Conor Oberst

Conor Oberst (born February 15, 1980) is an American singer-songwriter best known for his work in Bright Eyes. He has also played in several other bands, including Desaparecidos, Commander Venus and Park Ave.

You mean nothing to no one but that's nobody's fault.

Quotes

• I never fuck with Facebook. I absolutely despise social networking. I think it's truly going to result in the destruction of mankind. Sometimes I just wish I didn't live in this time. Before, there was so much more freedom and privacy, and you could truly escape places.
  • As quoted in "Conor Oberst's Mystical Awakening" by Chris Norris in Rolling Stone (25 June 2009), p. 66-84

A Collection of Songs Written and Recorded 1995-1997 (1998)

• The world's become a little too mean.
  • Saturday as Usual

• And me I'm in my bedroom drawing in my notebook
  Because my hand thinks I'm an artist
  But my heart knows I'm a poet
  It's just words they mean so little to me.
  • Saturday as Usual

• My Brother went to college
  To become a doctor
  And if he studies hard enough
  He'll end up just like papa, who hates his life.
  • Saturday as Usual

• And me I'm in the bathroom
  crying out my eyelids because it's hard to be a man
  when you're scared, just like a little kid.
  • Saturday as Usual

• If I die tonight, then I guess I die tonight
  Let me go on.
  • Falling Out Of Love At This Volume

• I started to sink like the moon tends to do if you stare at it too long
  Then you blink and it's gone
  • The Awful Sweetness Of Escaping Sweat

I guess time has a way of making everything alright
it's just there is not enough of it
and so we drink and we sing and we celebrate
this lie and hope that it will last
morning is here night has passed
A celebration upon completion

but i guess fear has a way of making sleep unbearable
and the days seem cold and long
but we'll cry and we dance
and we stumble into love in awkward perfect grace
the moon is gone and the sun has took its place
A celebration upon completion

Letting Off the Happiness (1998)

• I swear that I'm dying
  slowly but it's happening,
  and if the perfect spring is waiting somewhere...
  just take me there.
  • If Winter Ends

• In a coma, you don't dream,
  you just hope that someone sits with you.
  • Padraic My Prince

• I had a brother once, he drowned in a bathtub,
  before he'd ever learned how to talk.
  And I don't know what his name was
  but my mother does,
  I heard her say it once, she said,
  "Padraic, my prince, I have all but died from the sheer weight of my shame:
  you cried but no-one came."
  • Padraic My Prince

• I find that life is easier when it is just a blur
  With no details to confuse who or what or where I was
  So when the ending comes the full regret will be obscure
  
  • The Difference In The Shades

Insound Tour Support No.12 (2000)

• Well morning came, and it dressed the sky in a lovely yellow gown.
  Shopping malls are opening in that narrow hallway of downtown,
  filled with people who are shopping for their lovers and their friends,
  singing "I won't ever be lonely again"
  • I Won't Ever be Happy Again

• There's a cat in the window, of the house of my lover.
  Well she sleeps there alone now, or perhaps with another.
  Oh I try no to think about that, I try not to think at all!

• My parents ask if I'm alright; I say "I've just been staying up too late.
  I need to sleep" I need to do something!
  To get this awful weight up off my chest,
  keep her pretty ghost from chasing me!

• So you say there are spaces, opening wide?
  Oh believe me, there's day longer than nights.
  And you could be happy, if only you'd try.
  But you don't try. No you don't try.

• And you speak of a fever, that burns you inside,
  as you explain to your mother, how you've wanted to die.
  So she kisses your fingers, and says "My darling, but why?
  When there is so much more. There is so much more."

• You could be happy, the minute you try.
  Why won't you try? Oh won't you try?
  • The Joy in Forgetting - The Joy in Acceptance

Fevers and Mirrors (2000)

• And the sad act like lepers
  They stick to the shadows
  They long to ring bells of warning
  To tell of their coming
  So that the pure can shut their doors.
  • Arienette

• I drug your ghost across the country, and we plotted out my death.
  Every city and memory we whispered "Here is where you rest."
  Well I was determined in Chicago but I dug my teeth into my knees
  And I settled for a telephone, sang into your machine:
  "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine."
  • The Calendar Hung Itself

• And I sing and sing of awful things
  The pleasure that my sadness brings.
  • Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh

• For a sunrise or a sunset, you're manic or you’re depressed.
  Will you ever feel ok?
  • Sunrise, Sunset

• I think it is more like a ghost
  that has been following us both.
  Something vague that we're not seeing,
  something more like a feeling.
  • Something Vague

Now I know a disease that these Doctors can’t treat.
You contract on the day you accept all you see is a mirror and a mirror is all it can be.
A reflection of something we’re missing.

And these clocks keep unwinding and completely ignore everything that we hate or adore.
Once the page of a calendar is turned it’s no more.
So tell me then, what was it for?
Oh tell me, what was it for?

• • A Scale, A Mirror And Those Indifferent Clocks

Soon all the joy that pours from everything makes fountains of your eyes
because you finally understand the movement of a hand waving good-bye.

• • The Movement Of A Hand**

You combed your hair inside that mirror
The one you painted blue and glued with jewelry tears
Something about those bright colors
Would always make you feel better.
<

You said you hate my suffering, and you understood,
And you’d take care of me.
You'd always be there for me
Well, where are you now?

Haligh, Haligh, a lie, Haligh,
The plans were never finalized,
But left to hang like yarn and twine,
Dangling before my eyes.
Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh

Sunrise, sunset.
Sunrise, sunset.
Swiftly go the days.
Sunrise, sunset.
You wake up, then you undress.
It always is the same.
a sunrise and the sun sets.

Sunrise, the sun sets.
You are hopeful and then you regret.
The circle never breaks.

For a sunrise or sunset.
You’re either coming or you just left but you’re always on the way.

It’s a sunrise and a sunset.
From a cradle to a casket.
There’s no way to escape.
Sunrise, Sunset

Did you expect it all to stop
At the wave of your hand?
Like the sun’s just gonna drop,
If it’s night you demand.

I think you lost what you loved
In that mess of details.
They seemed so important at the time
Now you can’t even recall
Any names, faces, or lines;
It’s more the feeling of it all.
An attempt to tip the scales

But all I have for the moment is a song to pass the time.
Yeah, a melody to keep me from worrying.
Oh, some simple progression to keep my fingers busy.
And words that are sure to come back to me and they'll be laughing.
And they'll be laughing. My mediocrity. My mediocrity.

A Song To Pass The Time

Don't Be Frightened of Turning the Page (2001)

• There was this book I read and loved,
  The story of a ship
  Who sailed around the world and found
  That nothing else exists
  Beyond its own two sails
  And wooden shell
  And what is held within.
  All else is sure to pass.
  We clutch and grasp
  And debate what's truly permanent.
  • Oh, You Are the Roots That Sleep Beneath My Feet and Hold the Earth in Place

• I sing and drink and sleep on floors
  And try hard not to be annoyed
  By all these people worrying about me.
  So when I'm suffering through some awful drive,
  You occasionally cross my mind.
  It's my hidden hope that you are still among them.
  Well, are you?
  • Oh, You Are the Roots That Sleep Beneath My Feet and Hold the Earth in Place

Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002)

• If you wanna see the future,
  Go stare into a cloud.
• Well is it your fear of being buried
  that makes you so afraid to speak?
• So you can try and live in darkness
  but you will never shake the light.
  It will greet you every morning and make you more aware with its absence at night
• The hook is in deep boys,
  there is no more time.
  So you can struggle in the water
  and be too stubborn to die,
  or you could just let go and be lifted to the sky.

• • The Big Picture

• If the world could remain within a frame
  Like a painting on a wall,
  Then I think we would see the beauty, then
  We would stand staring in awe
  At our still lives posed
  Like a bowl of oranges,
  Like a story told
  By the fault lines and the soil.
  • Bowl of Oranges

• Ambition, I’ve found, can lead only to failure. I do not read the reviews. No, I am not singing for you.
• The animals laugh from the dark of the wilderness.
• I’ve seen a child, he's caught in the sad trap of gravity.
  He falls from the lowest branch of the apple tree
  and lands in the grass and weeps for his dignity.
  Next time he will not aim so high.
  Yeah, next time, neither will I.
• Well, I stood dropping a coin into the pit of a well.
  And I would throw my whole billfold if I thought it would help.
• "Honesty" "Accuracy" is just "Popular Opinion."
• Well, ABC, NBC, CBS: Bullshit.
  They give us fact or fiction?
  I guess an even split.
• And each new act of war is tonight's entertainment.
  We're still the pawns in their game.
• As they take eye for an eye until no one can see,
  we must stumble blindly forward, repeating history.

• • Let's Not Shit Ourselves

• Love's an excuse to get hurt and to hurt.
  Do you like to hurt?
  I do, I do
  then hurt me.
  • Lover I Don't Have to Love

• So you think I need some discipline, well, I had my share. I have been sent to my room. I've been sat in a chair. I held my tongue. I didn't plug my ears. No, I got a good talking to. And now I don't know why, but I still try to smile when they talk at me like I'm just a child. Well, I'm not a child. No, I am much younger than that. And now I have read some books and have grown quite brave. If only I could just speak up I think I would say that there is no truth. There is only you and what you make the truth.
  • Don't Know When But A Day is Gonna Come

• He once cut one of my nightmares out of paper.
  I thought it was beautiful, I put it on a record cover.
• It is clear to see that it is not them but me, who had lost my self-identity. As I hide behind these books I read, while scribbling my poetry, like art could save a wretch like me, with some ideal ideology that no one can hope to achieve. And I am never real; it is just a sketch of me. And everything I have made is trite and cheap and a waste of paint, of tape, of time
  • Waste of Paint

• My head's a carousel of pictures and
  The spinning never stops.
  • Nothing Gets Crossed Out

• For a song I was bought
  Now I lie when I talk
  With a careful eye on the cue card.
  Onto a stage I was pushed,
  With my sorrow well rehearsed.
  So give me all your pity and your money, now (all of it).
  • False Advertising

• But where was it when I first heard that sweet sound of humility?
  It came to my ears in the goddamn loveliest melody!
  How grateful I was, then, to be part of the mystery,
  To love, and to be loved!
  Let’s just hope that is enough.
  • Let's Not Shit Ourselves (To Love and to Be Loved)

• But you should never be embarrassed by your trouble with living
  Cause it's the ones with the sorest throats Laura,
  who have done the most singing.
  • Laura Laurent

• It's not a movie,
  no private screening
  This method acting,
  well, I call that living
  • Method Acting

• If I could act like
  This was my real life,
  And not some cage where I've been placed,
  Well then, I could tell you
  The truth like I used to
  And not be afraid of sounding fake.
  
  • False Advertising

• And it's too hard to focus through all this doubt
  I keep making this to-do list but nothing gets crossed out
  Working on the record seems pointless now
  When the world ends who's gonna hear it?

• Everything that happens is supposed to be
  And it's all pre-determined,
  can't change your destiny
  Guess I'll just keep moving,
  someday maybe I'll get to where I'm going
  • Nothing Gets Crossed Out

• So hurry up and run to the one that you love.
  And blind him with your kindness.
  And he'll make war, oh war,
  On who you were before.
  And he'll claim all that has spoiled in your heart.

• Because the truth is that gossip
  is as good as gospel in this town.
  You can save face but
  you won't ever save your soul.
  And that's a fact.
  • Make War

• It was a small mistake
  Sometimes that is all it takes.

• But, I was as helpless as a chess piece
  when I was lifted up by someone's hand
  And delivered from the corner
  my enemies had got me in
  But in all of my salvation
  I still felt imprisoned inside that holding cell
  that is myself

• So I wait for the day
  when I'll hear the key
  as it turns in the lock
  And the guard will say to me,
  "Oh my patient prisoner
  you waited for this day and finally,
  you are free!
  You are free!
  You are free!"
  • From A Balance Beam

There Is No Beginning to the Story (2003)

• We're all too busy working, entertaining ourselves
  With forty hours, television and prescription pills
  Well, I take two a day to help my brain behave
  It never does, but who's to say? At least my doctor gets paid.
  • Loose Leaves

• 'Cause a costume can be comfortable
  It can make you feel more beautiful
  It can even make you look like someone else
  But it's still you, so there's nothing you can do
  Like a bad habit, the one you couldn't kick, there it always is
  And it's nothing that no doctor's gonna fix.
  • We Are Free Men

I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005)

• I know you have a heavy heart, I can feel it when we kiss
  So many men stronger than me
  Have thrown their backs out trying to lift it
  But me I'm not a gamble
  You can count on me to split
  The love I sell you in the evening by the morning won't exist.
  • Lua

• I'd rather be working for a paycheck, than waiting to win the lottery.
  Besides, maybe this time it's different, I mean,
  I really think you like me.
  • First Day of my Life

• If you walk away I'll walk away
  first tell me which road you will take
  I don't want to risk our paths crossing someday
  so you walk that way I'll walk this way
• I found a liquid cure
  for my landlocked blues
• And there's kids playing guns in the streets
  And one's pointing his tree branch at me
  So I put my hands up I say
  "Enough is enough,
  If you walk away I walk away."
  And he shot me dead.
• But greed is a bottomless pit
  And our freedom's a joke we're just taking a piss
  And the whole world must watch the sad comic display
  If you're still free start runnin' away
  'cause we're comin' for ya!
• You'll be free child once you have died
  from the shackles of language and measurable time
  • Landlocked Blues

• And I never thought this life was possible,You're the yellow bird that I've been waiting for.
• In polaroids you were dressed in women's clothes
  Were you made ashamed,
  why'd you lock them in a drawer?
  Well, I don't think that I ever loved you more
• Well let the poets cry themselves to sleep
  And all their tearful words will turn back into steam
• The sound of loneliness makes me happier
  • Poison Oak

• Well, I could have been a famous singer
  If I had someone else's voice
  But failure's always sounded better
  Let's fuck it up, boys, make some noise!
• The sun came up with no conclusions
  Flowers sleepin' in their beds
  The city cemetary's hummin'
  I'm wide awake, its mornin'

• • Road To Joy

• i keep drinking the ink from my pen
  and i'm balancing history books up on my head
  but it all boils down to one quotable phrase
  if you love something give it away
  • landlocked blues

• a good woman will pick you apart
  a box full of suggestions for your possible heart
  and you may be offended. and you may be afraid
  but don't walk away, don't walk away
  • landlocked blues

• we made love on the living room floor
  with the noise in the background of a televised war
  and in that defeaning pleasure i thought i heard someone say
  if we walk away they'll walk away
  • landlocked blues

• So don't be fooled, so don't get lied to
  Love was always cruel
  And don't act strange, don't be a stranger
  It happened to me, now it's happening to you
  But if you'd take that train underwater
  Then we could talk it through

• Yeah, I was a postcard, I was a record
  I was a camera until I went blind

• • train under water

• I guess the best that I can do now
  is to pretend that I've done nothing wrong
  and to dream about a train
  that's gonna take me back where I belong

• So I go back and forth forever
  All my thoughts they come in pairs
  Oh I will, I won't, I doubt, I don't,
  I'm not surprised but I never feel quite prepared

• Now I'm hunched over a typewriter
  I guess you call that paintin' in a cave
  And there's a word I can't remember
  and a feeling I cannot escape

• I dreamt this ship was sinkin' there was people screaming all around
  And I awoke to my alarm clock it was a pop song it was playin' loud

• So I will find my fears and face them
  or I will cower like a dog
  I will kick and scream or kneel and plead
  I'll fight like hell to hide that I've given up

• • Another Travelin' Song

Digital Ash in a Digital Urn (2005)

• I want to be the surgeon who cuts you open
  Who fixes all of life's mistakes
  I want to be the house that you were raised in
  The only place where you feel safe.
• I wanna be a shower in the morning
  That wakes you up and makes you clean
  I know I'm just the weather against your window
  As you sleep through a winter's dream
  • Ship in a Bottle

• I hear if you make friends with Jesus Christ, you will get right up from that chalk outline. And then you'll get dolled up, and you'll dress in white all to take your place in his chorus line. And then in you'll come with those marching drums in a saintly compromise. No more whiskey slurs, no more blonde-haired girls for your whole eternal life. And you'll do the dance that was choreographed at the very dawn of time. Singing "I told you son, the day would come you would die, you'd die you'd die you'd die you'd die".
  • Arc Of Time

• Sometimes I worry that I've lost the plot
  My twitching muscles tease my flippant thoughts
  I never really dreamed of heaven much
  Until we put him in the ground.
• There is nothing as lucky, as easy, or free
  • Easy/Lucky/Free

• You took off your clothes and left on the light,
  You stood there so brave, you used to be shy,
  Each feature improved, each movement refined,
  And eyes like a showroom.
  • Take it Easy (Love Nothing)

• There is no Hell when you die
  so don't look so worried
  • Light Pollution

Noise Floor (Rarities: 1998-2005) (2006)

• so immagine what you want and hold onto that thought
  cause thats as close as it will ever come
  and believe you're were you're are
  keep acting out the part
  but at the end of the day
  the trees all get wheeled away
  and you'll be standing alone in a blank, blank space

• so believe you're who you are
  and stay in character
  but at the end of the play the audience walks away
  and ill be shivering cold on a well lit stage

• • The trees get wheeled away

• The drunk kids, the catholics
  They’re all about the same
  They’re waiting for something
  Hoping to be saved
  • Drunk Kid Catholic

• And I'm sorry about the phone call and needing you
  Some decisions you don't make
  I guess it's just like breathing or not wanting to
  There are some things you can't fake

• I'm sorry about the phone call; and waking you.
  I know that it is late,
  But thank you for talking, because I needed to.
  Some things just can't wait.

• • Happy Birthday To Me (Feb 15)

• So I want to get myself attached to something bolted down,
  So that these winds of circumstance won't keep blowing me around.
  From when I land to when I leave
  there is enough time to sleep and sing.
  I keep running around, when all I want is to lay motionless.

• • Motion Sickness

Cassadaga (2007)

• It's exploding bags, aerosol cans
  Southbound buses, Peter Pan
  They left it up to us again
  I thought you knew the drill
  It's kill or be killed.
  • Clairaudients(Kill or Be Killed)

• The squatters made a mural of a Mexican girl
  With fifteen cans of spray paint and a chemical swirl
  She's standing in the ashes at the end of the world
  Four winds blowing through her hair.
• The Bible's blind.
  The Torah's deaf.
  The Qur'an is mute.
  If you burned them all together you’d get close to the truth.
  • Four Winds

• On a detox loft through a Glendale Park over sidewalk chalk
  Someone wrote in red, "start over."
  • Cleanse Song

• Oh, I've made love, yeah, I've been fucked, so what?
  I'm a cartoon, you're a full moon, let's stay up.
  • Hot Knives

• You mean nothing to no one but that's nobody's fault.
  • Soul Singer in a Session Band

• Little soldier, little insect
  You know war it has no heart
  It will kill you in the sunshine
  Or happily in the the dark
  Where kindness is a card game
  Or a bent up cigarette
  In the trenches, in the hard rain
  With a bullet and a bet.
  • No One Would Riot for Less

• Everything must belong somewhere.
  I know that now, that's why I'm staying here.
  • I Must Belong Somewhere

• I never thought of running
  My feet just led the way
  • If The Brakeman turns my way

• I tried to pass for nothing
  But my dreams gave me away
  • If The Brakeman turns my way

• Don't be so amazing or I'll miss you too much.
  • Lime Tree

Conor Oberst (2008)

• You’ve been a father to me.
  Your 1960’s speak.
  Gives me comatose joy like re-run TV.
  While the mountainside was shining.
  Wild colors of my destiny
  • Cape Cañaveral

• And in the morning when the sun rise.
  Look in the water, see the blue sky.
  As if heaven has been laid there at our feet.
  • Sausalito

• I wanna be your happiness.
  I wanna be your common sense pain.
  • Get-Well-Cards

• If I loved you, well that's my fault
  • Lenders In The Temple

External links

• Conor Oberst's Official site