Elliott Smith
Elliott Smith
Steven Paul "Elliott" Smithwas an American singer, songwriter, and musician. Smith was born in Omaha, Nebraska, raised primarily in Texas, and lived for much of his life in Portland, Oregon, where he first gained popularity. Smith's primary instrument was the guitar, though he was also proficient with piano, clarinet, bass guitar, drums, and harmonica. Smith had a distinctive vocal style, characterized by his "whispery, spiderweb-thin delivery", and used multi-tracking to create vocal layers, textures, and harmonies...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionFolk Singer
Date of Birth6 August 1969
CityOmaha, NE
CountryUnited States of America
I'm the wrong kind of person to be really big and famous.
I think the suggestion that all my songs are personal is insulting because that assumes that I have a bunch of issues that I feel the need to unload on strangers. That is not the case. It also assumes that I just talk about myself the whole time which, again, is not true.
Doing battle with themselves that way, every day, all the time and sometimes it sucks, but other times it results in people making sort of a dream comprehensible to someone else.
You can take a picture of New York and one person looking at it will think it looks really depressing, frightening; and someone else will look at it and think of all the fun things you can do in New York. I think songs are kinda like that.
My girlfriend at the time convinced me to send these songs to Cavity Search. When they wanted to put out my record I was totally shocked.
I rode on a float in one of the parades in Mississippi. It's an experience.
So if somebody writes a song that appears to have some meaning then everybody thinks that it's a really heavy song.
I wondered if I would talk about drug use. But I guess, why hide it?
I'm just writing songs about how I feel or about how people I know feel.
Certain songs just feel a way that's hard to put into words and it's not happy and it's also not really sad but I couldn't say what it is
Fights problems with bigger problems.
Static in my head, the reflected sound of everything, tried to go to where it led, but it didn't lead to anything.
Nothing's gonna drag me down to a death that's not worth cheating.
I went walking around the city some more, people watching with a cold, blank stare. And I saw your face in everyone, I swear.