Watch Win Butler Talk Arcade Fire’s History and New Record, Bash Trump and Spotify in 2-Hour Lecture

Last week, Arcade Fire‘s Win Butler gave a talk at Red Bull Music Academy, taking place this month in Montréal. He discussed the history of the band, detailing the writing of many songs, as well as the making of their upcoming album. He also talked about David Bowie’s death and Arcade Fire’s relationship with the city of Montréal, bashed Donald Trump, and criticized streaming services. You can watch the full talk, which runs almost two hours, below.

While chronicling Arcade Fire’s career, Butler went into detail about the composition and inspiration of songs like “Laïka,” “Headlights Look Like Diamonds,” “No Cars Go,” and “Ready to Start.” He also discussed his upbringing in Houston, Texas, the influence of his musician grandfather (a “magical dude” who played with Duke Ellington), his harpist mother (“I took [her] to see Joanna Newsom—she’s like, ‘That’s what I was trying to do!’”), David Bowie’s death (“Millions of people are all of the sudden like ‘Why are there less colors in the universe?’”), and shared several stories about the time he’s spent in New Orleans with wife and bandmate Régine Chassagne. 

Arcade Fire are reportedly working on the follow-up to 2013’s Reflektor. When asked about it, Butler joked that the band “released a record like a year ago,” saying, “We just called it something else and no one liked it, so it kind of disappeared. So, we broke up.” He later made a quip that the next record might be called Cut the Crap 2 (in reference to the Clash’s final record Cut the Crap). 

Butler also talked about the influence Montréal had on him and his art:

“Culturally, Montréal had everything I thought NYC actually had. Maybe New York did have that but couldn’t find it anywhere, went to shows every night, all I found was people not from there, never-ending showcase of industry, and getting to Montréal all of our first shows were weird modern dance shows, band playing in someone’s loft, play records and dance afterwards, rent was so cheap…”

Elsewhere in the lecture he admonished Donald Trump (“he’s a complete fucking nightmare and a joke”) and discussed the upcoming U.S. presidential election: 

“I think there’s a lot of inmates in private prisons in Louisiana that would probably feel much differently about the outcome of the election. There’s a lot of kids that will not have access to healthcare and to education, there’s like millions and millions and millions of people whose lives will, the practical day to day of their lives will be extremely shaped…”

Butler concluded the lecture by criticizing streaming services for the financial challenges they present to musicians: 

“The sad thing about the Spotify world, that’s been totally eviscerated. 10,000 streams is like 25 cents now, while back then selling that much was enough to be in a band and do it seriously, weird economy of the whole thing is the tough one, continue to have a problem with, the infinite content model that we’re in, like to think we’d do the same thing…”

Watch Win Butler perform under his DJ Windows 98 alias at SXSW on Pitchfork.tv:

Comments are closed.