Julien Baker Quotes

Julien Baker

Profession : Musician

Birth : September 29, 1995

My parents wouldn't let me listen to 'American Idiot.' So it felt very rebellious to go over to my friend's house after school and listen to it in secrecy.

Julien Baker

Ultimately, I feel like there is just a pervasive evidence of God. Though I know that is maybe a controversial thing to say.

Julien Baker

My dad took me to the skate park every single weekend to see alternative bands.

Julien Baker

Sometimes you want to complain and be like, 'Why? Life is so horrible.' But it doesn't change that there are redeeming qualities and a universal capacity for redemption and grace. There are still things that make it worth it and bearable.

Julien Baker

There's no musician who just wakes up one day and decides, 'This is what I want to do.' It takes some development.

Julien Baker

Music and musical instruments were proximal to my life from very early on - I took piano lessons for a brief time, but then my dad had a guitar and when he was not playing it, I would pick it up and mess with it. He jokes that I used to complain that it hurt my fingers.

Julien Baker

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.

Julien Baker

I feel like it's a necessary part of musical development to go through that phase where you think that your favorite style of music is the only style of music, and I thought that for a while.

Julien Baker

I had a lot of fear about coming out as a kid.

Julien Baker

I feel really privileged to have gracious and merciless people with a lot of perspective and patience in my life.

Julien Baker

If 1,500 people are gonna see me and they each pay $20, I want to give them everything that I possibly can. They just made an exchange that allows me to live a dream of mine since I was a child. And that's not lost on me. So I want to expend every ounce of power and energy I have.

Julien Baker

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.

Julien Baker

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

Julien Baker

When I am writing alone I try to just write for myself without thinking, like, this will go on a record.

Julien Baker

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.

Julien Baker

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.

Julien Baker

Especially in the sphere of social activism, I think we tend to unwittingly conceptualize progress or revolution as black and white and having a clear beginning and end.

Julien Baker

When I talk about what I'm feeling, I can get outside of it and analyze it. I think that process, especially on 'Sprained Ankle,' happened after it was recorded. All of those songs are just documentations of how I felt at that time. I was writing them because I needed to.

Julien Baker