Matthew Sweet Quotes

I think of it as 'pretend freedom.' It was a way to trick my mind into not feeling so pressured. I felt like I had become numb to that process.

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More labels should be like that. Instead of putting these records out myself, I should have just signed with them, but they probably don't like my music (laughs).

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When I go to Japan and do shows I play for 1,000 to 1,500 people. I like a lot about Japan. Their popular culture and mass commercialization appeals to me.

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The summer of 2002 at the Wilson birthday party I met Van Dyke again and I made plans to have dinner with him.

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Back then, we could drive a mile from home and there was nothing. Now it's grown in every direction and is populated and modernized. I guess I have mixed feelings about it, but I'm not someone that thinks everything should stop growing.

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Girlfriend and 100 Percent Fun were my two peeks, around '92 and '96. The reality is that the times I had the most media success, sold lots of records and played bigger shows, I had the least control of my own life.

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It became a question of do I want to be on a label where it could take three years to put out a record instead of putting out three records over the same period of time on my own.

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When I did the record, I was coming off a time when my contract had been sold and the music industry had changed a lot. I didn't understand how to make records for big labels. I was waiting for a new kind of record label to emerge.

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It wasn't so much that I had to leave to make it in the music business as I was curious to be out on my own and sort of explore. I never felt that where I was ever influenced my songwriting.

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Things are going to change in this business. Look at how well Bright Eyes has done on Saddle Creek. No one's done anything like that before.

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I had no allusions of radio success. I just loved being in studios. I was having fun and in that sense I now feel a lot like I did when I did that record.

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My family lives there, so I come back sometimes between shows for a couple days. I get back a couple times a year. When I was 30 to 34 I was weirded out when I came back - you know, how your past gets away from you. It's grown so much.

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First off, I don't want anyone to think I'm this huge thing in Japan. Every group from here that's made any records over any length of time - even indie bands - have a Cheap Trick effect in Japan.

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There are things that I value now that I didn't when I first went over there, like Zen Buddhism, which has become part of my life over the last couple years.

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Creativity is much better when it's free. Someone can take it and sell it if that's what it needs, and from that standpoint, you have to have a label. If you could make your music and just give it away and somehow make a living - that would be the best scenario.

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My management always laughs at me when I say I felt all these pressures all these years. They think that I fought everything from the very beginning.

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He wanted to play accordion on something of mine and I said you can play accordion, but I want you to play piano and organ on some stuff. He came over a couple times a week for two weeks and gave me therapy as to whether I should do The Thorns or not.

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The openness of rural Nebraska certainly influenced me. That openness, in a way, fosters the imagination. But growing up, Lincoln wasn't a small town. It was a college town. It had record stores and was a liberal place.

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I wanted Kimi to be a Japanese record with a Japanese title. I wanted it to be for them. They appreciate things on a different level, and take their art very seriously - that's special if you're an artist.

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You know that they're not just into it for the moment, they really care about it and value it over time.

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I went to a rare live Van Dyke show and met him there. And then he came to a show of mine and we spoke back stage. The third time was at Brian Wilson's birthday party.

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I figured if the plane goes down, I'll go with a great genius and will always have my name connected with his.

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They said, 'If we put you in first class with Brian, will you do it' So I flew after not having flown in eight years. If there's one person who doesn't like flying as much as me, it's Brian.

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I got better money playing live and some publishing money - I still get checks from publishing. But the label was always recouping advances.

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He helped make Living Things even more crazy than I wanted it to be. He added old-fashioned piano and classical folk music - that weird otherworldly vibe - all these elements got onto the record.

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