What I like about pop music, and why I’m still attracted to it, is that in the end it becomes our folk music.

When I heard ‚Jesus, Take the Wheel,‘ I was like, OK. Some people look at it as a song written for an American Idol, Carrie Underwood, who is wonderful. But when you’re a songwriter listening to a song, you hear something else. I heard that song, and wow.

Love is about mutual respect, apart from attraction.

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

Music is always a commentary on society.

Few are drawn to the person whom others avoid and neglect; people gather around those who have already attracted interest.

Agressive music can only shock you once. Afterwards its impact declines. It’s inevitable.

Folk music is a bunch of fat people.

Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become.

One of life’s terrible truths is that women like guys who seem to know what they’re doing.

Music for me, it demands full concentration.

Then, when I’m in these relationships with people who are also creative, or creative in their own way, what happens is the attraction is initially there and it’s all unicorns and rainbows. And then they hate me.

You know what, I’m very attracted to someone who makes me laugh and is that charming. Really, I could be charmed by anyone. I’m just a sucker for somebody that is charming.

I am not some goddess that dropped down from the sky to sing pop music; I am not some extra-incredible human person that needs to be told how wonderful they are all day and kissed.

I think, a lot of times when you meet someone, you feel like you need to appear like you’re not interested in them so that they’ll be more interested in you. But what happens when you start showing him that you actually like him? What’s he gonna do then? Play the tape forward; how do you keep a guy like that? I don’t want to sign up for that.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

Even though I’m known as a pop musician, I have a seriousness about what I do.

Prince turned experimental music into pop music. ‚When Doves Cry,‘ the whole ‚Purple Rain‘ soundtrack – he was inspired by the Cocteau Twins and new wave pop and brought it into R&B when he first started, and then it became this cool, next-level, kind of hard-to-digest music. Which is what I felt ‚House of Balloons‘ was.

The great music for so many artists – the Beatles, the Rolling Stones – was always at the moment when they were closest to pop. It would be easy for U2 to go off and have a concept album, but I want us to stay in the pop fray.

I like a man who grins when he fights.

I don’t see myself as a pop artist. Like, when you hear ‚pop,‘ you’re like, ‚Oh, bubblegum, jumpy little girly stuff,‘ and I feel like, ‚Uh-uh. That’s not me.‘

Why are women… so much more interesting to men than men are to women?

Successful people make money. It’s not that people who make money become successful, but that successful people attract money. They bring success to what they do.

I’m pretty sure in my older years, I’ll be doing old-time flavored folk-mountain music.

I think that sexuality is only attractive when it’s natural and spontaneous.

The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory.

With pop music, the format dictates the form to a big degree. Just think of the pop single. It has endured as a form even in the download age because bands conform to a strict format, and work, often very productively, within the parameters.

Pop music will never be low brow.

In the divine milieu, all the elements of the universe touch each other by that which is most inward and ultimate in them. There they concentrate, little by little, all that is purest and most attractive in them without loss and without danger of subsequent corruption.

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.

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

When you really don’t like a guy, they’re all over you, and as soon as you act like you like them, they’re no longer interested.

Force always attracts men of low morality.

I want to make pop cool again, and the only way I can do that is by being ambitious and grand.

Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You’re glad someone’s done it but you don’t necessarily want to listen to it.

Young people are just as attracted to the truth as they are convenience and expediency.

I’m attracted to women who are smart and funny and ambitious and have lives of their own and great families. Isn’t that what attracts anyone?

The whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular.

We are often attracted to the wrong things, whether it be money, fame, or approval.

I believe when it comes to love, there’s something intangible about who we are attracted to, and I don’t think I have a pattern.

Money is usually attracted, not pursued.

I love to flirt, and I’ve never met a man I didn’t like.

One of the powerful temptations is that of the cinema palace. The cinema has undoubtedly an enormous attraction for boys, and people are constantly cudgelling their brains how to stop it. But it is one of those things which would be very difficult to stop even if it were altogether desirable.

As hard as it is, as ghetto as it is, hip-hop is pop music. It’s the sound of music getting out of the ghetto, while rock is looking for a ghetto.

I was doing these performance art pop music pieces in the city. And they were a bit on the eccentric side I suppose. So people started to call me Gaga after the Queen song ‚Radio Gaga.‘

I like someone who is a little crazy but coming from a good place. I think scars are sexy because it means you made a mistake that led to a mess.

In pop music, the public usually see the results – the hit records, the Grammy Awards performances, the concert tours – but not all the work that goes into getting into the spotlight. And not everyone realizes that, even if you have a lot of talent, chances are you won’t make it.

Pop music can absorb so many peculiar talents, ranging from the completely nonmusical poseur who just uses music as a kind of springboard for a sense of style, to people who just love putting all that complicated stuff together, brick by brick, on their computers, to people like me who like playing conceptual games and being surprised.

When I finish something, I want it out that day. Pop music is like the daily paper. Its got to be there then, not six months later.

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

Thoughts are mental energy; they’re the currency that you have to attract what you desire. Learn to stop spending that currency on thoughts you don’t want.