I don't think there are any clichés I try to avoid. As soon as I spot a cliché, I go for it. I feel like clichés are the most useful thing in songwriting. They're the tool on which you build… — Stephin Merritt Copy Share Image
The adventure is when people don't know what they're doing at all. Like, I think that the first pop band to use synthesizers as… — Stephin Merritt Copy Share Image
I gave up music criticism because of the increasingly obvious conflict of interest. I couldn't say anything bad about the records when I might… — Stephin Merritt Copy Share Image
Well, things hold up even if they sound dated. It can be very difficult to listen to 80s pop songs with really, really gigantic smashed drum sounds. You just want to turn that gated reverb down on the snare. It sounds wrong now. It sounds amateurish. And ugly. But at the time it sounded state-of-the-art. So yeah, I think it's… — Stephin Merritt Copy Share
There are only so many instruments you can layer on top of each other that aren't perfectly electronically programmed. "Long Vermont Roads" just cannot… — Stephin Merritt Copy Share Image
Popular music of the last 50 years has failed to keep in step with advances in musical theater, namely Stephen Sondheim. But the two have grown apart so that popular music is based more than ever on a rhythmic grid that is irrelevant in musical theater. In popular music, words matter less and less. Especially now that it's so international,… — Stephin Merritt Copy Share
Well, hardcore is so much about the body, in that you have to play as fast as possible. I'm not sure it can be… — Stephin Merritt Copy Share Image
I write songs by sitting around in bars, so drinking songs are a little obvious. It's surprising that I don't write entirely drinking songs, since I am, in fact, drinking while writing the song. Drinking and love are the two principal sources of pleasure outside of music. There's only so many sources of pleasure, really. That's about it. Well, there… — Stephin Merritt Copy Share
There's a whole kind of melancholy that you can only attain with reverb. That's an example of a technology introducing a whole new meaning. — Stephin Merritt Copy Share Image
You know, most love songs are not cheesy and corny. Most love songs are complaints, I think. Or about unrequited love, coming at it… — Stephin Merritt Copy Share Image
I don't think there are any clichés I try to avoid. As soon as I spot a cliché, I go for it. I feel… — Stephin Merritt Copy Share Image
Okay, a truly great song is a song that makes its own aesthetic intentions clear and then lives up to them and exceeds them… — Stephin Merritt Copy Share Image
If you want to write a love song, you need to not try to write it for a particular person in a particular situation.… — Stephin Merritt Copy Share Image
