British Music Quotes

#1. I was never too keen on the British music press. They've called us a supermarket hype, and they used to suggest that we didn't write our own songs.

Freddie Mercury

#2. I didn't like any British music before The Beatles. For me, it was all about black American music. But then I became a successful pop singer, even though the kind of music I liked was more elitist, which is what I'm trying to get back to.

Lulu

#3. It seemed like the only thing to do was to crank the volume of my tape of British music in protest. Even though I was the only one who could hear it, I felt like I was doing something important.

Joe Pernice

#4. Growing up around British music, you realise how much depth there is to it ... my stuff is different to the likes of Pitbull for that reason.

Calvin Harris

#5. Purcell is a composer who had a formative influence on British music - even The Who now cite him as an influence. There's an intense, dirty harmony, but there's a Louis XIV kind of elan and style, too. He had the melancholy DNA of our national folk heritage.

Charles Hazlewood

#6. I have been long associated with British music. I have favoured it as my alternate music next to American.

Leonard Slatkin

#7. Before Cliff (Richard) and The Shadows, there had been nothing worth listening to in British music.

John Lennon

#8. I once worked at a record label called London Records. The company was owned by Roger Ames, one of the most successful figures in the British music industry. Roger always placed a value on loafing, on holidays, on not being in the office all the time.

John Niven

#9. I have to say that getting to tackle Maria in 'The Sound of Music' at Carnegie Hall was surreal. When I heard my voice, it was all I could do to keep myself from doing a British accent and sound like Julie Andrews!

Laura Osnes

#10. [Being in the States] is almost like being on a holiday. It's kind of annoying because everyone's like "Oh, you're so obsessed with America," but it's not really that. I just really enjoy being here - I'm not the first British artist to make music here and be inspired by the country.

Marina And The Diamonds

#11. I've always liked country music. It's a certain aspect of America that goes back to the British Isles and the influence is very native to America.

Robert Duvall

#12. I didn't really see the British punk movement, if that's what it was, as wildly original, because I had been listening so intently to all the New York music since 1973, really.

Morrissey

#13. Being British, I don't really have a way of expressing myself in conversation. Music transcends language.

James Blunt

#14. The British like any kind of music so long as it is loud.

Thomas Beecham

#15. I'm English and I am British. I don't know if I feel part of a music scene. Musically, I have as many feelings and affinity with Americans or Canadians, or all sorts of people as I do with English people.

David Gilmour

#16. When I was younger, I was in love with everything about the British Isles, from British folklore to Celtic music. That was always where my passions were as a young girl, and so I studied folklore as a college student in England and Ireland.

Terri Windling

#17. I guess something that I've noticed from American acts who had success in touring is more of an explanation as to their music. Which is I think quite funny. I think British acts might like to leave more to the imagination - maybe a bit more obscure perhaps - a bit more shy.

Ben Lovett

#18. I've always said that Adele has turned so many people on to British singers - whether female singers or just like music from this country in general.

Ellie Goulding

#19. I've never got on with the British press because they've always given me such a hard time. Once they build a band up they just want to do people down. They shouldn't concentrate on the colour of someone's shirt they should listen to the music.

Andrew Eldritch

#20. In that flash of ecstasy she suddenly knew what all poetry, all music, all sculpture, except things like winged Assyrian Bulls, or the very broken pieces in the British museum, meant.

Angela Thirkell

#21. At first, I found the music I was making really hard to find a home for. I felt like my attitude was really British, but not the actual sounds I was making. Back in 2003, when I made 'Galang,' there were no clubs that had an 'anything and everything' attitude.

M.I.A.

#22. The British may not know much about music, but they certainly loves the noise it makes.

Richard Baker

#23. I'm not a great guitarist, but I do bits and bobs. I'm mainly a songwriter and a composer. I've done a lot of scoring and some stuff for British pop music that did pretty well, but I've mainly been working on my own stuff with Duncan Sheik.

Matthew James Thomas

#24. A sad, plangent music. In the British camp, Sharpe thought, they would be singing, but no one was singing here.

Bernard Cornwell

#25. I was in Britain that year [1963] and some music publishing people in Denmark Street in London suggested me to the BBC. So I found myself in front of a British television show, which was a nice surprise.

Gordon Lightfoot

#26. What could be more fortunate for the German propaganda machine than to be able to pump the theme that the Jews of Palestine were stealing the Arab lands just as they had tried to steal Germany. Jew hating and British imperialism - what music to the Mufti's ears! The

Leon Uris

#27. When I was 13, listening to Choice FM, I would listen to a lot of R&B from America, and whenever a British person tried to do it, it didn't really work, they just sounded like they were trying to copy that whole style. Now the music sounds British, something real rather than an imitation.

Katy B

#28. The great British blues guitarists of the Sixties - people like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Peter Green - could play like virtuosos, but they also understood the importance of energy and intensity

Joe Perry

#29. I was born in the '60s and grew up in the '70s - not exactly the best decade for food in British history. It was horrendous. It was a time when, as a nation, we excelled in art and music and acting and photography and fashion - all creative skills ... all apart from cooking.

Heston Blumenthal

#30. Since I first fell in love with choral music when I was 18 and began composing at 21, I've been listening to these recordings of British choirs. I just fell in love with that sound - that pure, clean, pristine sound - and I think it's probably been the biggest influence on my sound.

Eric Whitacre

#31. Back in those days, all us skinny white British kids were trying to look cool and sound black. And there was Hendrix, the ultimate in black cool. Everything he did was natural and perfect.

Ronnie Wood

#32. That's one of the good things about a lot of the young British bands, they are mixing all styles of music. I think that's very good because that's very modern.

Mick Jagger

#33. We thought being offered the M.B.E. [Member of the Order of the British Empire] was as funny as everybody else thought it was. Why? What for? We didn't believe it. It was a part we didn't want. We all met and agreed it was daft.

John Lennon