Top 48 Zachary Cole Smith Quotes
#1. Music journalists are some of the lazy, most uninspired, dull people I've ever met.
Zachary Cole Smith
#2. Somebody who knows all about how to make the record, or how to make records, they know how to work the EQ and they know how to work the stuff, but they don't know what I want it to sound like. So it's just easier for me to do it myself.
Zachary Cole Smith
#3. I wanted to show a different side of ourselves. I wanted to see in what ways I could explore something new. I felt like working on a double record would give people a lot to have.
Zachary Cole Smith
#4. One of the 12 steps is to admit that you're powerless, but I think that's bullshit. I think it's important to empower yourself by facing the stuff that triggers you.
Zachary Cole Smith
#5. I don't think fear necessarily is a core human emotion, but I do think fear of death is something that is at the core of every person's existence.
Zachary Cole Smith
#6. For me, it's always been important to have the live band be one thing, and the recorded band be kind of another thing.
Zachary Cole Smith
#7. [YSL creative director] Hedi [Slimane] is a music-obsessed guy. I might've originally met him through Sky.
Zachary Cole Smith
#8. I spent my life working before I started band. I worked construction, landscaping. I worked in kitchens, cleaned dishes. I worked demolition.
Zachary Cole Smith
#9. I'm glad that, despite everything, I was able to get work done and finish something. I never finish anything. So just being able to finish record and to make music is a great gift.
Zachary Cole Smith
#10. I guess I do feel the need to repent. I do feel like I owe the world a great album. I don't know why I feel that way. I just do.
Zachary Cole Smith
#11. I don't know if there's anything that would surprise people, because I don't think that anybody knows anything about me at all. There's not much out there. I think I'm going to come out with a pretty dark and troubled record, and it might upset some people.
Zachary Cole Smith
#12. My mom worked at [American] Vogue before I was born. She has always been fashion-minded. I grew up with original Yves Saint Laurent sketches on the wall in our house. A lot of that rubbed off on me.
Zachary Cole Smith
#13. I wouldn't say music is my passion, or my calling, or anything like that. I mean, I don't really believe in that kind of stuff. Life is a series of chance happenings, so I just fell into it.
Zachary Cole Smith
#14. There's a lot of stuff that I've been through in my life in the past couple of months that I don't really want to share with people who are close to me, but I have no option if it's my art.
Zachary Cole Smith
#15. I had to have the record literally taken away from me. I am such a perfectionist.
Zachary Cole Smith
#16. Generally, I think people are just going through the motions now. There's so much stuff that people are doing today that has already been done. I kind of like that new Savages record, but I don't know why they take themselves so seriously.
Zachary Cole Smith
#17. There's positive attention and there's negative attention - negative attention is easy, positive attention requires actual hard work.
Zachary Cole Smith
#18. Drugs are fine for you alone at home, but when it comes to being a family, which a band is, it just messes everything up.
Zachary Cole Smith
#19. When I read about myself and how writers have focused on negative stuff, it hurts my feelings.
Zachary Cole Smith
#20. Music is an opportunity to say every single thing that you want to say. People will pore over whatever you say and however you say it and, for me, it represents complete freedom of speech.
Zachary Cole Smith
#21. It's totally true: Ariel, Christopher Owens, me, and Courtney Love, all in Saint Laurent ads, all with the same haircut.
Zachary Cole Smith
#22. What I wanted was just to make music, and so, originally I just wanted to hide behind the album cover of the last record, and I wanted it to be almost anonymous.
Zachary Cole Smith
#24. Obviously there's so much about me on the Internet that you can turn against me, and you can make me into any person you want.
Zachary Cole Smith
#25. I'm like part of the Kurt Cobain school of writing lyrics, which is the syntax of the words is more important than ... is where it all comes from.
Zachary Cole Smith
#26. It's pretty easy to lose money on tour - most bands do on their first couple of tours. We're more established, but I think it was just poorly booked. It was a mess from the get-go.
Zachary Cole Smith
#27. I am super-interested in fashion. I love being a person whose clothes get discussed. That makes it more interesting for me.
Zachary Cole Smith
#28. Nobody really wanted to do that one European tour. For one, it was budgeted to lose money. They would've made something, but I would've lost a lot of money.
Zachary Cole Smith
#29. It's this funny thing now: You sign up to be a musician because you want to write music, but you don't spend your time writing music. Instead, you go around the world selling the music you've already made.
Zachary Cole Smith
#30. I went with Beach Fossils and we played 40 shows because we wanted people to see us.
Zachary Cole Smith
#31. Three years between records is longer than average. Double albums are much more of a statement. I really wanted to put myself out there as much as I possibly could.
Zachary Cole Smith
#32. I was raised by all women. I had no men in my life; it was my mom, my sister, and my grandmother. I've never identified as a man. I've always either felt like a boy or something else. I feel really uncomfortable thinking that, technically, I'm supposed to be a man, because I don't feel like one.
Zachary Cole Smith
#34. People are going to be way more patient listening to what I have to say now. I don't have five seconds to get their attention, I have five minutes. That's a huge window.
Zachary Cole Smith
#36. We were a commodity used by corporations to make their brand look fashionable, but then they used us to keep kids out of venues.
Zachary Cole Smith
#37. The touring band is DIIV, and the songs are always written with them in mind. But the new record is going to be more "me."
Zachary Cole Smith
#38. It's not like I had a breakdown, though it kind of felt like it at the time. I agreed to everything that happened. You can't really be at work and be like, "That's it. I've had too much. I'm going home."
Zachary Cole Smith
#39. It's so easy to hate something. It's harder to genuinely appreciate something.
Zachary Cole Smith
#41. I think that when people download the record they're kind of missing out on part of the experience, because it's really meant to be an immersive experience.
Zachary Cole Smith
#42. If I play Coachella, it's sponsored by a company - that's corporate, too. But we're playing it because we're getting paid and we want to be a part of the festival.
Zachary Cole Smith
#43. All I'm trying to do is make music that people like and that makes people happy.
Zachary Cole Smith
#44. I grew up around fashion - my mom was an editor for Vogue. Compared to the music industry, though, I'd say [fashion] is a little bit more disorganized. But it's exciting for me because, when you're a performer, there is a fashion element.
Zachary Cole Smith
#45. Recovery culture teaches you that you have to repent. I don't think that's necessary.
Zachary Cole Smith
#46. The music starts as being way separate from the lyrics, and I write - I have notebooks that I fill with drawings and just words, and stuff that I've written.
Zachary Cole Smith
#47. You can't show somebody what it's like to experience loss, but you can soundtrack it and help them experience their own loss. I am so lucky to have this venue to be able to say and talk about all the stuff I've been through.
Zachary Cole Smith
#48. I had these glorified ideas about San Francisco and its drug culture - I thought inspiration would just hit me and I would get these San Francisco drugs in my system and all of a sudden an amazing record would come out. But that's not really what happened at all.
Zachary Cole Smith
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