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.

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

I think that the idea of having a different approach to every single one of my albums is so exciting to me. I never want to make the same record twice. Why do it? What’s the point?

I used to think that, given enough goodwill, anybody would be able to ‚get‘ any music, no matter how distant the culture from which it came. And then I heard Chinese opera.

That’s why I hate to get started in these jam sessions. I’m always the last one to leave.

The album requires a certain focus of mine that I can’t really explain – let’s just say it’s all I can really do while I’m doing it.

I used to love Kurt Cobain, when he was telling people we’re a pop band. People would laugh, they thought of it as good old ironic Kurt. But he wasn’t being ironic.

Lyrics are the only thing to do with music that haven’t been made easier technically.

Music is something no one can control.

Sing me a new song; the world is transfigured; all the Heavens are rejoicing.

My audience went, ‚Wait, why is she singing jazz? What’s going on?‘ And then they went, ‚Oh, because she can. Because she loves it.‘ And jazz, a music invented by the African-American community, is the greatest art form, I believe, to have ever come out of this country.

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

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

U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.

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

The sound and music are 50% of the entertainment in a movie.

I write my own songs. I made my own videos. I pick my producers. Nothing goes out without my permission. It’s all authentic.

Robert Fripp and I will be recording another LP very soon. It should be even more monotonous than the first one!

In case you’re wondering whether I lip synch, the answer is no… people think so because I sound so good.

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

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

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.

Even though I’ve been putting out bodies of work for years, ‚Beauty Behind the Madness‘ felt like the beginning.

It’s insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it’s assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It’s that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he’s telling you something about his own life. It’s so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!

One of my goals from really early on was that if I was ever fortunate enough to be successful in music, I would want to stay the same person and the same songwriter.

Human beings love poetry. They don’t even know it sometimes… whether they’re the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber… they’re listening to poetry.

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.

My dad was into the 1950s doo-wop era. If you look at those groups, or at James Brown, Jackie Wilson and the Temptations in the 1960s, you’ll see you had to be sharp onstage.

I didn’t want to play it boring and safe. I also didn’t want to innovate too much. Second albums, man, they’re even scarier than first ones.

I just know that I’m a fan of all different kinds of genres. You’re supposed to be free doing music, and that’s how I feel.

I love good, loud speakers.

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

I feel like in my music I can be a rebel. I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life.

A letdown is worth a few songs. A heartbreak is worth a few albums.

You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends.

I don’t listen to the radio very much, but that could be because I don’t have a car.

Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.

One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn’t if you knew better.

Who’s to say what’s a good voice and not a good voice?

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

If there’s not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.

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

Anything that encourages people to pick up an instrument and play, I’m fully behind.

I was doing sold-out shows before I got radio play.

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. And writing Langston Hughes replica poems became me wanting to write like Stevie Wonder.

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.

If I’m gonna write songs about my exes, they can write songs about me. That’s how it works.

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

If people take anything from my music, it should be motivation to know that anything is possible as long as you keep working at it and don’t back down.

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.

As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I’d written? Yes. There’s many of them!

All my momma’s people were very musical. My grandpa, who was the Pentecostal minister, he was a great musician. He played the fiddle, he played the piano.

I would love to study guitar or trumpet.

The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin‘ now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.

I wanted to be in a punk band before I had even heard any punk music.

I owe everything to Nirvana. But I can’t let that overshadow the future. For the first few years, I didn’t even want to talk about Nirvana. Partly because it was just painful to talk about losing Kurt but also because I wanted the Foo Fighters to mean something.

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.

I always hated how I looked on camera. I never put a face to my music, which actually made the music that much more mysterious.

For me, ‚risky‘ is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is.

The thing that will never go away is that connection you make with a band or a song where you’re moved by the fact that it’s real people making music. You make that human connection with a song like ‚Let It Be‘ or ‚Long and Winding Road‘ or a song like ‚Bohemian Rhapsody‘ or ‚Roxanne,‘ any of those songs. They sound like people making music.

I grew up on the Beatles; I love Linkin Park and Green Day. I heard hip-hop for the first time at 11 and realized what I was missing.