David Longstreth

Every Dirty Projectors album is a world unto itself.

— David Longstreth

What music can do so well is tell the truth in a subjective way.

— David Longstreth

A song isn't a newspaper. It might feel direct, but it's not.

— David Longstreth

A lot of my vocals were the first time I ever sang the song.

— David Longstreth

Fame can amplify the message of art in a remarkable, meaningful way.

— David Longstreth

Sexual harrassment and abuse is intolerable.

— David Longstreth

You don't write songs, really, when you're on tour.

— David Longstreth

Steely Dan is a band I'm not that into. Well, I guess I like certain singles.

— David Longstreth

I'm super interested in visual, and I love that being in a band can be as much about making an image as…

— David Longstreth

I loved 'Nothing Was the Same' so much. For me, that was the first Drake record that I got into.

— David Longstreth

I'm the worst at favourites! I don't have one - I love all my children, I love them all equally.

— David Longstreth

Working as a producer, an arranger, and, in some cases, as a writer for some other people gave me a super different…

— David Longstreth

When we're talking about friendships, generosity and fairness and equanimity and sharing and all those things are super-important to me.

— David Longstreth

I like the idea that songs can communicate in a way no other media can. That's why I write them.

— David Longstreth

The people I really admire, like William Blake and John Coltrane and Richard Wagner, had these ridiculously full universes that took their…

— David Longstreth

There's been no two Dirty Projectors records that have had the same cast of characters every time.

— David Longstreth

I think certain people would be moved to be nostalgic about America's glory days, when the music set the tone for the…

— David Longstreth

When you make a melody that doesn't come with words from the get-go, sometimes you're just thinking about random vowel sounds that…

— David Longstreth

I've been good at creating new textures and new fabrics, like vocal hocketing, or interlocking guitars, or suggesting new ideas for style...…

— David Longstreth

I've always loved cuneiform; I've always loved the way it looks. I love that it's the world's oldest script. And the creative…

— David Longstreth

With 'Stillness', I don't think I appreciated how very codified all the different genres were in radio formats and the various constituencies…

— David Longstreth

For somebody like Kanye, fame is the fullest realisation of his art in a way. It's like an Andy Warhol dream or…

— David Longstreth

Most of the creative industries have been deskilled by these really powerful ideologies of punk in music and Warhol in the visual…

— David Longstreth

When it comes to music, I am a dictator. Making a Dirty Projectors record come to life is like making a movie;…

— David Longstreth

Making a movie really frees up the way you think.

— David Longstreth

It's a weird job because making music or writing a song is a personal thing... and it kind of has to be.…

— David Longstreth

I was obsessed with what a song was and what the possibilities of language in a song are.

— David Longstreth

I feel like the world is super different now than it was in 2009. And to get at something that's somewhat darker,…

— David Longstreth

Clearly, things are definitely changing in big ways as far as the way we consume music, listen to music, and what we…

— David Longstreth

Bjork has this kind of abstraction and formalism that you associate with art music or avant-garde music.

— David Longstreth

I made, like, five records as Dirty Projectors before I got out of college. And then I put a band together when…

— David Longstreth

The more songs I've written, the more I've grown interested in telling a story. When I first began, I had this list…

— David Longstreth

You can have outlandish ideas, but if you don't work at them, they just remain outlandish ideas. Anyone can have an idea.…

— David Longstreth

The idea of letting a recording be a moment in time appealed to me. With digital recording, it's easy to create a…

— David Longstreth

Sometimes when you're on tour, it feels like you're living the same day over and over again.

— David Longstreth

Music has been there for me. Whether good or bad, it's the way that I process experience. As a listener and as…

— David Longstreth

I love 808s - not only the Auto-Tune but just ,in general, the embrace of a kind of digital style of working.

— David Longstreth

I do feel like the hardest thing is to do something simple and tap into whatever remains of our common language rather…

— David Longstreth

One thing that I've often done under the Projectors is build an album from a central conceit.

— David Longstreth

The thing that transforms something from being an idea to being a physical reality is work.

— David Longstreth