Ben Hopkins

“When fringe groups gather, there is power in that.”

“I think that our work and our music stands on its own without this knowledge about our identity around it. But I also think that we very consciously decided not to hold back that part of ourselves, but to be very vocal about who we are, kind of what experiences we've had in life, and how we identify.”

“I'm in a car so much on tour that I often just ask my friends to DJ and ask them what they like. That's the best way I discover music.”

“I'm a freewheeling flower-child falling down the stairs constantly.”

“As a white queer person of a certain degree of economic privilege, I think that my ability to pass as straight is a privilege that other folk I know don't have. It's important to keep in mind who really is in the most trouble and to direct our attention to assisting those people.”

“A lot of my queer development as a kid came from trawling the Internet.”

“I feel like with PWR BTTM, Liv and I tried to create something that was kind and cared about the people who come.”

“Like my gender, sometimes things don't come out right the first time.”

“There is power in organization. There is power in a community. People have always wanted to destroy communities.”

“When you're a queer person put in the spotlight, you're supposed to have all the answers.”

“For queer people, the personal is very political, just to talk about it in a public space. It's very political just to come out and take up that space and be like, 'This is my narrative. It's not an outsider narrative, and it's not a fetish narrative; it's just my story, and it's worth being told and listened to.'”

“If you listen to PWR BTTM, or to Gloss, If you look at me on stage, it can make you feel less alone. It makes you feel like you're a queer person and you have this singular power, but it's not like we're a brand. We're just real.”

“Creating a safe space at our shows isn't encouraging anything. It's just saying thank you.”

“I know what we're going to do as PWR BTTM. We're going to put a new record out; we're going to go on tour a lot, and we're going to do cool stuff. We're going to try to be kind to our friends and family and loved ones. And we're going to look cute.”

“Is punk dressing up in leather jackets? No. It's having a counter-cultural perspective.”

“When I started playing music, I was more of a character. Now I'm just me with a cool outfit on. I'm more comfortable being myself.”

“I'd say, at the end of the day, you know, from a songwriting practice standpoint, you write songs to make yourself feel something true and validating, and cathartic, maybe, and then whoever responds to it is, like, out of your control.”

“I think the earnestness of what we're saying and what other bands like us are totally saying - or other queer bands - is 'We exist.'”

“People who pigeonhole us for our queerness are not people I'm interested in knowing. They're so boring. How dare you be so boring? Grow up. Get some Ray-Bans.”

“Drag has always made me feel less scared.”