One thing that I've struggled with has been a certain amount of animosity toward the whole human race. James Mercer More Quotes by James Mercer More Quotes From James Mercer The part of modern pop music I don't know much about is hip hop. James Mercer about know modern music I don't like the idea of a singer-songwriter record. I don't picture myself that way, and it's not my favorite sort of look, I guess. It's really just an aesthetic thing. James Mercer picture myself look aesthetic When I started The Shins, it really was just me, alone, but it was still The Shins. I was totally recording stuff and writing songs as The Shins and all of that. So the beginning inception of the whole thing was some sort of a lie, I guess. James Mercer lie alone beginning me I know that there are a lot of sort of silly things that one thinks as a music listener about bands. I am a fan of many bands. James Mercer i-am things know music My attempt at really doing classic sort of songwriting is Shins stuff. James Mercer doing songwriting classic stuff As a child, I lived in Germany at the Ramstein air force base, where my dad sang at a nightclub in Kaiserslautern. My parents couldn't afford a babysitter, so when I was, like, ten or 11, I would go with them to the bar until two in the morning. James Mercer parents child dad morning We played a festival in Ireland once, and in the middle of 'New Slang,' the Scissor Sisters kicked in across the field on this mega stage. It was a little distracting. It was hard to keep track of what I was supposed to sing. James Mercer sing new hard stage