February 20, 2015
Arcade Fire pose backstage with the award for album of the year at the 53rd annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 13, 2011, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Arcade Fire pose backstage with the award for album of the year at the 53rd annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 13, 2011, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)


Rolling Stone | Huffington Post | The Guardian

Arcade Fire’s Will Butler is planning to write a song based on headlines he finds in The Guardian every day for a week, the newspaper reported Friday.

The song-writing sprint is inspired by Bob Dylan’s penchant for scouring newspapers for song ideas, such as the paper that led to “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” Butler tells The Guardian. The writing begins on Feb. 23, and each song will debut on The Guardian’s website.

The challenge comes in advance of Butler’s solo album, Policy, which will premiere on March 10, Rolling Stone’s Daniel Kreps writes.

Butler tells The Guardian that he’s been looking for inspiration on The Guardian on a daily basis.

Some of them possibly lend themselves to songs. It’s a cruel thing, but sometimes you read something and think, ‘Uh oh. I could make something really meaty out of that.’ Something like the Dominique Strauss-Kahn trial – my God, that’s the gnarliest story in the world, but it’s interesting.

Butler’s pledge to write newspaper-themed songs comes two days after he appeared as the musical guest at the relaunch party for The New York Times Magazine.

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Benjamin Mullin was formerly the managing editor of Poynter.org. He also previously reported for Poynter as a staff writer, Google Journalism Fellow and Naughton Fellow,…
Benjamin Mullin

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