Author Profile
James Mercer
1970 • American • Musician
45
Total Quotes
Collected Meditations
Showing 45 quotesYou have to keep the recording process open. If you make too many decisions before you go in, you can lose out on those serendipitous moments that can really make a record, that I think are always required in the making of a really good record.— James Mercer
The Shins is, in a way, a recording project that turned into a live band. So I don't really keep myself beholden to any rules when I'm in the studio for Shins. I just gotta get it done as best I can.— James Mercer
I think that once you start writing songs, you start developing a library of ideas that you can go and take from, so it gets easier as you go.— James Mercer
The real challenge of writing songs isn't just writing a bunch of parts - like a verse, chorus, verse - but making something that flows together, that brings you back.— James Mercer
The thing that inspires me most is empathizing with people's flaws and seeing how they deal with them. That sort of connection you feel with someone when you realize that maybe even the negative things that they've said or done are because of insecurities or injuries they've endured.— James Mercer
The way I was brought up, there was a little bit of prodding to do something more practical, and I wasted a lot of time trying to be a practical person.— James Mercer
I was a regular dork. I was a kid who was scrawny and all that, and probably kind of dumb or something. I wasn't unordinary; I wasn't extraordinary.— James Mercer
As a child, I lived in Germany at the Ramstein air force base, where my dad sang at a nightclub in Kaiserslautern. My parents couldn't afford a babysitter, so when I was, like, ten or 11, I would go with them to the bar until two in the morning.— James Mercer
For some reason, it seems like pop writers, it's like they just get worse or something over time. And then you're really jealous of movie directors whose careers seem to grow and they'll be 70 years old and still doing these incredible jobs. I'm going to reverse that, I hope.— James Mercer
Honestly, humans are social creatures that really crave intimacy, and I think that the friends I have who are trying to somehow go it alone are suffering for it.— James Mercer
I've always sort of felt like what the Shins is, I guess, is a vehicle for my writing.— James Mercer
My hope is that one day I'll be able to work and have a quieter life, but still a creative life.— James Mercer
I know that there are a lot of sort of silly things that one thinks as a music listener about bands. I am a fan of many bands.— James Mercer
I'm trying to avoid having regrets about missing opportunities. That would be the worst thing. Like having an audience waiting, and not working hard enough, and coming out with a record that disappointed them.— James Mercer
My dad was a Navy munitions officer, and by the end of his career, he was a specialist in nuclear weapons.— James Mercer