Ben Gibbard
Ben Gibbard
Benjamin "Ben" Gibbard is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. He is best known as the lead vocalist and guitarist of the indie rock band Death Cab for Cutie, with which he has recorded eight studio albums, and as one half of the electronica duo the Postal Service. Gibbard released his debut solo album, Former Lives, in 2012, and a collaborative studio album, One Fast Move or I'm Gone, with Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt's Jay Farrar...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth11 April 1976
CityBremerton, WA
CountryUnited States of America
More times than not, it's a failed endeavor. You will fail more times than you succeed. But I think you need those failed endeavors.
Because of my age and what I do for a living and the amount of time that I've spent away from my family and loved ones, I'm starting to relate more to the late-period Kerouac stuff in the way that I once related to the fun and excitement of the early material. There's a darkness inside of me that I'm only now starting to come to grips with and accept. And it's starting to scare me.
I think sometimes a narrative can come out of a single word.
There were a lot of fences and walls existing in my life, literally and figuratively, and that was really not indicative of the kind of person that I'd always been. So, when I moved back to Seattle, the first thing I said was, "I will never live in fear again."
You can't please everybody all the time, but I think for the most part we tend to maintain a healthy level of self-reference to kind of make sure we continue to push things forward.
I don't want to be overdramatic about it, but I'm starting to see a lot of my bad habits get the best of me.
Our band is very polarizing. There are people who absolutely can't stand us, and people who absolutely can't live without us. I'd rather spark those kind of polar-opposite feelings than have people be indifferent.
A lot of the material is about the inevitable disappointment people feel as they move through life, and things don't feel the way they expect. No experience will ever match up to the idealized version in your mind.
There's a cinematic quality that happens in my mind when I hear something that really lands. An album is just a journal of a life moving through time.
And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time.
An ex-girlfriend once got upset when I told her that music is the most important thing in my life. It's more important than anyone else could ever be. I don't want to be overly dramatic and say it's the only thing that gets me up and keeps me going. But people in your life come and go. As you go through your life, you make friendships, you break friendships, you have relationships. Music is the one thing I've always been able to rely on.
I'm a war of head versus heart, it's always this way. My head is weak, my heart always speaks, before I know what it will say.
At this point in my life, I find myself obsessed with alternate paths I could've taken. I don't think about this with a sense of regret, but with a sense of wonder...
I have always been very open and earnest about some things in my life, some things that are not directly in my life, but they're twirling around me at the time.