Jenny Hval Quotes:

The body should not just be something you see. It's also the inside of it. It's frightening and abstract and much more than pretty or not pretty. The shape of it is boring.

Topics: Body, Shapes, Boring, Not Pretty

It feels very different to have long, thick, brightly colored hair. It makes me feel so conflicted to wear, and I believe showing a conflicted person onstage is actually really interesting and emotionally engaging. I'm trying to not just be the person standing on the outside and looking at something, but to actually be it, in a way.

Topics: Believe, Hair, Long, Red Hair

When I was growing up, I would try to sing out of key very consciously. I was probably afraid of trying too hard to do something beautiful, and then I just wasn't good enough. But I've learned that I was also on the outside - wanting more challenge by living in that more conventional world.

Topics: Beautiful, Growing Up, Keys, Trying Too Hard, Wanting More

I've always seen myself as the person listening to alternative music and all that - generic indie person. I always tried to be the least pretty I could be.

Topics: Listening, Alternatives, Alternative Music

Everybody needs to read a lot of revolutionary stuff, because the revolution is a big part of our will to live.

Topics: Needs, Stuff, Revolution

I'm constantly reading and trying to enlighten myself to how the world works in its silent ways to make everything seem normal when it's actually incredibly discriminating.

source: - "Jenny Hval's Soft Dick Rock". Interview with Jenn Pelly, pitchfork.com. June 15, 2015.

Topics: Reading, Trying, World

I disagree very strongly with people saying "that battle is over." If you've started a battle, I don't think it ever ends. The illusion that it's ended can reverse any good results that have come from it.

source: - Source: pitchfork.com

Topics: Thinking, People, Battle

If you believe that you have nothing to fight for, that just means the people in power, and the people with money, can sneak anything into your life. Everything can be taken away from you.

source: - "Jenny Hval's Soft Dick Rock". Interview with Jenn Pelly, pitchfork.com. June 15, 2015.

Topics: Believe, Taken, Mean

Health is so important now, it's ridiculous - the body has become frightening, this thing that will kill you if you don't keep really healthy. The body is the enemy now.

source: - "Jenny Hval's Soft Dick Rock". Interview with Jenn Pelly, pitchfork.com. June 15, 2015.

Topics: Healthy, Enemy, Important

Everything you do is so personal. In the end, it doesn't matter so much if you write about your own life or not. It's going to be as much artifice when it comes out as a piece of music. Everything is in character in a way. But that's a great thing.

Topics: Writing, Character, Pieces

Very devoted religious people are so extroverted, but at the same time, they're so repressed sexually and so conservative. I've never been able to understand that combination, but I'm fascinated by it.

Topics: Religious, People, Able, Repressed

Soft things are terrifying. They're the real signals of death. Images of strength can never be that terrifying. It's the images of weakness that are a real apocalypse.

source: - "Jenny Hval's Soft Dick Rock". Interview with Jenn Pelly, pitchfork.com. June 15, 2015.

Topics: Real, Weakness, Apocalypse

Gym is a center of capitalist breakdown, and everything is focused on the individual.

source: - "Jenny Hval's Soft Dick Rock". Interview with Jenn Pelly, pitchfork.com. June 15, 2015.

Topics: Individual, Breakdown, Capitalist

There's a great relationship between pop music and the way the body could be seen from the inside - when I was singing or listening to music I would change shape in my head, becoming all kinds of things and people. Music is a way of making your body.

source: - "Jenny Hval's Soft Dick Rock". Interview with Jenn Pelly, pitchfork.com. June 15, 2015.

Topics: People, Listening, Singing

Norway is pretty forward thinking in terms of gender equality, but we don't seem to practice it as well as we think. I'm constantly thinking: How much power have we really gained? We have to keep fighting to even keep what we've fought for already.

Topics: Fighting, Thinking, Practice, Constantly Thinking, Forward Thinking

When I write stuff that's provocative, I want people to think about that, too. I'm in between a pop musician and an artist in that way. I want people to be part of the music as they listen, but I also want them to think: What was that?

source: - Source: pitchfork.com

Topics: Writing, Artist, Thinking

I'm very interested in the visual world because I'm also very interested in feminism. I find that the world of watching takes us into the most psychotic state of, like, "You are this one person, but you have to become another person to see these images."

source: - Source: pitchfork.com

Topics: Feminism, World, Like You

I really hated being the Norwegian girl in every single conversation in Australia, so I tried to make my Norwegian-ness invisible, speaking like whoever was around me.

source: - Source: pitchfork.com

Topics: Girl, Australia, Invisible, Norwegians

When you're outside of genre, you can expose more vulnerability.

source: - Source: pitchfork.com

Topics: Genre, Vulnerability

I'm not in any way trying to make statements that are not also invaded by emotions and abstract ideas that I don't really understand myself. It's more interesting when I can do that.

source: - Source: pitchfork.com

Topics: Ideas, Interesting, Trying

I couldn't even have a guitar. But I got a three-track recorder that was so small that I could take it with me. Then I started recording and writing properly. I recorded lots of voices, not just my own. I was interested in people speaking and singing English and trying out words.

source: - Source: pitchfork.com

Topics: Writing, Guitar, Voice

I'm not trying to be a solution or create a freer, utopian world. I think my music dreams of it, though.

source: - Source: pitchfork.com

Topics: Dream, Thinking, Trying

I'm obsessed with voices in film. I have this memory of how people say words, even on the most intensely stupid reality TV show.

source: - Source: pitchfork.com

Topics: Memories, Stupid, Reality

On an emotional level, I don't want to be a guide. I want people to hear things and experience them their own way.

source: - Source: pitchfork.com

Topics: Emotional, People, Levels

I've never been good at being nostalgic, and I've never been able to focus on sound without having a voice that's very here-and-now.

source: - Source: pitchfork.com

Topics: Voice, Focus, Sound

I'm inspired by that rawness in very direct communication. My work is not meant to keep people happy or give them an escape.

source: - Source: pitchfork.com

Topics: Communication, People, Giving, Rawness, Direct Communication

I've always been so interested in the way the body feels when singing or being on stage, or being in the audience for that matter. It doesn't have to be the typical "rock" experience. It can be so much more.

source: - Source: pitchfork.com

Topics: Rocks, Singing, Typical

I got really interested in the language used in blogs written by young girls - a young person's aggression, which is always lacking from the visual world.

source: - Source: pitchfork.com

Topics: Girl, World, Language

I've always been a fan of reading art catalogues from exhibitions, and plays, and I've worked with a surrealist German playwright, Heiner Müller.

source: - Source: pitchfork.com

Topics: Art, Reading, Play, Surrealist, Catalogues

I remember being very, very aware of gender when I was really young. Not necessarily in a bad way. Maybe it's a little bit because I'm Norwegian and how I've been brought up.

source: - Source: pitchfork.com

Topics: Norwegians