And more lessons from his expansive third album, Pure Comedy.
In fact, his stream-of-consciousness ramblings became so consuming last fall, he decided to take a six-monthTwitter sabbatical.
I was working on [my new] album and was distracted by the phone.
Credit: Guy Lowndes
(Helogged back onlast month.)
Because if you hate something, you shouldnt sit around thinking about it.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY:Honeybeartackled the intricacies of love, butPure Comedydeals with more global themes.
What precipitated that shift?JOSH TILLMAN:They arent so disparate.
When you start talking about love and you keep pulling the thread, you get to these other questions.
This album starts [by] talking about the nature of love.
Love is the substance of survival.
Were so helpless more helpless than, like, any other creature on this planet.
If we are not taken care of, then we die real easy; our skulls are soft.
You think about babies screaming in the night so that predators know exactly where the humans are.
Predators are like, These weird animals are completely helpless.
So we come up with these constructs to introduce order into the world.Totally.
Youre like, I have that same pain.
What I love about humanity is our absurdity and our weakness and our comedy.
I cant think of a better way to spend ones life than the pursuit of freedom.
I was reading this thing the other day that was like, Is life a simulation?
Its a simulation and there are these glitches that are happening.
Donald Trump is a glitch.
The [La La Land] Oscar flub was a glitch.
The Cubs winning the World Series was a glitch.
That, to me, is not freedom.
When people go, How did Trump happen!
I dont know what the f is going on either.
In yourextended Pure Comedy film, you said you want to make music, not entertainment.
How do you reconcile that with your role in popular music?Entertainment has become a state of mind.
Its no longer really a commodity; its a way of life.
Music is not a single serving experience.
You live with an album.
If thats what they need right now, thats totally fine.
I want it to be useful.
But I like the idea of someone revisiting the album 10 years from now, 20 years from now.
Entertainment doesnt really do that.
Entertainment gets old and it gets embarrassing and it dies.
And you never think of it.
When you look at art from 20 years ago, its as good as it was then.
Weve lost the distinction between the two.
Its important as a culture to make a distinction.
People go, Well, but youre an entertainer.
And Im like, F you.
Jimmy Fallon is an entertainer.
I am not an entertainer.And if you cant see the difference, then you are truly cynical.
Entertainment is about forgetting your life and art is about remembering your life.
So whether I am successful or not at being an artist, that is what I aspire to.
Thats what the takeaway was but not because they dont get the song.
Youd have to be really willfully ignorant to not get what that song is about.
I dont think people are as stupid as they pretend they are.
People pretend to be really stupid on the internet because outrage is now a commodity.
Its what people want.
Look at the internet.
It started very idealistic: This is going to be true democracy.
It became a vehicle for porn.Then it became porn and outrage.
Once [the Oculus Rift] becomes standard issue.
I dont want that to happen.
People who really hate me could get into that thing and simulate murdering me.
Theres a sequence of zeroes and ones that would do that.
There are only going to be infamous people.
Jennifer Lawrence will be famous and everyone else will be infamous.
So why did you mention Taylor in that song?Nothing else rhymed with Oculus Rift.
But Taylor Swift is more significant than just rhyming.
Youve talked about how youdropped acid at her concert.
You did thosecovers of her songs.
Why Taylor Swift?I dont know.
Last year…
She was inescapable.That was the thing.
And when youre a songwriter there is this sort of recycling that happens.
This weird little avalanche happened.
And then before you know it, shes just in my subconscious.
And my songs are the byproduct of my subconscious mind.
Its a pretty simple equation.
Have you two met?Yeah, shes lovely.
I had a very pleasant, brief interaction with her.
Talk about someone who has to deal with a lot of psychic craziness.
Thats the point of the song.
Human beings should not be turned into entertainment.
I really believe that.
Theres imagery here of cities burning, the apocalypse coming to pass.
Do you buy into that worldview?
How literal are these lyrics?Im not like stockpiling a bunker or anything.
But the worlds gonna be fine.
There will be some kind of ice age or something, but the planets gonna be fine.
What are we gonna do, explode the Earth?
Were just gonna kill ourselves.
Its like, lets worry about each other.
If we really did, then we would also stop doing s that is fing with the environment.
Because whats fing with the environment is a direct result of us not taking care of each other.
If we focused on that, the world would look a lot different.
We wouldnt have nuclear waste.
We wouldnt have children picking through our discarded iPhones in Cambodia.
Youve worked with Lady Gaga and Beyonce.
There was no industry maneuvering.
It was really simple.
Gaga is the real deal.
Music is just everywhere all the time now.
Thats what pop music is: music to be everywhere all the time.
And I wanted to know, how does this music happen?
What does it look like when it is being made?
Who cares very much about truth.
I think its insane to not have a choice in whether or not you hear certain types of music.
This goes beyond music.
I dont remember making a decision to know all about Donald Trump.
