McBriare Samuel Lanyon “Mac” DeMarco is a Canadian singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer. DeMarco has released six full-length studio albums, his debut Rock and Roll Night Club (2012), 2 (2012), Salad Days (2014), Another One (2015), This Old Dog (2017), and Here Comes the Cowboy (2019). His style of music has been described as “blue wave” and “slacker rock”, or, by DeMarco himself, “jizz jazz”. These Mac DeMarco quotes will motivate you.
Best Mac DeMarco Quotes
- “Everybody’s a multifaceted, emotional, living being, I think. Sometimes it’s fun to goof around, sometimes you’ve got to think about things, sometimes you’ve got to be strange, and then you’ve got to be jiggly. That’s just what being a human’s all about.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I’m just being myself. I’m not a very complex guy; I’m not a very studious, crazy intellectual guy. I’m just a guy.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “When you’re growing up, you just take what you’ve got.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “Patience is important, and also, if you don’t want to do it, don’t do it. But if you do, do. That’s a general rule in how I live my life.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “Regardless of how funny I want to be, I don’t ever have a problem speaking from my heart or speaking honestly to people.” ~ Mac DeMarco
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“Perfectionist? That’s not something I am.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I was having a good time before, but you grow up after a couple years and realize, “I can’t get drunk like this every night.” Things change.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I mean, Lady Gaga is trying to be a freak or whatever but that quality of being very meaningful and heartfelt, but also having a sense of humor about it, bands don’t do that anymore. Lady Gaga’s songs are cheesy. The Beatles weren’t cheesy. That’s the hardest thing with music: to not be cheesy, but also be meaningful. That’s the goal, I think.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I have a lot of friends that I’d like to shout out but I don’t think anyone will know who they are.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “In Europe, people tend to be very respectful. They try not to make too much noise at inappropriate times. In other countries, people can be very still. Sometimes I’m not sure if a crowd is into it until the end when they usually want me to do something crazy for the encore.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “You know, when your poisoning your body night after night after night, you end up chipping a couple years off your life. I’ve always wanted to be able to do this and now that I am, it’s hard to complain.” ~ Mac DeMarco
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“Once a song comes out, these songs aren’t mine. They’re everybodys. So there you go.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “The songs that I’m able to write are the songs I’m able to write, whatever they may be. The path I’ve cut for myself is pop music – love-y pop music. That’s what I enjoy doing. And I don’t think I’m going to get sick of it anytime soon.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I take making music seriously, but you have to have a sense of humor about yourself. I invite people into my life. That’s how I do it.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “‘Salad Days’ refers to a youthful or innocent period. And a lot of people having been asking me already so you jaded? And I’m not, I’m 23. It’s me reflecting, I had to re-learn to have fun with music and I had to re-count my blessings.” ~ Mac DeMarco
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“Journalists say my music is “blue wave,” or “dreamy,” or “jangly-slacker jewel,” and none of it really makes sense to me.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “The time came around where the label was like, “Well, if you want something to come out in early 2017, it’s going to have to be done by, like, so-and-so.” So I plucked some of the old songs and wrote some new ones. Everybody keeps asking me, “Is this your L.A. record?” I was doing songs in a bedroom in New York, I was doing it in a bedroom in L.A. The only difference is when I look out the window, there’s palm trees instead of snow.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I think people do expect something a little weird to happen. Maybe they’ve seen something I did once on the Internet and expect that I’m gonna do that every night.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I had a band called the Sound Of Love and that was R&B songs about girls in my high school. I played in some other indie bands who were trying to make it big; those sucked. Then I started Makeout Videotape and that was that.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I don’t have that much experience in the studio, but I’m always really uncomfortable when I’m there. You’re on the clock and it costs a lot of money.” ~ Mac DeMarco
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Neil Young is the prime example, the grand goal, if you will. He’s still shredding, and he never lost his credibility.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I like guitar. It just turned out that it’s the instrument I learned to play. I have a lot of respect for it and I’m learning more and more everyday.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “You kind of have to be like ” What have you been working the last five years for? Why are you complaining?” It’s essentially me talking myself out of being a crybaby indie rock butthead.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I’m not really good at writing sad sappy ballads. In terms of the lyrics not matching the vibe of the music, that’s kind of the way my career has gone; everyone is a little confused about it all the time.” ~ Mac DeMarco
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“I hate living in a really small apartment, living in a shoebox, not being able to play the drums, not having space. It sucks.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “Usually when festivals are really huge it’s kind of weird. It’s totally fun for me and my band to play in front of a crowd that doesn’t necessarily know who we are, but festivals get pretty impersonal when they get super large.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “It’s so crazy with the Internet and being able to play shows to people who are actually interested in you. I feel so lucky when that happens.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “When we were in Beijing, they were all “it’s an honor, you’re playing at the oldest rock club in Beijing”. And I was all “oh crazy how old is it?” And then were all: “5 years old.”Asia is just very different.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I don’t think anybody has a choice. Everybody has to kind of interact with all the craziness right now. I don’t like to engage – a lot of people made a point of doing the social media thing, and I think that social media is complete trash, so I treat it like that. I like Instagram. I like the funny photos. Other than that, it’s not for me.” ~ Mac DeMarco
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“Going on tour, you don’t have a lot of time to mull things over. You’re just kind of, “Another beer, another show, another song.”” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I recorded this album in a windowless room in Brooklyn by myself. I think Chamber of Reflection sums the album up better than Salad Days to tell you the truth.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “[Making music] only turned into this weird job in the last year or so. Once I figured that out, I was having a blast.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I’m not very good at playing piano, so I usually hit chords with my right hand. And those chords came, and I was just singing a little bit.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I lived in Brooklyn for a year and I moved out to Rockaway Beach. I’ve been living here for two years now. I put my address on the album, so I have a lot of visitors all the time.” ~ Mac DeMarco
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“Connan Mockasin from New Zealand. I met him a little while ago, I love his music.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I really love a lot of Japanese music, like Ryuichi Sakamoto and this guy I got really into, Tatsuro Yamashita. When I was a little younger, I thought synthesizers meant Kraftwerk, cold, robotic, weird, Autobahn. But these guys are having a lot of fun on these things. Sometimes. Sometimes it’s very somber. They could go either way.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “That’s kind of the weird thing about Salad Days. I had to block time off from touring and tell my management and label like no press, no nothing. Let me make an album. You guys are running me dead.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I do get labeled as a guitar band, but the only reason is that’s the instrument I know how to play. The guitar is serving the song I’m writing. But I’m learning how to play keyboard better now so that’ll start serving the song as well; it’ll be another flavor. I’m not going to switch it up with big, fat drum machine beats and real swoopy synths, but yeah…” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “It was weird [touring with them]. It felt more like we were playing for Phoenix. They asked us because they’re fans of what we do.” ~ Mac DeMarco
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“If I feel like I’m going too far in one direction, I just can it. It’s a weird thing. Some of my songs might be cheesy; I try and keep it light. It’s hard to explain.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I thought I knew Elton John, but then it was like, “Woah, Elton’s a pimp! He’s really amazing.” And since Billy and Elton are homies, I’m finally getting it – the two-piano boys.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I’ve recorded at home since I was a teenager, and I’m able to sit here in my underwear and keep trying different things until something works. I think if I did that in a studio the engineer would be like, “What the hell is wrong with you?”” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I never liked living in Montreal. And I don’t really like the music scene there. It was never my cup of tea, and I never felt like I ever fit in.” ~ Mac DeMarco
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“I mean, Manhattan is cool. But weird parts, I like that. Jamaica, Queens, that’s great.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I do like touring. Sometimes it’s crazy. We’re really lucky and we’ve gone all over the world. You can’t complain about getting paid to see the world. I’ve had to reel myself in a little bit at some points.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “[Chamber of Reflection off of Salad Days]I think it’s probably that one. There’s no guitar on that song, I’ve never recorded a song with absolutely no guitar, which is interesting. The idea behind it, well it’s a Free Mason reference because before they become Free Mason’s they had to go into this room called the Chamber of Reflection where they think about the life they brought with them, the life they’ve lived up until this point and all their wrong and right doings. And that’s basically what I did with this album.” ~ Mac DeMarco
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“I like a lot of west coast stuff like Aerial Pink.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “We went on tour with Phoenix. I don’t really know anything about Phoenix I’d heard a couple songs. And I thought, I don’t really know if I want to go on this, it’s kind of weird, kind of a pain in the ass for us. But everyone was like YOU HAVE TO DO IT, it’s going to be so good for your career. And I mean I don’t know if it was good for our career but the guys in the band were super huge sweethearts.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “Their [Phoenix] audience wasn’t into us at all. The way most of the venues worked was there was no alcohol on the floor so usually during our set most people were in the lobby getting their drink on.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I mean it was weird. But Phoenix watched us every night. But it’s like they’re not even a band, they’re like a corporation. They bring a staff of like 40 people.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “My music is kind of laid back, it doesn’t have super crispy, shiny production, and I’m not singing my heart out or whatever. But that whole idea of blogs declaring: “this is the new denomination for this sound” is ridiculous to me.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I’m getting paid to tour and travel and I don’t have to work a shitty job. And it’s weird because you like start getting pissed off about that.” ~ Mac DeMarco
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“I’ve never done an album in the same place really – I like to be able to remember where I did every single one of them .” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “Over a year before I started recording Salad Days, so I finally sat down and was like I have to do this. And it did feel like a chore. I was looking at it in a completely wrong way, trying to one-up myself. Just the typical sophomore album bullshit. The main thing I got out of it is I eventually gave up on all that stuff. I had to re-learn why I liked making music in the first place, why I liked recording in my room all the time. Because it’s fun. It’s fun for me.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “[ If I wasn’t making music ] I’d probably end up going to school, I never went to school. Or just give up and get my plumber’s ticket and move back to Edmonton and become an alcoholic.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I get asked that a lot: “What do you think your role is, with all the people that look up to you?” I’m an entertainer, you know? I’m not trying to bombard anybody with anything, but at the same time, face-to-face or in real life, if I’m talking to some kid, I have opinions just like everybody else does.” ~ Mac DeMarco
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“[Juan Wauters] got the tips for Queens because he grew up there. So him and my roommate, Matt Volz, they hooked me up, New York Style.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “With the “old dog” stuff, maybe the term “old” is in there, but I’m 26. I’m not that old. It’s mostly like, “Ah, you dirty old dog!” I’m saying it more like that. I’m still ripping. I’m ready to rip. I’ll make a bunch more records and have a nice time. We’ll see what happens.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “[My House By The Water] is a nice instrumental track. The sound of the water is from the same place where the front photo was taken. I live really close to the airport, so there’s also planes going over. It’s kind of to remind me of living in there because I’m not gonna be living in there for very much longer.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I didn’t want to play music because the whole family did it. I wanted to work in a cubicle. I saw Office Space as a young tween and missed the point of the movie. I was like, “This looks good!”.” ~ Mac DeMarco
- “I think recording at home feels more organic and injects some more personality into the music.” ~ Mac DeMarco
