Julien Baker on the responsibility of sad song making
"The music I create, and the idea that “sad songs make me feel better”—[it almost implies] that wallowing is the answer. And I fear that, because I think that can be very dangerous. For a long time, one of the songs that bothered me most was a song off the first record, “Good News,” and it just goes, “I ruin everything” and I just am screaming “I ruin everything, I ruin everything,” and I think so frequently that if I had known I was going to have to stand on a stage in front of a thousand people and tell them I ruin everything, I wouldn’t have written that, because you know what? I don’t. But people feel like that all the time, and that’s a real human emotion."
"What moved me when I was a kid was DIY bands coming through and just screaming at strangers. Because they just want to be heard, and they want strangers to hear what they have to say so badly, because we have such a hunger for communication and connection and relatability. That’s, like, the fundamental human craving, a need for understanding. And I think there’s something very beautiful and precious about that."
