So many girls come up and say to me, ‚I have never listened to country music in my life. I didn’t even know my town had a country-music station. Then I got your record, and now I’m obsessed.‘ That’s the coolest compliment to me.

At the end of the day, who I really and truly am is a little girl who loved to play the piano.

Cause when you’re sequencing a record, you want the listener to stick with it from beginning to end, and in order to do that, you really have to map out the journey from the first song to the last.

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

There’s more good music being made now than ever before.

I wish I could make music about politics. I feel like it’s such an art and a talent that I admire tremendously, but when I step into the studio, I step out of the real world, and it’s therapeutic.

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.

Music is the voice that tells us that the human race is greater than it knows.

I don’t think I’d ever make an album of just covers because I love writing my own music.

Songs are my diaries; they always have been. You have to put your trust in everyone because putting down those real, personal details and thoughts that make a song authentic also opens you right up. I am constantly misunderstood; a lot of people just don’t get me.

I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.

I wanted to have the adoration of John Lennon but have the anonymity of Ringo Starr. I didn’t want to be a frontman. I just wanted to be back there and still be a rock and roll star at the same time.

My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die.

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

I always had a knack for improvisation. I can write down the notes I play, but never really had a proper academic musical background. I suppose I’m blessed and cursed by the fact I have that freedom.

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

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

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

I was a strange, loud little kid who could sit at the piano and kill a Beethoven piece.

Madonna, I think, is the greatest visual musical artist that we’ve ever had. If you look at her photo log, the photographers that she was able to work with throughout her career framed her in the proper way. It was the proper context. It was that visual that made sure that everything was gonna cut through in a certain way.

People like music when they’re in love, but they don’t need it as much. You need music when you’re missing someone or you’re pining for someone or you’re forgetting someone or you’re trying to process what just happened.

Doing the box set is one of those things where you get to rewrite your own history to some extent. We could take out some of the songs that we felt weren’t as strong as some of the others, so you look better.

It’s not essential for me to have a big debut week; it’s not essential for me to have big radio records.

A chorus is not easy.

I always wanted to operate at the highest altitude, just in terms of hip-hop and the music.

Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. They’re my biggest heroes. I love everything about Leonard Cohen: his lyrics and his voice. He seems like a really clever man, and Bob Dylan does as well. He’s just really cool.

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.

I don’t even listen to rap. My apartment is too nice to listen to rap in.

I can write a song in about an hour if it’s a simple country song.

If you ever see young artists, and they’re not sounding good, they sound good. They’re good singers. They wouldn’t be where they are if they didn’t sound good. It’s their nerves. Any time you see your favorite artist, and he’s or she’s screwing up or not hitting those notes, it’s not because she can’t hit it or she can’t sing; he or she is scared.

I just hope people don’t get sick of us. I’m sick of us and I’m in Destiny’s Child.

How to play music may be known. At the commencement of the piece, all the parts should sound together. As it proceeds, they should be in harmony while severally distinct and flowing without break, and thus on to the conclusion.

I really like hip-hop and rap; that’s my main influence. I really wanna be more of a hip-hop artist.

My songwriting is like extending a hand to the listener.

Punk is musical freedom. It’s saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster’s terms, ‚nirvana‘ means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that’s pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.

Rap music is the only vital form of music introduced since punk rock.

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

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

I think I first realized I wanted to be in country music and be an artist when I was 10. And I started dragging my parents to festivals, and fairs, and karaoke contests, and I did that for about a year before I came to Nashville for the first time. I was 11 and I had this demo CD of me singing Dixie Chicks and Leanne Rimes songs.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

I believe in singing.

What makes a song last is real content from a mind that is thinking a little bit harder about certain things. A lot of artists don’t really think that hard.

I dislike the concept of ‚chic‘ being the highest compliment for a human being. I’d rather someone be nice than to be chic.

‚Nothin‘ on You‘ by B.o.B was the first song where I heard myself on the radio. I’d been trying my whole career to write a song like that, which incorporates live instruments with hip-hop and singing.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don’t really know what we’re doing and when we do, it doesn’t seem to help.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

I feel connected to my generation through the music, but I also fear for us. We’re in a very self-destructive state where we’re addicted to outside opinions and we all feel like we have fans.

I love story songs because I’ve always loved books.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

All I really had was a suitcase and my drums. So I took them up to Seattle and hoped it would work.

No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of indifference.

Music has to be sort of ignorable sometimes.

Dropkick Murphys get me going, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana… plus, all the regular hip-hop stuff.

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

I try to really capitalize off of what other rappers really can’t do. There are opportunities that rappers I love simply can’t get, because… you know… I don’t have the tattoos; I have a different image.

Lots of songs aren’t even from my experiences, but they’re about accepting… the dark things about yourself.

I only live in my music, and I have scarcely begun one thing when I start on another. As I am now working, I am often engaged on three or four things at the same time.

To be honest, I never really considered myself to be too much of an actress. So, whenever I get the chance to do music, I’m always, like, just in it. It’s like, ‚Oh my God, I finally get to do this. I’m so happy.‘

It’s important to love in hip hop.