Joanna Newsom famous quotes

I definitely don't subscribe to the theory that more instruments, or more vocal tracks, harmony, or double tracking the voice, is a good thing. People do their early albums very stripped down, then each album becomes bloated.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Voice #People #Track

I'm not a wanderer, which is funny because I'm on tour half the time. I'm a home, hearth and family kind of person.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Home #Half #Kind

I would happy for someone to download my music.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Downloads

I am producing sounds that people are not used to hearing from the harp.
-- Joanna Newsom

#People #Sound #Hearing

I can understand someone not liking the voice or the songs.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Song #Voice

I can't play my songs on the smaller harp. I have a Celtic harp. I can't do the key changes.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Song #Keys #Play

The very first Walnut Whales recording was recorded just a few weeks after I had started singing, out of the blue, started singing. And the voice, you can hear how uncomfortable I am with it, and how terrified I am with it.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Blue #Whales #Voice

I give away CDs at shows if someone wants a CD but doesn't have any money. I wouldn't want to do that forever.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Cds #Giving #Forever

I have a deep rooted folk sensibility that I can't get away from completely.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Get Away #Folks #Sensibility

I have a recording that I did of instrumental songs.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Song

I have writing songs on my own for about six years.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Song #Writing #Years

I started playing harp about fourteen years ago.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Years #Harps #Fourteen

I want to make music that somehow connects to the things that I love in America music.
-- Joanna Newsom

#America #Want

I can bear a lot but not that pall
-- Joanna Newsom

#Bears

I am not doing something that it is experimental music in relation to classical music.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Classical Music #Relation

I am always trying to write.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Writing #Trying

I wasn't born of a whistle or milked from a thistle at twilight No I was all horns and thorns sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Twilight #Thorns #Born

What a woman does is open doors. And it is not a question of locking or unlocking.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Doors #Doe #Unlocking

It broke my heart when I learned the moon had been passing the sun’s light off as its own.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Heart #Moon #Light

Lyrics are very different. There is a clear line between that and a poem. Something that has been a source of great excitement and delight for me is this idea that I get to rhyme.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Ideas #Different #Delight

In high school, we studied a lot of poetical forms. I was really interested in the math that was involved and the strange live break ups. That gave me a great amount of respect for a rhymed stanza.
-- Joanna Newsom

#School #Math #Rhyming

There are some mornings when the sky looks like a road.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Morning #Sky #Looks

I am consciously trying not to make it sound Celtic or African.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Trying #Sound #Corny

I did spend a year in high school being obsessed with Fleetwood Mac.
-- Joanna Newsom

#School #Years #Obsession

People in San Francisco and the East Bay have shown interest, done interviews, and have come to shows. I guess that the news travels fast out of this island that we are on.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Easter #Islands #San Francisco

I played piano for about two years when I was a kid. I didn't play long enough to be really great.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Kids #Years #Play

We deserve to know light. And grow evermore lighter and lighter.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Healing #Light #Grows

We are blessed and sustained by what is not said
-- Joanna Newsom

#Blessed #Said

And all that we built, and all that we breathed And all that we spilled or pulled up like weeds Is piled up in back and it burns irrevocably And we spoke up in turns 'til the silence crept over me.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Weed #Silence #Spokes

And a thimble's worth of milky moon Can touch hearts larger than a thimble.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Heart #Moon

My voice in combination with the harp - which, by the way, I use because I've played it my entire life, not to make some statement about the harp - somehow has ... coloured people's interpretations of the music and projected an idea of childlike or fairytale quality or innocence. Which sometimes prevents people from listening to the songs the way I would like them to be listened to.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Song #Ideas #Voice

I have a lot of interest in interior rhyming; not just rhyming at the end of the lines, but playing around with rhymes within the lines, playing with where the syllabic emphases in the sentences are, lining those up at strange moments in the line of the song. I'm not sure if that comes across or not.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Song #Lines #Rhyming

You should listen to a lot of different music.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Different #Should

The way that words fit together is always interesting to me. I love words.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Interesting #Together #Way

People are often afraid for me. They think that I am going to break. I can make it through a set.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Thinking #People #Break

I wasn't interested in writing music that wasn't beautiful for me to listen to.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Beautiful #Writing #Writing Music

I wanted to write songs which I think is a different thing. I wanted to write music that is informed by folk music. The chord progressions are obvious references.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Song #Writing #Thinking

I recorded harp first or singing first. I recorded it all together. Part of the reason is that I don't know how to play the songs without also singing. I forget how they progress. I don't think that any of them are verse, chorus, verse, and so on. They are not simple.
-- Joanna Newsom

#Song #Simple #Thinking