Jenny Hval Quotes

#1. I've always been so interested in the way the body feels when singing or being on stage, or being in the audience for that matter. It doesn't have to be the typical "rock" experience. It can be so much more.

Jenny Hval

#2. There's a great relationship between pop music and the way the body could be seen from the inside - when I was singing or listening to music I would change shape in my head, becoming all kinds of things and people. Music is a way of making your body.

Jenny Hval

#3. I'm obsessed with voices in film. I have this memory of how people say words, even on the most intensely stupid reality TV show.

Jenny Hval

#4. When I write stuff that's provocative, I want people to think about that, too. I'm in between a pop musician and an artist in that way. I want people to be part of the music as they listen, but I also want them to think: What was that?

Jenny Hval

#5. I'm always going back and forth between wanting to do stuff that's abstract and stuff that's just telling everybody to listen.

Jenny Hval

#6. Gym is a center of capitalist breakdown, and everything is focused on the individual.

Jenny Hval

#7. I'm constantly reading and trying to enlighten myself to how the world works in its silent ways to make everything seem normal when it's actually incredibly discriminating.

Jenny Hval

#8. Norway's a very gender-aware country, and we're very liberal. There are lots of women's voices being heard here compared to many other countries.

Jenny Hval

#9. When you're outside of genre, you can expose more vulnerability.

Jenny Hval

#10. The body should not just be something you see. It's also the inside of it. It's frightening and abstract and much more than pretty or not pretty. The shape of it is boring.

Jenny Hval

#11. I disagree very strongly with people saying "that battle is over." If you've started a battle, I don't think it ever ends. The illusion that it's ended can reverse any good results that have come from it.

Jenny Hval

#12. Very devoted religious people are so extroverted, but at the same time, they're so repressed sexually and so conservative. I've never been able to understand that combination, but I'm fascinated by it.

Jenny Hval

#13. I've always seen myself as the person listening to alternative music and all that - generic indie person. I always tried to be the least pretty I could be.

Jenny Hval

#14. I've never been good at being nostalgic, and I've never been able to focus on sound without having a voice that's very here-and-now.

Jenny Hval

#15. I'm not in any way trying to make statements that are not also invaded by emotions and abstract ideas that I don't really understand myself. It's more interesting when I can do that.

Jenny Hval

#16. Everybody needs to read a lot of revolutionary stuff, because the revolution is a big part of our will to live.

Jenny Hval

#17. I'm inspired by that rawness in very direct communication. My work is not meant to keep people happy or give them an escape.

Jenny Hval

#18. On an emotional level, I don't want to be a guide. I want people to hear things and experience them their own way.

Jenny Hval

#19. I took interest in Paris Hilton at one point and got fascinated with her voice.

Jenny Hval

#20. Norway is pretty forward thinking in terms of gender equality, but we don't seem to practice it as well as we think. I'm constantly thinking: How much power have we really gained? We have to keep fighting to even keep what we've fought for already.

Jenny Hval

#21. Soft things are terrifying. They're the real signals of death. Images of strength can never be that terrifying. It's the images of weakness that are a real apocalypse.

Jenny Hval

#22. Health is so important now, it's ridiculous - the body has become frightening, this thing that will kill you if you don't keep really healthy. The body is the enemy now.

Jenny Hval

#23. I really hated being the Norwegian girl in every single conversation in Australia, so I tried to make my Norwegian-ness invisible, speaking like whoever was around me.

Jenny Hval

#24. I remember being very, very aware of gender when I was really young. Not necessarily in a bad way. Maybe it's a little bit because I'm Norwegian and how I've been brought up.

Jenny Hval

#25. I'm very interested in the visual world because I'm also very interested in feminism. I find that the world of watching takes us into the most psychotic state of, like, "You are this one person, but you have to become another person to see these images."

Jenny Hval

#26. Everything you do is so personal. In the end, it doesn't matter so much if you write about your own life or not. It's going to be as much artifice when it comes out as a piece of music. Everything is in character in a way. But that's a great thing.

Jenny Hval

#27. I'm not trying to be a solution or create a freer, utopian world. I think my music dreams of it, though.

Jenny Hval

#28. When I was growing up, I would try to sing out of key very consciously. I was probably afraid of trying too hard to do something beautiful, and then I just wasn't good enough. But I've learned that I was also on the outside - wanting more challenge by living in that more conventional world.

Jenny Hval

#29. I went through various phases of different accents - I get ridiculously obsessed with different accents, different regional ways of using the voice, different types of singing. It's all tied together. Speaking is a kind of singing, as are crying and laughing.

Jenny Hval

#30. I couldn't even have a guitar. But I got a three-track recorder that was so small that I could take it with me. Then I started recording and writing properly. I recorded lots of voices, not just my own. I was interested in people speaking and singing English and trying out words.

Jenny Hval

#31. If you believe that you have nothing to fight for, that just means the people in power, and the people with money, can sneak anything into your life. Everything can be taken away from you.

Jenny Hval

#32. I got really interested in the language used in blogs written by young girls - a young person's aggression, which is always lacking from the visual world.

Jenny Hval

#33. I've studied film a lot, so I know much more about film than music, but I don't think I could have made films.

Jenny Hval