Nate Ruess Quotes

• Well, the crazy thing for me is I think out of anything that’s happened in the last year, all the success, people always ask what do you guys do with the money? I don’t think they realize we’re not really making any money.

  Nate Ruess

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• We love a good, hyped sound, but when it starts to sound insincere, that’s when I lose interest. I hope that our music, even if it sounds polished, doesn’t sound insincere.

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• We have this really retro vibe and style of songwriting and, personally, I wasn’t embracing the current state of music until I fell in love with hip-hop. It felt good to suddenly embrace where music was headed, and I think hip-hop is the best at that, because it feels so progressive and everybody wants to be the best.

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• We grew up listening to alternative music from the ’90s, and there was no shame in being on a major label and still making the music you wanted to make. I feel like rap rock came around and drew a line in the sand, and everybody that was like me ran away from that and started making indie-rock.

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• Van Morrison is probably, at this point in time, my biggest influence as a vocalist. When we were making our last album I had a vinyl copy of ‘Veedon Fleece’ in the vocal booth in front of me, in the dorky sense. I think there were candles around, which is really tacky, but hey, I needed to channel Van the Man!

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• The Queen and Electric Light Orchestra harmonies are so distinct and fit in our songs so well sometimes, but we don’t know how to do them properly.

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• Running in Central Park is my favorite thing to wake up and do. I have my own specific path that I have to run every single time. There’s a little bit of OCD involved, but I love it.

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• My parents had normal jobs, and I didn’t just want to work all day, and so I thought if I could break into music I wouldn’t have to work all day. And I had an uncle who was on Broadway, so I was like, ‘I have to be able to sing.’

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• My girlfriend is a fashion designer. She has her own company called Rachel Antonoff. She is doing a collaboration with Urban Outfitters right now, a shoe collaboration with Bass. She sells to Barneys, stuff like that.

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• My dad dragged me to a Bruce Springsteen concert as a kid. It was my first concert, but I fell asleep in the middle. My second concert was Weezer on the ‘Pinkerton’ tour, and ‘Pinkerton’ is the reason why I’m doing this.

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• Lyrics have become so dumbed down nowadays. People don’t want to have to think about lyrics anymore, they just want to be told something. Until these great things started happening with us, I’d really given up on reaching people like that.

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• Lyrics are so important, I hate every second of writing them, but it’s something I take great pride in when it’s finished.

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• Lately I’ve been falling asleep listening to ‘Common One’ by Van Morrison, specifically the song ‘Summertime in England.’ It’s 15 minutes long, so to make it through the entire song is a real task unto itself, but Van has that emotional payoff that makes even his most tiresome songs more powerful than most people’s entire catalog.

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• It’s the coolest part about writing music. I don’t know how other people work, but so much is derived from some amalgamation of all these different songs that I love. That’s why they jump all over the place.

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• It’s interesting to feel the pressure of having to be outgoing, because I think in general, as a human being, I’m pessimistic and introverted. But, it’s cool, because it’s a whole different side of me, and I impress myself. Even at times when I think that there’s no possible way that I can be engaging, I’ll suddenly pull it out and impress myself.

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• It’s important that I get time to run, to just go for a jog for about 30 minutes. It helps with my voice, but it also kind of gives me a little bit of time to myself – and you get to see a city.

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• In a city like New York, any night can be completely different, even in a subtle way.

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• If you look at a lot of the songs I’ve been involved in, there’s always been this retro vibe. I started getting worried that I wasn’t moving forward very much, nor was I even in tune with the music today. I almost scoffed at it.

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• If you can make the song a soundtrack to what you’re living at the time, I think that’s the most important part of a song.

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• I worry that if I enjoy something – like the songs on ‘Some Nights’ are about wondering about who you are. I’m never quite sure and I’d hate to feel sort of content and get a good sense of who I am because if I know one thing, that’s not me. I don’t mind not necessarily being happy about it. And that’s fine.

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Nate Ruess (42)

Birth:	26th February, 1982
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Musician, Singer

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