Tony Molina

Tony Molina is an American musician and singer-songwriter from Millbrae, California.

Lyrics

• I need some help
  Can you look inside my brain?
  Tell me if I'm going insane
  Cause I'm feelin' kinda strange all the time
  • "Look Inside My Brain," from the Ovens compilation album

• The more that you change
  The more I stay the same
  It's always gonna be that way
  • "Been Here Before," from Songs from San Mateo County

Interviews

• I’m not someone who can write a song about surfing or having pizza parties or whatever other fools do.
  • Interview with Since I Left You, 2023

• The whole album [In the Store] is about alcoholism and from the perspective of someone who sees the world through an alcoholic lens. The thing about alcoholics is that we have a lot in common and share similar stories and experiences. So I was touching on some things from my personal life that I think are super common among others who live a similar life. From the darkest points of addiction, struggling with recovery, and chronic relapse, to the paranoia and anxiety that comes from withdrawal. As a person in recovery, I felt like I needed to document these things at the time when I was going through it.
  • ibid.

• I think the older I get the more I appreciate lyrics. But what I’m mostly drawn to is melody and instrumentation. When lyrics are good, it’s great, but it’s never been my main focus, it’s always been an afterthought.
  • Allmusic Interview, 2018

• I don’t write songs about my personal life or anything like that. Mostly I don’t. It’s really uncomfortable to do, so I’ve never even really attempted it that much, it’s much easier to come up with some simple thing that doesn’t apply to me and make that the song. Sometimes when I look back on stuff like that, I think, “All these songs are about a breakup,” but I’m not going through a breakup, I’m not losing people, my life is pretty good.
  • ibid.

• When I was drinking, bad music would find its way into my life.
  • Yellow Green Red Interview

• I quit social media for good in 2016, so those two things – being offline and sobriety – restored my overall focus, taste, ability, work ethic, and I also got more serious about record collecting and digging deeper and educating myself on music more than making music myself, all those things times ten. It’s like night and day, the difference.
  • ibid

• I was real faded and very sick in all aspects when this song ["No One Told He"] came about. I think at the time in my barely-functioning, cooked-ass brain I thought I was doing some kind of ‘68 Beatles / George Harrison nod with this one. Now in 2026, I have the mental clarity to realize that this song is more of a nightmare early ’70s soft rock AM radio, Crosby Stills & Nash, barefoot-bearded guy, CIA plant, hanging in the Canyon asshole nightmare song from hell. Basically everything gross, swagless and bad is front and center in this song.
  • On his song "No One Told He"

• I still play the exact same kind of music now as I did as a child...I don’t think I was born from any scene...The ‘hardcore guy finds sensitive side’ angle that people tried to pull in the past doesn’t apply to me. It’s also corny and not interesting.
  • Vice Magazine Interview, 2018

• I am still wildly uncomfortable with releasing music to the public but I try to shut that off, especially when my friends are so supportive of whatever music I am working on, it kind of convinces me that it is decent or listenable enough to put out there...I usually leave it up to other people to decide. I am perfectly OK with and used to shelving recordings and never releasing them.”
  • ibid.

• I honestly don’t give a care about lyrics when it comes to writing songs.
  • ibid.

• I’ve always done both [solo and bands]. It seems pretty boring to just do one thing.
  • Vice Magazine interview, 2014

• I think the first thing is understanding that Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, the Spotify slimebag, Jack Dorsey, and any / all of these techie gentrifier colonizer pigs are true scum of the earth that do not have anyone’s best interest in mind. They one-hundred percent are trying to keep you addicted, manipulated and powerless, they will rob you of your dignity and integrity, strip you of your desire for honest and true self-expression, condition you to prioritize capital instead of the spiritual value of art. They will condition you to publicly log your character defects to the world, they will erase and wipe out real culture and replace it with swagless garbage, they will make your band suck ass and you will be spending your days thinking of ways to sell the shitty record you made to the public instead of writing real songs; they will sell you garbage and essentially give you brain disease for the rest of your natural life. Nobody needs it for anything, especially your band.
  • on social media, from a Yellow Green Red interview