Cuepoint: I feel like you’d be a good person to discuss the “Blurred Lines” ruling with. What were your thoughts on how that came down?

Ben Gibbard: I’m certainly, by no means, a legal expert on such matters. I’m not very familiar with either song, to be perfectly honest. I was reading a lot about it, as I’m sure a lot of people were, but I didn’t go through the YouTube hole of the mash-ups and that kind of stuff. I do think, though, as we continue to live an ever-increasing meta existence, as a culture, where we are continuing to borrow from works that already exist and taking elements from them to create new ones, I certainly think the ruling sets a fairly dangerous precedent for that. And it doesn’t necessarily have to extend just to music. It seems to me as if we’re dealing with a situation where things are certainly similar, but not necessarily exactly the same.

I think a very clear cut example of, dare I say, plagiarism is the Sam Smith-Tom Petty situation where you have a song that is flagrantly… it is the hook from one song being used for another song. To me, that was a very obvious example of plagiarism. If somebody had done that to me, I would probably take a similar course of action. Or I would expect a similar course of action to be taken against me, if that were the case. But, in the “Blurred Lines” situation, I’ve heard a little bit of it and it seems like a dangerous precedent has been set. We’ll have to see how that proliferates itself further down the road, I suppose.

Sure. And all art is derivative because, like you said, we live in a shared society. But the thing that stuck in my craw about that case was that it seemed like Robin Thicke sat down, played that tune, and said, “I want to make something just like this.” Then, he did that, but didn’t give any credit. Plus the pre-emptive lawsuit…

Well, yeah. And also you have to be a real fucking idiot to, ostensibly, take the vibe of something and then admit to the press that you did that. [Laughs] I mean, look, on many occasions, we have referenced previous work by other artists and said, “Isn’t this a cool drum feel? We should try to do something like this.” Or like, “Hey, you know, isn’t the feel of this song really great?” But I would never talk to you about it. I would never give you a roadmap to a song in which we had utilized previously existing ideas. So, as far as I’m concerned, the central take-away lesson is, “Don’t be an idiot like Robin Thicke and tell everybody that you basically tried to steal something.” [Laughs] Through all of the “What does it mean legally?” stuff, I think, more than anything, it means “Don’t be a fucking idiot. Don’t admit when you’re influenced by a particular work.”

[Laughs] Well, do you ever worry that all the good songs have been written? Or do you feel like there’s an infinite source out there?

I don’t feel that all the great songs have been written. I do feel that where we are now, certainly with rock & roll music, is that so much of it is variations on themes. But I think that it’s one’s particular creativity and individuality that comes out within that variation on a particular theme that makes a song great.

I think there’s something that feels so good about a 1–4–5 chord progression. It’s a very standard chord progression and it just feels good to the ears. When a song goes from a 4-chord down to a 1-chord, the resolution that our brains recognize and that feel and sound good to us are not going to cease to sound good to us if we start creating new whacky chord structures that don’t appeal to us. I don’t know what it is in our lizard brains that — certainly in Western music — make these progressions and melodies sound good to us, but they do. I would much rather hear a song that’s written from a fresh perspective, using ideas that have existed in rock & roll for 50 years, than something that is incredibly abrasive to my ears but is new. I could write you something that you’ve never heard right now. But it’s not going to sound good. You’re not going to want to listen to it. The thing that makes us want to listen to things, and the thing that makes music really embedded in our lives, is that there’s something new-yet-familiar sounding about it.

Right. The Hindustani Classical scale and micro-tones are different, but American ears don’t know how to hear those tones and enjoy them.

Yeah, that’s very true. Maybe someday we’ll evolve to find a similar sense of familiarity with them, but I don’t think that day is coming any time soon.

[Laughs] So are you a guy who feels like songs are just out there floating around, waiting to be captured or do you think songs are created in a more internal, technical process that the composer goes through?

I certainly have written things that I felt were beamed down to me from somewhere else. And they’re some of the best songs, I think, that I’ve written — some of the most well-known and appreciated songs I’ve written. Something like “I Will Follow You into the Dark” or “Such Great Heights” ► were songs that I wrote incredibly quickly. After weeks of banging my head against the wall trying to write songs, those songs, when I wrote them, seemingly came out of nowhere. It did feel that there was some sort of spiritual transcendence happening and the song being beamed down to me. But, at the end of the day, I wrote those songs.

You still have to craft and shape and mold it…

Sure, of course. What I do find interesting is a point that a friend of mine once stated, which was, “You know, being a writer of any kind of discipline is kind of like being a magician. You’re defying the laws of physics.” There’s nothing there. And then there’s something there. That defies the first law of physics. So, in that sense, maybe there is something spiritual about the process of writing, in general, but having gone through all of the longer periods of writer’s block and unsuccessful writing, I subscribe more to the philosophy that “inspiration likes to find you hard at work” more than “you are just a vessel for some kind of cosmic transference of music that, if you’re in the right place at the right time, it’s beamed down to you.”

Got it. Is it weird to have people rooting for your misery because they like your sad songs the best?

[Laughs] Well, I was happier than I’ve been in years when I wrote these songs. I get it. I get that that’s a quip that people have thrown around in relation to this record and the previous record, either wishing that I would write from the point of misery or just simply be miserable so I could write songs. But that’s really never been the mindset I’ve been in while I’ve been creating these things.

When you’re alone in a room with an instrument, more times than not, at least I feel very introspective because I’m alone and playing something on an instrument. Whatever I’m playing is kind of dictating the tone of the lyric and where the song’s going to go. I think that environment plays into that — living in the Northwest for the better part of my life plays into that. When you’re writing songs in January and it’s the 30th straight day of rain, it’s hard to write “Shiny Happy People.”

…which is good because that one’s already been written.

Yeah, exactly. I’d get sued by R.E.M. and that would be really awkward when my friend Peter [Buck] hit me with a lawsuit. But there’s a reason a lot of the music that comes from Southern California sounds a certain way, I suppose. Environment certainly is a factor.

But, yeah, I get it. I understand what people mean by that. I think one of the many reasons people gravitate toward sad music and melancholy is that, when you’re listening to a sad song and you’re feeling that way, it gives you the impression that you’re not alone in your melancholy. That’s a really empowering feeling when you’re going through something difficult and you feel like you’re a freak or you’re all alone, if you’re feeling this way. And then you’re listening to a song that’s echoing a similar sentiment, it’s very empowering.

And happy songs just don’t feel that way. You may crank up “Walking on Sunshine” when you’re driving in your car on a nice day and you’re headed to the beach, but I highly doubt that Katrina and the Waves have people coming up to them saying, “Hey, man. ‘Walking on Sunshine’ really helped me when I was in a really happy place in my life.’” You know what I mean? That’s not to diminish the value of that song. I personally love that song. It comes on the radio, I crank it up. But people don’t do that. They don’t go, “Hey, R.E.M. I was really happy one day, and ‘Shiny Happy People’ just really made me happier. So thank you for that. I really needed it.’” That’s just not how it goes. That’s why people’s relationship with sad songs are the way they are. Because people do come up to me and say, “Hey, I was in a really difficult place in my life and ‘I Will Follow You into the Dark’ was very helpful to me. It gave me a lot of comfort.” That’s not something that I set out trying to do, but I do appreciate it when people say that to me.

I’ll admit… on the soundtrack to my life, “I Will Possess Your Heart” comes up in a number of scenes. So I get it, too.

[Laughs] Yeah, totally.

I know every artist’s goal is to keep progressing and challenging and improving their art. So is it ever sort of insulting when people hold on to your early work? Is that a sort of insinuation that whatever you’ve done since doesn’t measure up to that? Or do you chalk it up to personal tastes?

I think we all, being fans of music, we understand that dynamic when the first record — or handful of records — you hear by a band comes in a place in your life when you’re open to them and you’re ready to have a new favorite band and they just knock your socks off and everything they’re saying speaks directly to you. It almost seems that, in order to continue that dynamic between a fan and an artist over a long period of time, requires both the artist and the fan to be on almost identical life paths at the same time. Does that make any sense?