music quotes

I’m not a supermodel. That’s not what I do. What I do is music. I want my fans to feel the way I do, to know what they have to offer is just as important, more important, than what’s happening on the outside.

I’ve been asking myself: ‚Why put together these things – CDs, albums?‘ The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it’s artistically viable. It’s not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it’s not obvious or even conscious on the artists‘ part.

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

‚Wrecking Ball‘ is a great song.

Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.

I think I can keep a rhythm to a beat, but there are quite a few people who would argue with me.

I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.

I always loved that old song ‚Banks of the Ohio‘ – it was always such a man’s song, so I’ve always wanted to record it.

We tend to mistake music for the physical object.

Music is my shining light, my favorite thing in the world. T get me to stop doing it for one second would be difficult!

So there’s no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn’t necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn’t necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.

My songs are like my children – I expect them to support me when I’m old.

My fans don’t feel like I hold anything back from them. They know whatever I’m going through now, they’ll hear about it on a record someday. They’ll hear the real story. There’s a little bit of lag time. It’s not as instant as going on a gossip blog. But it’s much more accurate.

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

I have to work really hard to get the record deal – I have to spend years at it to get good. I have to practice to be good at guitar.

Ninety percent of all music is always crap, and when too many people decide they’re going to have guitar bands, then ninety percent of them are going to be crap. It’s just a given law.

Music is a really great creative tool for me, for different roles.

Yes, the Bible should be taught in our schools because it is necessary to understand the Bible if we are to truly understand our own culture and how it came to be. The Bible has influenced every part of western culture from our art, music, and history, to our sense of fairness, charity, and business.

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 never intended for the Monster Ball to be a religious experience, it just became one.

I found music to be the therapy of choice. I guess it is for a lot of people.

I think when people make a record with a goal in mind – like taking it to the next level or making them seem more mature – that gets in the way of writing great songs.

Every single one of the guys that I’ve written songs about has been tracked down on MySpace by my fans.

People should just buy a CD and rip it. You are legal then.

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

It’s always great to perform at home in the good ol‘ U.S.A.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

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

I’ve written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that’s what’s been fun about looking back.

Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston, I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song, and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, ‚Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.‘

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

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person. That’s the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing.

‚Thursday‘ is a conceptual album. Whatever that situation was, I spent the whole album focusing on that situation.

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

I knew the second I finished the first record – ‚House Of Balloons‘ – and had all this material leftover that a trilogy would be best.

With music, you often don’t have to translate it. It just affects you, and you don’t know why.

The truth of it is that every singer out there with songs on the radio is raising the next generation, so make your words count.

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

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.

In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.

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

I just kept touring and touring until it became second nature to go onstage, perform, and sing.

I’ve always written songs the same way. You learn different tricks – you learn craft, you learn structure, all that – as you go.

Nothing feels better than going onstage and everybody is singing every word – and actually wanting to see you.

What I’ve discovered is that in art, as in music, there’s a lot of truth-and then there’s a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It’s the moment that the audience falls in love.

I try to devote my afternoons to making music in my home studio, but it’s a lot more fun hanging out with musicians and friends, and trying subtly to influence a band than making your own stuff.

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 sang a lot of low stuff on songs like ‚Secrets‘ and ‚Rockin‘,‘ almost like Toni Braxton. On ‚Secrets,‘ I’m a different person.

Where I come from it was really unheard of to be at a party and someone says, ‚What kind of music do you make?‘, and you say, ‚Pop music.‘ You may as well have ‚I’m not cool‘ stamped on your forehead.

Getting a great idea with song writing is a lot like love. You don’t know why this one is different, but it is. You don’t know why this one is better, but it is. It sticks in your head, and you can’t stop thinking about it.

I would like to do a duet with Taylor Hanson, because I have loved Hanson since I was 8.

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

I used to sing songs and write with my uncle, Bill Owens.

I guess you could say I devoted myself so strongly to my music that for awhile I forgot about my family. But I only get one set of parents, and I think I forgot about that for a little while.

No, I can’t do rap music!

On Saturday afternoons when all the things are done in the house and there’s no real work to be done, I play Bach and Chopin and turn it up real loudly and get a good bottle of chardonnay and sit out on my deck and look out at the garden.

I really learned to sing in church, I think, really with emotion.

I have so many playlists full of Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne, Chris Brown.

There’s something about music that encourages people to want to know more about the person that made it, and where it was recorded, what year it was done, what they were listening to, and all this kind of stuff. There’s something that invites all this obsessive behavior.

I think what made it difficult for people to get, and still makes it difficult for people to get, is the theatrical nature of the work and the fact that, my music doesn’t exist without the performance-art element.