Quotes from Julien Baker

With my own music, I'm much more reluctant to say, you know, 'This record slaps!'

Many of my songs just come together in quatrains because that's how a hymn goes.

I think people learn best and are more engaged when it's just normal relatable situations that illustrate the principles they're discussing.

Songs like 'Everything To Help You Sleep' or 'Claws in Your Back' took a little bit more grappling with the actual poetry for me to feel comfortable with the song. And there's a little bit more song crafting going on, and I had a specific idea in mind of the imagery I wanted to evoke.

There are people who are explicit and people who are implicit, right? Like I say, 'I think there is a God,' but I've seen Christian metalcore bands do altar calls at their shows and be like, 'Come get saved right now.' I think there's a subtler way, which is to say I'm being honest with my beliefs.

Some songs just fall out of you. And some you have to wrestle out like an abscess.

There are bands who write of emotions that are very heartbreaking, touching, or relatable, but they'll be like concept records, they're about fictional characters.

We always have a great time touring Germany, but one of my favourite museums in the world is Museum Ludwig, an incredible contemporary art museum in Cologne. I could spend all day in it.

I don't think that you can just walk through life without all of your experiences informing your perspective on the world.

Appointments' is largely just derived from pieces of dialogue with another person, and then also what's going on inside of my own mind, or a person's own mind. They're intended to be a little bit exaggerated and a satire of things that we're not sure are entirely true, or maybe biased.

I do not want to make art and then try to dictate how people use it, or how people interact with it.

Every girl is a singer. I wanted to learn the solos and play lead guitar. I would meticulously teach myself solos so when dudes were like, 'Oh, you're a girl, you can't play guitar,' I could rip these insane Telecaster blues solos and tell them, 'Yeah, I can burn up a fret board.'

Some shows feel very reverent - when you're in a seated theater, no one really sings. I love it when people sing! I wish people would sing all the time. Because one of my favorite things when I get to do as a musician is step away from the microphone and listen to everyone sing together.

It used to be you would need a couple grand to make a record at a studio. Now, you can do it on freaking GarageBand.

With my first high school band ever, we would have these breaks in the song for idiotic solos, solos that were un-tasteful and would be shredding, but I needed to put them in there, and I realize now it's because we were playing shows with a whole bunch of bands that were all male.

Sometimes, it feels artificial to try to come up with a solution to something that none of us know how to solve.

My parents were always playing records: My mom was really into the Beatles and Fleetwood Mac, and my dad was more Billy Squire, Whitesnake, '80s hair metal. But I think there's that crucial point where you become an adolescent and you don't want to listen to your parents' music.

I didn't grow up on country and blues, I was just a kid listening to VH1 and then I realized I needed to expand my musical horizons. Now I have a deep appreciation for southern heritage music.

Those parts of myself that are too ugly or dangerous are precisely the things I feel convicted to share.

We think empathy is innate, but it's not. It's a muscle you're working.

It's just nice to have people around and see people actively trying to construct a community of mutual support around music.

The thing about music is that it gives voice and names to anguish and also addresses how to comfort it.

I feel like I've had bad nights or destructive nights or nights where I don't remember anything or nights where I was seriously injured or seriously in danger. And I remained nihilistic and unconcerned because it felt like there was no alternative.

A lot of artists I like end up being queer. Or maybe it's a subconscious thing that you can identify of, like, 'Oh this person understands the nuances of the romantic narrative of a queer person, or the social narrative of a queer person.' And then you discover, lo and behold that they are a queer person.