Nate Ruess Quotations

I think that I always thought that if my uncle was on Broadway, then I must inherently have a good voice. I don't think that for a while I did. Eventually, out of sheer will of never wanting to get a job or go to college, I found my way into doing music full-time.

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.

I feel like the rap metal at the end of the 1990s destroyed rock music for everybody and suddenly everybody felt like they had to apologise for being in rock bands. People suddenly felt bad about wanting to reach massive audiences and the sense of theatre, that we have in our live show, became something to avoid.

I was in a really crummy pop-punk band. I think we did a whole bunch of Blink-182 covers, and we were on the fringe of losers and jocks. So we invited all the cool kids to come watch us play in our bass player's brother's bedroom. And it was terrible, but everyone thought we were so cool.

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.

I was signed at 19 years old to a major label, and dropped by the time I was 22.

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

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.

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.

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.