I write music every day.
Lady GagaI used to watch some F1 races but I was never straightaway thinking ‚that is what I want to do.‘
Lando NorrisIn my next incarnation, I want to be a writer.
Fidel CastroI read every book there was on jazz, about the original players – King Oliver, Buddy Bolden and all those groups. At one time I was fairly well schooled in that… I could tell you who played where and when, historically, way before my time.
Clint EastwoodMy passion is bringing storylines around and constructing a full body of work rather than just a 16-bar verse.
Kendrick LamarIn high school, I majored in brick masonry. We had the wood shop, the machine shop, so I know about all that. I wanted to build buildings when I graduated from high school. I do know my way around that stuff.
Mr. TI thought that I wrote songs and wrote music, and that was sort of what I thought I was best at doing. And because nobody else was ever doing my songs, I felt – you know, I had to go out and do them.
David BowieThere’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unspeakable, all those things come into being a composer, into writing music, into searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.
David BowieI think sometimes – not always – I write songs that are accessible.
David ByrneWhen I’m making music, I can hear all the parts, all the instruments. I can hear what it should be.
Lady GagaWhen I look back over my life it’s almost as if there was a plan laid out for me – from the little girl who was so passionate about animals who longed to go to Africa and whose family couldn’t afford to put her through college. Everyone laughed at my dreams. I was supposed to be a secretary in Bournemouth.
Jane GoodallNo woman in my time will be prime minister or chancellor or foreign secretary – not the top jobs. Anyway, I wouldn’t want to be prime minister; you have to give yourself 100 percent.
Margaret ThatcherI’d been making music that was intended to be like painting, in the sense that it’s environmental, without the customary narrative and episodic quality that music normally has. I called this ‚ambient music.‘ But at the same time I was trying to make visual art become more like music, in that it changed the way that music changes.
Brian EnoAs a child, when asked what I would be, I usually said I was going to be a huntsman. A fine profession, truly!
Charles SpurgeonFor me it’s always contingent on getting a sound-the sound always suggests what kind of melody it should be. So it’s always sound first and then the line afterwards.
Brian EnoOnce I started working with generative music in the 1970s, I was flirting with ideas of making a kind of endless music – not like a record that you’d put on, which would play for a while and finish.
Brian EnoLike other kids wanted to become firemen or astronauts, I wanted to make people laugh.
Steven WrightI push myself in a lot of aspects when I write a song. I write a piece and where most people would stop and say, ‚Oh, that’s the hook right there,‘ I’ll move that to the first four bars of the verse and do a new hook.
DrakeI like the idea of a kind of eternal music, but I didn’t want it to be eternally repetitive, either. I wanted it to be eternally changing. So I developed two ideas in that way. ‚Discreet Music‘ was like that, and ‚Music for Airports.‘ What you hear on the recordings is a little part of one of those processes working itself out.
Brian EnoI didn’t know what a stockbroker was when I was eight, but I would just tell everybody that’s what I was going to be.
Taylor SwiftI enjoy working with complicated equipment. A lot of my things started just with a rhythm box, but I feed it through so many things that what comes out sounds very complex and rich.
Brian EnoI play a lot of instruments. I write all my own music. I spend hours and hours a day in the studio. I’m a producer. I’m a writer.
Lady GagaI always wrote poetry and stuff like that, so putting songs together wasn’t that spectacular.
Amy WinehouseThe way ‚Lux‘ was made is that there are 12 sections in here, though two of them are joined together. So there are really 11 sections, in a sense, and each one uses five notes out of a palette of seven notes, and my palette is all the white notes on the piano. That was the original palette.
Brian EnoWhen I first started making ambient music, I was setting up systems using synthesizers that generated pulses more or less randomly. The end result is a kind of music that continuously changes. Of course, until computers came along, all I could actually present of that work was a piece of its output.
Brian EnoI wanted to be a secret agent and an astronaut, preferably at the same time.
David ByrneI have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.
Taylor SwiftI feel it’s my job to continue being a student of music if I want to continue being an artist and a producer of other artists. You have to keep filling your mind with other music. You have to be ahead of the curve.
Bruno MarsUsually I start with a beat, I start making a beat, and my producer side is making the beat. And on a good day, my rapper side will jump in and start the writing process – maybe come up with a hook or start a verse. Sometimes it just happens like that. A song like ‚Lights Please‘ happens like that.
J. ColeIt’s easy to make an album full of great songs. But I want people to go for the ride. The songs have to make sense together.
RihannaI thought I would be a guy on the radio.
Steven WrightHe knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
George Bernard ShawMost game music is based on loops effectively.
Brian EnoThere are times when I feel like I’m a traveling minister. I’m trying to go out and get kids to pick-up yard sale instruments and change the world.
Dave GrohlWhen you write a song like ‚Forrest Gump,‘ the subject can’t be androgynous. It requires an unnecessary amount of effort.
Frank OceanI want to be an artist, an actress with integrity, and that includes all kinds of parts.
Marilyn MonroeI got interested in the idea of music that could make itself, in a sense, in the mid 1960s really, when I first heard composers like Terry Riley, and when I first started playing with tape recorders.
Brian Eno