Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
One way I judge music is whether it compels me to listen to it.
I never met anyone before who made me feel the way music makes me feel.
Growing up in the U.S., music became a way for me to find my roots and anchor points.
That pesky acting career has always gotten in the way of me doing something with music.
I publish my own music. I'm creating my own songbook. It works that way for me; I'm very independent.
Music is so important to me that that's got to be the only way I can do it. In the purest possible way.
I wanted to try a different way of making music. That's what made me try different things with my voice.
I have music inside me and I'm very lucky to be able to play music and that's the way that I try to do it.
Music is such an intensely personal thing for me, and I knew if I was going to do it, it would be in my own way.
Music is so 100 percent for me that the idea of giving that up in any way, shape, or form would be terrifying to me.
Lou Reed's spirit and the way he did things was so important. Him and his music mean so much to me as the years go by.
Music inspires me and puts me in the right mood, but to actually listen to it when I write - I find it gets in the way.
I could only do music if I could do it the way I could do it. That's what be making me stop, I don't wanna do music in the box.
I just wanted to experiment with the bass, and my main influence from Jaco Pastorius inspired me to write music in a certain way.
I like to release music the way I feel it, as opposed to having a date. The idea of dates, boxes, categories are very scary for me.
I've always been interested in film, so to get involved in any way in the genesis of making a film or music for a film is fascinating to me.
I think what really stays with me is the idea that you can write music about the texture of a wall, and everything is in some way connected.
Music spoke to me when I was young in such an intimate, empowering, magical way, and I think that music is already doing that for young queer kids.
There is some gangsta music I like, like Biggie Smalls - he reminds me of Slick Rick -doing the same thing, but he did it in a really artistic way.
As a journalist, I have wanted very much to find a way to write about the music industry, and it's been frustrating to me that that's never worked out.
I listen to and I play all kinds of music, and I'm interested in jazz and in bluegrass - I like it all - but Cuban music speaks to me in a certain way.
My way to de-stress is either listening to music or talking to my sister, Kourtney. She's going to teach me how to meditate, and that should help a lot.
Part of me wants to stay hidden; it's no coincidence that I write movie music. It lets me stay in the shadows, in a way, but still lets me be expressive.
I feel like I've figured out the way that I can talk about things that are important to me and have my music and the way of performance be healing and be helpful.
When I was 17, I listened to reggae music. I loved Bob Marley. I started growing dreadlocks. It's always been my way, that the outside matches what's going on with me inside.
It had never occurred to me before that music and thinking are so much alike. In fact you could say music is another way of thinking, or maybe thinking is another kind of music.
Any of the rewards or accolades or any of that are very nice and everything but the music is what saves me. And it did. I would write my way out of any kind of depressing period.
My reading of serious books about serious music is seriously compromised by the way that I can't understand any musical theory. Any mentions of D major or C minor are meaningless to me.
During college, I collaborated with another YouTuber and musician, Shankar Tucker. He told me, 'You can do music on YouTube and it's a viable way to put out your songs' and it worked out.
My songwriting is very personal. The music that influenced me was so impactful that had I grown up somewhere else, I know I would still write the same way I do because of those influences.
The easiest way for me to tell someone what I do is to say that I'm a non-musician who practises and produces music. I don't have a theoretical language for music. I have this abstract dream language.
I wrote so much about fandom and participation for NPR that I eventually realized my most fertile way of participating in music is to actually play it, at least in a way that made the most sense to me.
Music as background to me becomes like a mosquito, an insect. In the studio we have big speakers, and to me that's the way music should be listened to. When I listen to music, I want to just listen to music.
I run around, I listen to a lot of music, go to a lot of concerts. And when I see someone that gases me, I try to go out of my way to involve them somehow in what I'm doing or get involved in what they're doing.
The thing that scares me about the way the music industry has changed so much is that I'm afraid that the record, the album, will disappear, and it'll go back to the way it was in the '50s where everything is single-based.
When I say dance music, it's anything that makes me want to dance. It could be Timbaland and Missy Elliott, but it could also be disco music and samba music: It's not relying on melody in the same way; it's more about rhythm.
I've been in very many situations where I've not liked the other members of the band or they have not liked me. I grew up presuming that's the way music was made. It doesn't need to be that way. It's taken me years years to find that out.
I've always argued that all Tame Impala melodies are pure pop. It's just that 'Lonerism,' for example, is a completely rumbling, fuzzed out psychedelic rock album. But for me, it was just pop music produced the way that I like to produce it.
I was always into music. And none of my friends were really into music the same way I was. So it was just different. It was really not very well understood by most of my friends. They didn't tease me about it - they just didn't really relate.
The point with me is that it's always been, even with the stand-up, that the music has to be right. You have to take it seriously. You have to try and play it as faithfully as possible. That way it helps the comedy. Rather than just playing it in a silly way.
I'll tell you sort of an odd story: My music taste changed on 9/11. And it's very strange. I actually intellectually find this very curious. But on 9/11, I didn't like how rock music responded. And country music collectively, the way they responded, it resonated with me.
I was drawing before I did music, but me, I'm a dilettante. I jump into everything until I find one thing that I enjoy more than others. Rap was something that was always there because my brother used to rap - piano and musical instruments is something I learnt on the way.
Hildegard von Bingen conveys spiritual ecstasy, if we're talking of Western music. What bothers me about Western music is that it doesn't have an esoteric dimension in the way the music of the East has, whether it be Byzantine chant, the music of the Sufis, or Hindu music.
You can be a rapper born and raised in go-go music, violence, drugs, crack, Reagonomics, and still, if you hear 'Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,' you're going to find a way to hum along. Guilty pleasures? It don't matter. Sue me - I like the song. To dance to it is another matter.
To be honest, for me, my main workout is when I'm on stage. Even though I make pop music, I don't think I perform in the classic 'pop star' sort of way. I'm very active on stage; I always end up dripping in sweat afterwards. It's always like a full-on, wild performance, so that's pretty much like my exercise, I would say.
I think Korea is so focused on just the charts, and what's going to chart and what's not, and I'm sure it's like that way in the States as well, to a certain degree. But I enjoy working in the States a little bit more. Because it's more about making music that is the right sound and the right fit to me, not so much just chasing the charts.
It never occurred to me that I was important enough to have some politician go out of his way to silence me. I only found out about it in the '80s by accident - a broadcaster announced they received letters of commendation from the White House for having suppressed my music. My career was so highly impacted in the U.S. it will never recover.
There's the way modern music is produced, which is, 'Here's a piece of music, and I'm the producer, so pay me and make sure my credit is right and get me my splits.' But I'm trying to go backward. Now, it's more like 'What's the texture? What's the over-arching story?' There are more things to pay attention to than 'Is this the right snare?'