Win Butler

“Funny songs aren't usually that good. Like Weird Al and maybe a couple of Beatles songs, but it's kind of hard to bring humor into rock music in an interesting way.”

“My favorite English teacher in high school showed me 'Brazil' when I was 15, and it blew my mind. It's one of those movies that's revealed itself in different ways as I've gone back to it over the years.”

“The music in Haiti is all tied up in voodoo and African rhythm, and so there's this funny thing: go to a voodoo ceremony, and then go to a Catholic church and tell me which music you liked better, to which one the music is more integral.”

“I had a somewhat religious upbringing. Not strict, but it was there, and I'm kind of thankful for that. If you grow up just watching MTV, that's its own form of religion, and it's not even based on happiness or communal responsibility. I mean, try to construct a worldview out of that.”

“If you think about it, if you've ever been to a Catholic service, it's practically a laser light show. It's very dramatic, very theatrical. The outfits they wear, it's all designed to be impressive.”

“The film 'Black Orpheus' is one of my favorite films of all time, which is set in Carnival in Brazil.”

“I'm not someone who can dance to a song I don't like.”

“I'm not a good hipster - if I let my moustache grow for weeks, it just looks like I have dirt on my face. I'll never have a glorious handlebar moustache.”

“Whenever you're talking about meaning, basically... I think a lot of the human experience has to do with trying to understand what things mean, and there's not really any tools to do that unless you're thinking about it in a more spiritual or philosophical realm.”

“I grew up in a somewhat religious family. My dad's family isn't religious at all, but my mom's side of the family is, so I was exposed to church a bit.”

“I studied the Bible and philosophy in college, and I think in a certain sense that's the kind of stuff that still makes my brain work.”

“There are so many bands that I'm kind of aware of through media about them, and it ends up filtering my experience of the actual music.”

“The idea of dancing to bad house music is something I could never get behind.”

“I don't like to talk about other bands in interviews.”

“The Flaming Lips have been on Warner Bros. forever, and certainly everything I heard growing up was on a major label in some way, from the Cure to Radiohead to Bjork.”

“My parents live near the ocean, and I've spent a lot of time walking through the water at night, being around the water.”

“Being in a rock band, I feel a certain responsibility to have a weird haircut. I mean, who else gets to do that?”

“I never really felt super-Texan. It wasn't like I was unhappy, but I wasn't superhappy.”

“I was really sick of bands just ignoring the audience as a posture in rock music. And I think we fed off each other in terms of trying to engage the audience, not in a hammy way, but actually trying to be aware of the space that you are playing in and trying to connect in some way through the music.”

“I think there's some pretty amazing language in the Bible.”