I could probably spend the next five years reworking an album from ten years ago, if given the chance, to make it better - make it best, so to speak.

Zach Condon

Categorized in : Years Albums Next

The more I know, the more I realise I don't know. And the more I realise I'll never truly understand.

realising knows

Raucous drunken trumpets and instrumentation tend to guide the way you think. They can give you a path to follow lyrically.

giving way thinking

You always know when a real inspiration is behind the melody, arrangements, even lyrics. And I know that's really vague, but it's true.

melody inspiration real

Often when I find myself listening to music, at least 60 to 70% of it is foreign, so I don't understand a word of it. Melody to me will always be a million times more important than words.

melody important listening

As a teenager and a young adult, I never felt like my own story was interesting enough to tell, so I always wrote lyrics from someone else's perspective - told someone else's story.

teenager perspective interesting

I think that sonically, music speaks volumes more than words do, and I have always thought that and will continue to think that for the rest of my life.

volume speak thinking

I write one step at a time, always finishing off the part I'm working on before even thinking about the next part. I need to hear it all together before deciding what goes next. I even mix before moving on...in other words, I write by recording.

writing moving thinking

Lyrics are what I tend to tear hair out over and they're where I tend to feel weak musically, if I'm being very honest. It is not something I feel like I know anything about; I would not consider myself a writer. I just want to sing, I just want to sing a melody, I just want to feel a melody, and be part of the song, and everything else is not so important.

important hair song

I'm sure that's every adolescent's complaint about their home town. When a city is unstimulating, you get pretty isolated.

towns cities home

I want a song that raises the hair on the back of my neck when I sing it live and I want to feel it every time.

I was a very good student until about sophomore year, and that's when I just became so disillusioned with the whole thing that I just became an awful student. I was still making good grades. But I was cutting class three days a week and faking papers that I got off the internet.

cutting class years

I'm very flash and burn - the first thing that comes to mind is obviously the best idea, and that's because it should come out of a natural place, and if you don't do that then you're writing someone else's music, not your own.

mind writing ideas

My dad is obsessed with music, so I was raised around this guitar player that really wanted me to be a guitar player.

guitar dad player

The way Jacques Brel writes a story, getting into the character, bringing out all his faults and qualities in the same song.... Not that I could ever write in such an epic way, but it really is a different way to go about writing lyrics...and I find that quite inspiring.

writing song character

I just reached the point where I realised, I need to stop repeating myself if I'm ever actually going to enjoy the music I'm creating.

creating enjoy needs

I can't work in Brooklyn. Unless I'm completely locked away in a studio, there's just too much distraction and stimulation.

There was always a unique Beirut sound, it was always there, and so this time I just dove straight into that, instead of daydreaming and wandering.

dove daydreaming unique

It's just not an image I had ever put out about myself - the bedroom synth guy. The whole thing seemed ridiculous.

bedroom ridiculous guy

As much as I try to grow as a lyricist, I tend to laugh at even calling myself that, because I think that my actual talents lie more in arrangements than they do words.

laughing lying thinking

I didn't realize how different our band's senses of melody actually were. I would write a part that just made perfect sense to me, but for them, it was mind-boggling. Likewise, they could play stuff with relative ease that I never could have. If there was something lost in translation melodically, it wouldn't work at all - we'd just be 17 people in a giant room staring awkwardly at each other. When that happened, I'd go home, figure out what was wrong, fix it, and then return to smooth sailing.

perfect home writing