want to talk about every detail of it. And it is really boring to all your friends, and it should be. I was really worried about even going there at all. — Matt Berninger

The truth is, I'm pretty lighthearted. — Matt Berninger

I watched R.E.M. connect with the back row of a 50,000-seat venue. — Matt Berninger

People will dig their heels in and fight for the things they love and against the things they hate. — Matt Berninger

I can never turn a tour into a vacation. — Matt Berninger

I actually don't go to shows anymore. Rock concerts have lost their appeal for me. — Matt Berninger

I usually always think of characters and sometimes the characters are a little bit invented, so it's nice to give these invented, blurry, personas an actually name. It makes me get closer to them or something like that. But they're not all real, they're weird amalgamations of reality. — Matt Berninger

I'm not saying I'm not a moody guy sometimes, but I think I have a pretty normal balance. — Matt Berninger

I have pit bulls barking at me on half of the love songs. — Matt Berninger

A lot of the lyrics I write involve images that just swing the song in a way that feels really good to me and there isn't a literal explanation. They're not riddles for the listener to solve. — Matt Berninger

Lyrics need to be good, but they don't need to be obvious right away. — Matt Berninger

I never sit and fill a journal with lyrics. Most of the time I'm trying to write a feeling, not a story. I'm not necessarily trying to describe the details of a place or event so much as the feeling of the thing. It is a kind of weird alchemy that is elusive until it feels right. — Matt Berninger

The lyrics are what I work on the hardest, but I'm not trying to make a perfectly clear message or anything like that. In fact, I'm usually trying to avoid saying something too directly, because usually that rings false anyway. — Matt Berninger

'Alligator' was the first record that anyone paid attention to, and it seemed like it was the screamy songs that got us that attention. — Matt Berninger

I drink wine on stage to sort of loosen my grip on reality a little. — Matt Berninger

Not all the songs are real events, but I do write about stuff that is close to my heart and it comes out one way or another. — Matt Berninger

You gotta lean towards the things that make you like yourself. Forget everything else. — Matt Berninger

My favourite store? Seize Sur Vingt in New York. They make most of my suits, and they are really cool people. — Matt Berninger

A lot of my lyrics are approximate meaning without me knowing why they sound right. — Matt Berninger

I became at peace with the darkness or the personality that I have. I am usually pretty funny and happy. — Matt Berninger

I don't want somebody telling my daughter who she can marry, or what she can do with her body. That's what was at stake. — Matt Berninger

I don't play an instrument. I pretend. I try to. — Matt Berninger

I don't love being on the road. — Matt Berninger

Maybe because I have spent too much of my life in rock clubs. I don't really go to parties anymore either. I'll usually be in the bus by 11:30 after a show. — Matt Berninger

Music has got a community vibe to it that pulls people together, and those communities are different in different places. — Matt Berninger

Trying to make it and get people to respect your band, being a cool band-all of that stuff-I think we've arrived at a place where we have kids and everything is in perspective and it doesn't matter. — Matt Berninger

I'm doing a little freelance work, and I think everybody's trying to take their minds off rock and roll for a little while and get some perspective. — Matt Berninger

I think most people start rock bands in their early twenties or teens, but I was almost thirty at the time when the band started really doing anything and it took another several years before people started caring about us. — Matt Berninger

The last thing you want to do is write songs about being in a band. — Matt Berninger

There are records that you just sink into. They coincide with what you're going through and become an ally. If our records do that for people, that's the greatest compliment I could ever receive. That's one of the reasons making music is so important to me, because there's a very strange emotional reach. For me - more than books or movies or other things - music is like a mainline to your heart. — Matt Berninger

Live on coffee and flowers. Try not to worry what the weather will be. — Matt Berninger

My parents know that I have always been sort of a dark melodramatic kid, so they were never concerned. — Matt Berninger

Getting on stage and performing and standing under lights is such an unsettling experience - in a good and bad way - but it's the only place I can go to feel comfortable. — Matt Berninger

I do a lot of editing and switching around and putting little pieces together to get the right mood and personality, and it takes me forever to get a song finished. — Matt Berninger

I'm a stubborn guy that loses his temper, sometimes driving the station wagon in the wrong direction for hours and hours and never admitting that he's gone the wrong way. — Matt Berninger

Weirdly, I was still trying to be the older brother, and trying to get him [ Tom Berninger] to try to be more like me a little bit. Or not be more like me but ... I was frustrated that he sometimes let things stop him in his life, and he let the wind get knocked out of his sails a few times. — Matt Berninger

A suit is a sign of respect. — Matt Berninger

The song 'Humiliation' is kind of about what if, outside of a dinner party or something, I was blown up by a drone missile, out by the pool. What an embarrassing way to go. — Matt Berninger

Sometimes you have to wear what you want. — Matt Berninger

Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave know best. Although I wear a lot of jeans, I've been told that Nick Cave doesn't own a pair and wouldn't be caught dead in denim. — Matt Berninger

At first, when 'Boxer' came out, people were a little let down, and we worried that it might be the end for us. But then it began to grow on people. 'Boxer' bought us our creative freedom. — Matt Berninger

Usually, writing lyrics for me is like bleeding drop by drop from the forehead. — Matt Berninger

It is the melody and the rhythm that are by far the most important and then words and imagery and stuff, story bits will start to stick to a melody and that is the way I write. — Matt Berninger