A biography for Mark Fosterhasn’t been written yet.
“When I write a song, the music comes from my spirit, which is very playful and optimistic, but then the lyrics come from my head, which is in a different space.”
“I feel like my calling is to show people joy: to make them feel like there's something to look forward to.”
“I've written so many songs that are hopeful - songs that are, like, about an old man that gives all his possessions away because he wants to help people. I wrote 'Pumped Up Kicks' just to tell a different type of story.”
“I think that there's a difference between being an entertainer and being an artist.”
“I look at bands like the Beach Boys, Hall & Oates and Blur, and those are the bands I want to be in company with because their songwriting is intelligent, and yet you don't need to be a musical genius to pick it up.”
“People worship anyone in the entertainment industry. You can be a used-car salesman and have a television commercial on the local station, and that makes you a celebrity.”
“Foster the People wouldn't exist without Mophonics.”
“I think my inner child wants to take over the world.”
“I don't like to write the same song twice.”
“Pressure has always been more of a friend than a foe for me with songwriting.”
“'Pumped Up Kicks' is written from the perspective like Truman Capote wrote 'In Cold Blood' or Dostoevsky wrote 'Crime & Punishment.' It's psychologically breaking down someone's state of mind and diving in and walking in their shoes.”
“I remember, when I heard Jeff Buckley's 'Grace,' on first listen I just thought it was such a great song.”
“I could have pigeonholed us and wrote a whole record like 'Pumped Up Kicks,' and we would have been this breezy, nostalgic West Coast Beach Boys recreation band. That's not the type of writer I am. Once I try one style, I move on.”
“I'm a really extreme person, and balance is probably the hardest thing for me to maintain.”
“I'd rather be a poor singer/songwriter doing what I love than get rich from selling my soul.”
“I feel like trying to write a song in order to be a big hit is just not something I'm interested in because it's not going to come from an authentic place of expression.”
“Fear just crushes creativity, and if I let fear into the studio and into the songwriting, I was going to let it kill the artist inside of me.”
“Mophonics is kind of a creative home for me.”
“When you're underwater with goggles on, a couple of your senses are taken away, and it becomes this purely visual thing. It's just you and yourself.”
“When I started really playing music, I pretty much quit sports. I quit everything.”