I am soooo uncomfortable -- NPR and Sigur Ros bring you the WORST INTERVIEW EVER!

Even NPR called it "possibly the worst interview in the history of electronic media." I was their interview!

(shudder)

IT was their interview. oops

The comments section is even better:

What kind of stupid medium posts interview with a name like "When Good Interviews Go Bad"? Only to put down the band maybe? I lost all respect for NPR.

Sent by maxell | 5:39 AM ET | 10-11-2007

We are the greatest nation in the world, we have the most beutiful women and also strongest mens.

Sent by matti | 6:24 AM ET | 10-11-2007

He's got those two at the end completely the wrong way round.

Menses?

All I can say is WOW.

i counted 1 decent question

and 4 dudes being shitheads

It would have been more difficult to listen to if either party had been, you know, not bad. They both sucked at interviews.

Oy vey.

This is what happens when you interview bashful dudes who don't have a good grasp of English.

Or, they're just dicks.

Their P.R. folks called and asked if we wanted them on the show, to which we quickly replied, "hells yeah".

They had the apperance of too cool for school. It didn't look like they were struggling to understand, it looked like they were just assholes.

And I'm not saying that the interviewer was top-notch, but still . . . ack! I'm still so uncomfortable.

it was really awkward!

i'd hope to give them the benefit of the doubt that they're just uncomfortable with speaking the English language.

BUT, they seemed like cocky douches.

that was a Grade A trainwreck.

the interviewer did fine with what he had to work with, they were just being cunts.

http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?id=4647&name=Sigur+R%F2s

dude can't even use words to sing - what were the odds he'd have alot for an interview?

"who is your favorite interviewer" "it's youuu-uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu"

Jonsi has a fine grasp of English, as I'm sure do the rest of the band. A friend of mine chatted with him for ages after their first headline gig in Dublin a few years ago, and he seemed like a fairly approachable, affable fellow.

Georg (their bass player) used to do/probably still does most of their interviews, because the rest aren't as fluent in English:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_H%C3%B3lm

HAHAH this comment rules:

Possible alternate names for Sigur Ros:

The Tumbleweeds
The Crickets (Buddy Holly already used)
The Not Everybody All at Onces
Jonsi n' Da Mornin' People
Silence is Colden
The Trees Falling in Woods
Iceband
Luke and the Dramatic Pauses
The Elipses

Sent by Saul Goodman | 3:08 PM ET | 10-11-2007

"Mum"

I think the band are dicks generally but, as a first question, "Did you start out like this or as a more regular sounding band?" is such a moronic question that you'd have to be a whore to give an enthusiastic answer & it was like that from then on.

So everyone who doesn't like being interviewed and only does it because they have to is a dick?

FFS, they made an album that had no titles and no lyrics just because they wanted the music to speak for itself. What makes anyone think they'd suddenly enjoy explaining themselves and their music in interviews all of a sudden?

No, I said they were dicks generally, but in this interview blameless, shitface.

shitface.

just what I needed, thanks. and bye.

If you agree to do an interview, you should at least make an attempt to say something!

I didn't think it was too bad tbh. given the interviewer was such a cockhead.

I would have responded much worse to some of those questions.

SR fanboys in comments thread = gold

Yeah, the guy was asking retarded questions. They gave honest, straightforward answers. Their English seems fine. (The answer to the Hopelandic question was good, even.) What were they supposed to say?

Potential alternate answers:
"We started out as a folky bar band but through a long journey in the twilight of our angst we discovered a new form of expression. It took years of planning and consideration of dialectical materialism."

"Yes, we always expected that we would be the kind of band that would sell 2M records. We spent a lot of time getting pissed in bars and picking fights out of sheer frustration until we were in sight of that goal."

"Our motivation for getting together was never 'just to make music.' We recognized a gleam in each other's eyes and knew a revolution was on the horizon."

...

I think you obviated the need for anyone to interview Radiohead anymore.

"Did you start out like this or as a more regular sounding band?" is such a moronic question that you'd have to be a whore to give an enthusiastic answer

This isn't a strange question at all, and his attempt at a follow-up ("did you plan this sound, or did it just happen") is a fairly sensible one -- you just have to prepared to run into a band that doesn't feel like demystifying its process.

A lot of people would give fine non-whorish answers to this, such as "actually, when we first got together, we were a metal cover band" or "our sound developed because we were playing a lot of parties, and wanted to do something fun and direct," or any of the millions of things bands happily say about themselves every day.

This interviewer's problem = when people are giving one-sentence answers like "yes, I guess so," you don't start asking 100-word questions; you follow up with really simple, conversational, impossible-to-avoid questions like "why is that?," or you kinda argue with them, or whatever else makes them engage with the conversation rather than answering like a survey form. (It's easy to imagine that bands would like to help you out to make their interview go well, but that's just ... not the case.)

Also: as soon as you address a question to a band of multiple people and they can't decide who's going to answer, it's time to start singling people out and asking direct questions, or at least warming them up with factual ones (like who joined the band when, or where they recorded their last record, or whatever).

boo hoo

nabisco otm btw

I mean really, how hard is to just give satisfactory answers to the questions and go about the rest of your day? They were just being dicks.

I think asking the first question but not directing it at anyone created the first pregnant pause and made for a poor rapport from then on. Providing what you presume the answer to be in a 30 second long question doesn't help either but they were a bit shitty to the interviewer.

I can understand Jonsi getting a bit arsey about the "Hopelandic" question as even the interviewer admits it's fucking lame of people to keep asking the same thing to get the same answer.

I've seen/heard other interviews with them when they've been fairly expansive and friendly. Maybe they were just having a bad day.

"This interviewer's problem = when people are giving one-sentence answers like "yes, I guess so," you don't start asking 100-word questions"

Replace the word "don't" with "shouldn't", and this is still wrong, but not as far wrong. The fact is that one does often react by getting wordy when conversations get awkward -- a smart print journalist may want to change tack completely, but a radio journalist, smart or dumb, is mostly thinking "Oh, shit -- dead air. FILL IT FILL IT FILL IT!!!!!!"

This interviewer's problem = when people are giving one-sentence answers like "yes, I guess so," you don't start asking 100-word questions; you follow up with really simple, conversational, impossible-to-avoid questions like "why is that?," or you kinda argue with them, or whatever else makes them engage with the conversation rather than answering like a survey form. (It's easy to imagine that bands would like to help you out to make their interview go well, but that's just ... not the case.)

He also commits the mistake of repeatedly giving them questions and then supplying an option, enabling them to just go "yeah, that's it, pretty much" over and over again.

Didn't he ask *closed* questions? I noticed that and if the interviewee doesn't like the questions then of course they'll be cocky and just answer with a short reply. His questions were much too long and he should have noticed that they didn't like the (mostly negative and way too long) questions about music.

FFS, they made an album that had no titles and no lyrics just because they wanted the music to speak for itself. What makes anyone think they'd suddenly enjoy explaining themselves and their music in interviews all of a sudden?

I understand you, Stan, but if that's indeed the case why the fuck did they agree to a Q&A? I mean, sheesh, it's not the hardest thing in the world, just play the game and answer a few questions. Five minutes of work and that's it.

Sure it was cringe-worthy, but not that awful. As an interviewer we've all experienced that. I think it was a bit silly of'em to put that on their site (the text anyway).

It wasn't that bad at all. Dead air is cool. Being a shitty interviewer, not so much.

Are you guys idiots? The idea of those being "closed questions" is totally redic. NPR is for a general audience and often the listener won't have a reference point to begin from. If they had answered properly, he would have been able to use their answers as a springboard for more questions.

yeah exactly. this isnt pitchfork fm.

xpost dude, apparently not, cause they refused to give him replies. ok, they were dicks about it, but as an interviewer you should try another approach if it doesn't click.

What would you have asked?

they agreed to and even requested the interview. bad questions? man up and change the subject.

xpost They seemed more keen to talk about traveling, so I would run with that and actually joked about it all. Then again I would have flunked it as well. Shit happens.

More interesting questions he could have possibly asked for a general-audience programme (riffed off the top of a non-journalist's head):

"Could you describe your sound?"
"You do something a bit unusual where you play the electric guitar with a bow? Could you describe what that sounds like? Where did you get the idea to do this?"
"How has selling 2 million records affected how you function as a band?"
"The Kronos Quartet performed an arrangement of a song of yours, treating it like a classical composition. What did you think of their version?"

"Can you explain Finland to us?"

Maybe the people defending them are having trouble comprehending the english language?

I have trouble comprehending your last post so you might be onto something.

Dead air is cool.
OTM

*the questions are inane. the interviewer is sooooo obsessed with their sound.

*i'm sure the singer by now i sooooo sick of hearing questions about Hopelandic or whatever it is that he sings.

*the interview isn't that bad, really. just really awkward.

also, those comments are better than the interview. i.e.:

Holy crap guys. I couldnt watch more than like 20 seconds of that. That was painful. Theyre a great band, I love them. However,, anyone who sings an entire album in a made up language is obviously a pretentious a*****e.

In terms of squirm-inducing awfulness, this interview isn't even in the league of Terry Gross's interview with Gene Simmons. Which is to say that it's not good and it's not so bad it's "good". It's just smack in the middle of uninterestingville. NPR's/Luke Burbank's attempt to pretend that it's somehow worthy of any attention whatsoever is pure chicanery.

Seriously, I'm not sure why we're arguing over who should get blamed more:

1. Sigur Ros = have good press opportunity and are either uninterested in or really bad at helping it turn out well

2. interviewer = gets nervous and doesn't try any of the tactics that could make things go better, which, as an awkward interviewer myself, I can't rag on him too much for

P.S. N, I understand the nervousness and desire to fill dead air, but that doesn't change the fact that certain interview techniques can actually break through this kind of deadlock. It takes quick thinking, but if you can fire back ten-word follow-ups to someone's ten-word answers, you turn the interview into the kind of direct conversation people can't escape from -- and then you can explain things to the listener in the form of lengthy asides (instead of the normal interview artifice where you're just prompting the subject to tell the listener stuff you already know).

yeah the solution with an interview like this is just to press the interviewee into elaborating on his responses - it can take three volleys before he'll get pissed off enough to say "look, here's what I think," but it usually works

I think NPR is good at being reporters on non musical issues. NPR has always been so fucking boring with musical interviews.

I have not checked out the link but i can only see this interview as being the most *exciting* NPR interview because for once there is actual tension in the awkwardness and dead air. That must be more entertaining than old school public radio drivel with talented artists that put you to sleep.

I would castrate Rush Limbaugh if I could get away with it but Rush Limbaugh would do a better interview with Sigur Ros than NPR would.

cc: NPR, Sigur Ross

subj: How to do an Interview