In my songs, I’m not saying something that’s never been said before. The have lyrics aren’t going to blow people away. It’s the emotion and the melody that drive it home.

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.

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.

I’m a huge fan of R. Kelly’s. He’s a musical genius and probably the most prolific artist of the generation before mine.

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.

I’ve rarely seen video screens used well in a music concert.

I’m not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.

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

All Montreal bands have around nine members, I believe.

I don’t know which will go first – rock ‚n‘ roll or Christianity.

I hate talking about music, to tell you the truth.

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.

My music will go on forever. Maybe it’s a fool say that, but when me know facts me can say facts. My music will go on forever.

I get so excited when a song I wrote that’s very personal to me goes No. 1 and I look down and see people singing the words back to me.

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we’d all love one another.

I wanted to get rid of the element that had been considered essential in pop music: the voice.

I’ve got my Grammys on top of my piano and I look at them when I play.

Hip-hop saved my life, man. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been even decent at. I don’t know how to do anything else.

Who could refrain that had a heart to love and in that heart courage to make love known?

I’ve definitely seen bands before they made money kind of change their thing on the next tour, and I prefer it when it’s a little more raw.

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

You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.

Real art is basic emotion. If a scene is handled with simplicity – and I don’t mean simple – it’ll be good, and the public will know it.

I like being able to be on the inside of music, rather than on the outside listening to it.

I wrote a song with Ed Sheeran that was kind of spontaneous.

I don’t profess to have music as my big wheel and there are a number of other things as important to me apart from music. Theatre and mime, for instance.

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.

Writing for other artists helped me figure out that magic you have to capture to make everyone connect with a song.

I didn’t have nothin‘ going for me… school, home… until I found something I loved, which was music, and that changed everything.

The great moments of rock ‚n‘ roll were never off in some corner of the music world, in a self-constructed ghetto.

The jazz I love is sweet and pure with raw elements, which is exactly what the good hip-hop is doing now.

If you hear Anarchy in the UK today your hair stands on end. It gives you the shivers.

It’s important to love in hip hop.

Music belongs to the people. To no one else. To no one else.

Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.

Music is always a commentary on society.

I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best – I mean, when I’m at my best – of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.

The real lover is the man who can thrill you just by touching your head or smiling into your eyes – or just by staring into space.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches – he has made music sick.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

When I’m stuck for a closing to a lyric, I will drag out my last resort: overwhelming illogic.

When I was a teenager, my biggest lessons came from Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, George Strait, Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley. I learned so much from opening up for those artists, and it also taught me how to treat your opening acts and make them feel like they’re part of a family, not just a tour.

I think ABBA have a pure joy to their music and that’s what makes them extraordinary.

One of the benefits of playing to small audiences in small clubs for a few years is that you’re allowed to fail.

People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around – the music and the ideas.

Poetry and lyrics are very similar. Making words bounce off a page.

I write music every day.

When I was in high school, there were these British blues-rock-type bands with really good guitar players that would jam on one song for half an hour. And as much as I was amazed by some of those guitar players, seeing them prompted me to make a note that that’s not something I could do.

I wish all teenagers can filter through songs instead of turning to drugs and alcohol.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

I learned how important it is to entertain people and give them a reason to come and watch you play.

I wanted to prove the sustaining power of music.

I ain’t here to argue about his facial features. Or here to convert atheists into believers. I’m just trying to say the way school need teachers the way Kathie Lee needed Regis that’s the way yall need Jesus.

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

I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant.

Television sounded really different than the Ramones sounded really different than us sounded really different than Blondie sounded really different than the Sex Pistols.

I just love working with Eminem. He’s just one of my favorite rappers, and his lyrics – he’s a true poet, and I enjoy that about him.