Tell Me How You Really Feel: a conversation with Courtney Barnett
by Bob Boilen, Robin Hilton and Catherine Zhang
July 31, 2018
The folks at NPR Music recently put out a call asking listeners to share their thoughts about the songs on Courtney Barnett's latest album, Tell Me How You Really Feel, and other tracks from her rich lyrical catalog. On this week's All Songs Considered, NPR Music's Bob Boilen, Robin Hilton and Catherine Zhang share some of those listener stories and thoughts, and Courtney talks about what inspires her, the creative process and how her music can be interpreted.
Listen to the full interview with the play button at the top of the page and read edited highlights below.
Courtney Barnett on the cathartic power of songs:
"Writing songs like ['I'm Not Your Mother, I'm Not Your Bitch'] in my private personal space and then sharing them is such a vulnerable thing. But then the unexpected element, which I guess I didn't think about or consider, is how people connect with them. And over time — especially the last few years of touring and people interpreting them in different ways and that comfort that we all find in music for whatever we need, like whatever our own situation is - we're always going to find what we need in a song."
On the Margaret Atwood quote in 'Nameless, Faceless:'
"I think the overall message and idea of that song has just been toiling around for forever. But that quote, I just wrote it down in my diary. 'Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.' I remember saying it and writing it down and thinking how powerful it was. And then, I must have slipped it in. I kind of always had the intention to take it out… I thought it was a bit too wordy. Then it ends up, I sing it around the house and I can't get rid of it. That song obviously touches on so many different kinds of levels of misogyny and violence and the anonymous online, seemingly harmless, versus the truly physical. So yeah, it encompasses that world."
On 'Anonymous Club' and the quest to understand intimacy:
"I feel like maybe it's a lifelong journey of figuring out that line of relationship and friendship and intimacy and vulnerability and all those things. But I mean, even back to the theme of interpretation — and I don't think that there's ever a right or wrong interpretation — but for me the 'Anonymous Club' was always more a kind of friendship, like the relationship of a friendship, and not so much in a loving relationship which is maybe what [the listener] was connecting with."
On which lyric of hers she'd get tattooed:
"It would probably be: 'I get most self defensive when I know I'm wrong,' which is from 'I'm Not Your Mother, I'm Not Your Bitch.' I think that's a good reminder every day to recognize where your anger and frustration come from in moments and deal with it appropriately."
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External Link
Courtney Barnett - official site