Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
People are gonna listen to the music whether or not I reveal myself.
I can't see myself doing anything else. I feel like I can touch more people with music.
Acting, I get to explore other people and other characters; with music, I get to express and explore myself.
When I started picking out music for myself, I was a hip-hop kid. DMX, The Roots, Outkast, people like that.
I see myself as a composer who plays music and likes to play with other people, and not just as a solo artist.
People are amazed to see that I wrote all the words and music myself to 'Stan Freberg Presents The United States Of America.'
I just want to write fun, interesting music that pushes boundaries and is still true to myself. I want people to feel something.
I don't really see myself as a pop star. I guess I just really enjoy being able to play my music for people who actually want to listen to it.
I treat every album as a new beginning, so I'm asking myself, 'What is pop music now? What are people consuming?' and I take these things into effect.
I never feel that my music is sparse or minimalist; the way fat people never really think they're fat. I certainly don't consider myself minimalist at all.
I know so few people who actually give music their undivided attention, so I've been trying to just park myself on the couch between the speakers and listen.
I was always an odd girl; I managed to alienate a lot of people. I felt like a square peg in a round hole in the music industry and created a lot of neurosis for myself.
I don't really like the idea of putting myself in any category now... I think that people are looking for music that's real and honest and that they can relate to emotionally.
In a way, I feel it might be ill-mannered to try and top myself. The music I play is a ritual. Something that matters to people in a special way. I wouldn't want to interfere with that.
What is a hit? Who can tell? Who decides what a hit sounds like? I needed to remind myself that a hit is whatever people decide is a hit. I don't make hits; I make music. People make hits.
I've never been the guy to go for the celebrity girl. I've always liked regular girls, regular people, because I've always viewed myself as a regular person who just happens to be gifted in music.
Though my music audience is cross-generational, like my television audience, my core demographic is people like myself. People who have grown up on hip-hop, but hip-hop doesn't necessarily speak to us any longer.
Music is an extraordinary vehicle for expressing emotion - very powerful emotions. That's what draws millions of people towards it. And, um, I found myself always going for these darker places and - people identify with that.
There are people out there who are into traditional country music and for those people you have artists like Brad Paisley and Josh Turner and Alan Jackson. Then you have artists with a progressive style of country music, like myself and Eric Church and Luke Bryan and Miranda Lambert.
In a sense, I'm always hearing music of some sort, whether it's people talking or surface noise or whatever, because there is no privacy. So when I'm by myself, I just kind of like to be and reflect, and I can't do that when I'm listening to music. Because it's someone else's reflections, not mine.
No matter how many times people say it - 'Oh, I'm just writing this for myself' 'Oh, I'm just doing this for myself' - nobody's doing it for themselves! You're doing it for an audience. So whether I'm performing or writing a book or playing music, it's definitely to be put out there and to be received in some way, definitely.
People have always said that I could have been a highly successful pop artist, if only that were my intention. It never was. My original intention was to be a kind of behind-the-scenes participant in music, to just be a record producer and engineer. And I made a record for myself just so I could have an outlet for my musical ideas.
I wanna be in a movie, I wanna have a clothing line, I wanna put myself in a position where, when I'm dead and gone, or I can't rap anymore, that's still moving. Tupac and Biggie, they've been dead 10-plus years and people talk about them everyday. I'm gonna try to speak everything into existence. I know the music is my key to get there.