I’m not into albums that are meant to sound perfect.

I think that it’s okay to be mad at someone who hurt you. This isn’t about, like, the pageantry of trying to seem like nothing affects you.

Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

If you’re trying too hard to be the girl next door, you’re not going to be.

I always say I wanna work with Alicia Keys. I’m in awe of her.

I used to consider the listener. But now I’m in a space where, if I’m not inspired, I can’t really do the music. I can’t feel it.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

A lot of people from my generation of music are so focused on playing things correctly or to perfection that they’re stuck in that safe place.

I’d love it if everyone knew one Foo Fighters song.

I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.

‚Bellyache‘ is totally fictional. I like writing about things that aren’t real. The song is about not trusting anyone and then putting trust in yourself and realizing that you don’t know what you are doing, either. Or realizing that things you do with a group of people that you think are cool in the moment are ultimately all on you.

I know people said I wasn’t selling out in America, but that was entirely untrue. We sold out all over the world, and every night I looked out into the fans and those front rows that you’re talking about, the tears, the honesty, the inability to not be completely overjoyed because they felt accepted.

‚Jolene‘ has been very popular all of these years, even overseas.

Mozart’s music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.

To all the musicians, to the Academy, with all due respect, reggaeton is part of our Latin culture. And its representing as much as any other genre at the worldwide level.

It’s easier to aim to please and say what others want to hear than to form an opinion and fight for it, even if it means taking a risk or losing your job.

When I listen to the radio, I just hear so much music that doesn’t even sound like people. The vocals are all tuned, and the drums are all fake.

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.

When you listen to Ray Charles, there’s never any doubt whose voice that is.

You can’t imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life.

Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.

You know why Foo Fighters have been a band for 20 years? Because I’ve never really told anybody what I think of them. The last thing you ever want to do is go to therapy with your band.

Zappa was very technical and impressed by things that were musically challenging – weird time signatures, strange keys, awkward chord sequences. Zappa was important to me as an example of everything I didn’t want to do. I’m very grateful to him, actually.

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

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story.

I taught myself to play the guitar by listening to Paul Simon records, working it out note by note. He is an incredibly intelligent musician. He’s not someone who has a natural outpouring of melody like McCartney or Dylan, who are just terribly prolific with musical ideas.

However, there’s no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums.

In high school I wanted to be a rock star and was in a lot of bands.

I don’t know, I feel desperate when I sing. And I look desperate – it feels like I’m singing for my life, which makes me twitch, if that makes sense.

Dancing was always part of my culture growing up in Barbados. When I shot my 1st video I worked really hard with my choreographer to perfect the routines.

People should just buy a CD and rip it. You are legal then.

I really am a fan of Ye’s music.

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

My father moved to Hawaii from Brooklyn and my mother came there as a child from the Philippines. They met at a show where my dad was playing percussion. My mom was a hula dancer.

I’ve got a feeling that music might not be the most interesting place to be in the world of things.

I like to be myself, and I don’t pretend. For instance, I don’t dress up for occasions; I am what I am.

I wish I could tell you me and my rock band were traveling around, strung out. No, we were a family band. Straight Partridge Family.

When it comes down to it, glam rock was all very amusing. At the time, it was funny, then a few years later it became sort of serious-looking and a bit foreboding.

Honestly, I never really put the mic down.

I’d love to do a duet, always wanted to work with Madonna, but she never asked.

I don’t really believe in the type of pressure that people are wanting to put on the type of music that I make.

I don’t really have a gimmick or a ‚thing.‘ I’m one of the few artists who gets to be himself every day.

Open Graph is a language for structuring content and sharing that goes on in other apps, and we’re continuing to build it out longer term. But we found we need to build more specific experiences around categories like music or movies. Where we’ve taken the time to build those specific experiences, stuff has gone quite well.

I suppose my best attribute, if you want to call it that, is sincerity. I can sell sincerity because that’s the way I am.

The Beatles created something that never trailed off. What a gift that was to their fans. If you’re into the Beatles, you loved them from beginning to end.

If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have any songs that are about how much I love someone. They’re all either about, like, ‚I hate you,‘ or ‚You make me hate me.‘

I don’t like the name, U2, actually.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

I would drive to gigs in my tiny little Fiat. I would shoot up and down the M1 to play at various places.

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.

Self-talk, for me, has been the biggest thing in my life. A lot of us have a dialogue that is crap. It’s a crappy dialogue. We live in a world right now that is very external. Everything is very on the surface. Superficial. Everything. And what we’re telling ourselves is what we see on TV.

Obviously, the cinematography of films is art, just as a still shot can be art. If I’m watching a Wes Anderson movie, the colour palettes alone, and the way they’re painted, could be art. With music, you’re a little bit limited, of course, because it’s only audio.

I’m no hillbilly singer.

I think if I did something in the pop world right now, it would be for Rihanna. I’d love to do something production wise for her.

I have to practice to be good at guitar. I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.

My mother knew how to read music and everything. But I just kinda learned off of records. And so, I was listening to records and I’d play ‚em over and over.

‚Evil men have no songs.‘ How is it that the Russians have songs?

I live half the year on Necker, a tiny island in the Caribbean, and it’s always full of people in party mode. Everyone comes up to the big house, and we’ll be dancing until the early hours to the island’s band, the Front Line.

In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.