But, I’ve always loved John Mayer and I think T-Pain is brilliant.

I’m the king of the anthems.

The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don’t set out to say anything very important.

I love music, and after my first experience with movies, I can’t wait to do more.

I love the song ‚I Hope You Dance‘ by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.

I believe in singing.

I wish I could play bass like Larry Graham or Bootsy Collins. My God, I’d give up just about everything else for that.

There’s something missing in the music industry today… and it’s music. Songs you hear don’t last, it’s just product fed to you by the industry.

Cause I’m a musician, I’m not really good at posing and being a model, like, modeling.

I love being a part of the country-music community.

I just wanted to be a composer; I became an actor by default, really. I got a scholarship to a college of music and drama, hoping to take a scholarship in music. But I ended up as an acting student, so I’ve stuck with that for the last 50-odd years.

We uploaded ‚Ocean Eyes‘ to SoundCloud, and it started getting a lot of plays pretty much immediately.

I do put a lot of God in my music, but not because I’m super religious. There are a lot of demons in my music, too. I acknowledge both.

You get to a point where it’s like you can’t really do anything right, and people will pick on you for whatever decisions you make, so I just try and take no notice and get on with my music.

I’m not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.

The thing about hip-hop today is it’s smart, it’s insightful. The way they can communicate a complex message in a very short space is remarkable.

I do like Burial; he’s so curiously clumsy, you can’t help but be moved. It’s so un-Hollywood, and the rhythms are so un-danceable.

Sometimes, I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there’s always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?

Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.

There’s something about music that encourages people to want to know more about the person that made it, and where it was recorded, what year it was done, what they were listening to, and all this kind of stuff. There’s something that invites all this obsessive behavior.

I wanted to be Gerry Mulligan, only, see, I didn’t have any kind of technique. So I thought, well, baritone sax is kind of easier; I can manage that – except I couldn’t afford a baritone, so I bought an alto, which was the same fingering.

I never could get over the fact that The Pixies formed, worked and separated without America taking them to its heart or even recognizing their existence for the most part.

Searching for music is like searching for God. They’re very similar. There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unseeable, the unspeakable, all those things, comes into being a composer and to writing music and to searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.

I could sing you a thousand and one doo-wop songs. I love the simplicity in that music. It’s not super-poetic, it’s just from the heart.

I look out at the stadiums full of people and see them all knowing the words to songs I wrote. And curling their hair! I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny. And wonderful.

I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.

A lot of people don’t realise I came out of the Smoky Mountains with a load of songs.

The music we do is for people to enjoy, dance and sing to it. Dreamers – keep on dreaming and keep working hard to achieve your goals. There are many difficulties, but what matters is to stay focused and have perseverance.

You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.

I really like hip-hop and rap; that’s my main influence. I really wanna be more of a hip-hop artist.

Here’s what I think about music and journalism: The most important thing is to just press play.

Whenever I make music, it reflects where I’m at mentally.

I need music. It’s like my heartbeat, so to speak. It keeps me going no matter what’s going on – bad games, press, whatever!

My nails are my rhythm section when I’m writing a song all alone. Some day, I may cut an album, just me and my nails.

I get a thrill meeting kids who are into alternative music.

I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I’d just write.

If I’d had good discipline, I might have gone into music.

I never wanted to sing. I just wanted to play rhythm guitar – hide in the back and just play.

In Hawaii, some of the biggest radio stations are reggae. The local bands are heavily influenced by Bob Marley.

This is the thing about hip-hop music and where people get it most misconstrued: It’s all hip-hop. You can’t say that just what I do is hip-hop, because hip-hop is all energies. James Brown can get on the track and mumble all day. But guess what? You felt his soul on those records.

When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.

At 57, to have a No. 1 album, I wasn’t expecting it.

My style influences my music and everything around me.

Whatever I’m feeling, whatever I’m going through, whatever mood I’m in… If I’m feeling like dancing or clubbing, then it will be reflected in the music. If I’m feeling dark and vulnerable, then it will reflect in the music, too.

I love Wiz Khalifa.

I’ve made sure that in any situation and with any record label, I’m allowed to write my own music.

When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn – I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point – and that was it.

You can’t really imagine music without technology.

I’ve been asking myself: ‚Why put together these things – CDs, albums?‘ The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it’s artistically viable. It’s not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it’s not obvious or even conscious on the artists‘ part.

If it’s illegal to rock and roll, throw my ass in jail!

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

Bob Dylan is like an alien on this earth, and I love him! I cried when I saw him play live because I was so close to him.

As for my stuff, I’m just doing guest verses for other people’s records. I try to stay recording, because if I don’t, I get rusty.

I can write a song in about an hour if it’s a simple country song.

When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily I should have been in that band – or at least in a Pixies cover band.

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

To all the musicians who are making reggaeton, let’s put some more effort into it and bring something new to the people!

One day, I’ll be listening to a bunch of Ray Charles, the next day it’s nothing but Red Hot Chili Peppers. The next day it might be Tupac all day.

The age of a woman doesn’t mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.