I’ve always been a fan of melody and emotional melancholy, whether it was Rites of Spring or Tears for Fears or Neil Young. If I hear a song that has a sweet melody, I’m a sucker for it, whether it’s Linkin Park or Little Richard.

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 can operate in half-a-song format.

When I’m writing a record, I kind of don’t listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.

When I was performing the songs on ‚Kiss Land,‘ it was a great singalong. But there were moments where I realized some parts were catchier than the others. There’s maybe two choruses on all of ‚Kiss Land.‘

I do value the respect I get from my contemporaries, but to have Oasis cover my song, to have Puff Daddy cover a song, to have Goldie come along to my gigs – that’s where my ego is at. To have my fellow musicians like what I do, that’s very cool.

If it’s good music, it’s good music.

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.

It’s important to love in hip hop.

Anybody that doesn’t like Cardi B a hater!

I kinda like the idea of having an album that’s all me.

I want to be a recording artist for my whole entire life. But Broadway is something I would come back to at any given moment. I love, love, love doing theater.

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

I was part of Jazzercise class. It was an aerobics routine accompanied by loud music, sounding quite awful to me. Jazzercise was popular in the ’80s and ’90s.

I listen to my old records and I think, ‚How did I ever get on the radio?‘

You can’t really imagine music without technology.

I say, ‚Yeah, Taylor Swift.‘ I think she is a smart, beautiful girl. I think she’s making all the right moves. She’s got a good head on her shoulders. She’s surrounded with wonderful people. Her songs are great. She keeps herself anchored. She knows who she is, and she’s living and standing by that.

People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.

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.

I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

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

Music has to be sort of ignorable sometimes.

A record deal doesn’t make you an artist; you make yourself an artist.

Every album, I make big records. I’m going to always make an anthem. That’s what I do.

Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.

My whole life, I’ve sung and listened to music, and since the beginning, I’ve had iTunes and used Apple Music for streaming.

‚Victory‘ is like, you won, so the question is, what? What did you win? I think that the songs go into that. It’s just about reaching a place in myself.

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.

I pay attention to lyrics and I know what rap fans care about. I try to write for the average listener and I’m conscious of the mainstream without selling out.

What I like about music is the songs you can remember the lines of in a single second.

I want to thank The Beatles for almost single-handedly getting me out of writer’s block.

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.

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.

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

When I listen to a song, I don’t say, ‚Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.‘ I’m thinking, ‚That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.‘

The game is changing with songs like ‚Earned It‘ as opposed to it changing me.

I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.

I’ve had mixtapes that have been better than albums I’ve heard from other artists. I take my time; I put my heart into it.

Music, even with these dial-up connections you have to the Internet, is very practical to download.

I always use Michael as, first and foremost, a vocal inspiration, and ‚Off the Wall‘ was definitely the one that made me feel like I could sing.

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

I taught myself how to play the guitar, I taught myself how to play the drums, and I kind of fake doing both of them. But drumming comes more natural to me, and it just feels better.

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

There have been times that I’ve wept as I’ve gone from city to city and I’ve seen how far people have wandered from God.

It seems almost backwards to me that my music seems the more emotional outlet, and the art stuff seems more about ideas.

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

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

My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.

I’m a songwriter. Everything affects me.

‚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.

Man, that record came out and was real big in Memphis. They started playing it, and it got real big. Don’t know why-the lyrics had no meaning.

Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness.

I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.

I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know.

I wanted to prove the sustaining power of music.

The basis of our partnership strategy and our partnership approach: We build the social technology. They provide the music.

No, I can’t do rap music!

And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I’m going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I’m going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan.

Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing – ‚Oh, let’s put that sentence there, let’s get rid of this‘ – have become commonplace in films and music too.

Music has the power to inspire the world.