Talk:Elliott Smith

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Everybody gets a tag. If you listen to a Velvet Underground record, you don't think, 'Godfathers of Punk.' You just think, 'This sounds great.' The tags are there in order to help try to sell something by giving it a name that's going to stick in somebody's memory. But it doesn't describe it. So 'depressing' isn't a word I would use to describe my music. But there is some sadness in it -- there has to be, so that the happiness in it will matter.

I hope that Dreamworks can sell enough records that they're happy - so I don't get dropped.

What we need are some dancers. Or maybe...answers? does anybody have any answers?"

Someone in the crowd: "Your ass!"

Smith: "My ass?! That's a good answer."

Sometimes people seem to think that my songs are more personal than somebody else's and I don't really think that's true. Y'know, I think my songs reveal whatever they reveal; they say certain things about who I am, whereas Will Smith singing "Gettin' Jiggy With It" reveals certain things about who he is. Like for one thing that he doesn't mind singing a senseless song. But I don't know. It's just--I don't know. It's sort of like if no one is playing--if people who are by and large on the radio and television really don't give a shit what words they're singing, then someone comes along who actually sings about things that matter to them, then everybody thinks that their lyrics are really personal. But it's just situational.

Well, I try not to think about the general public since I have no idea what the general public is and I don't think anybody does.