Music Criticism Quotes

#1. Music criticism should be to musicians what ornithology is to the birds.

Yuja Wang

#2. Wine is similar to music in that it's a purely experiential realm, and it's a purely subjective practice. That's sort of the funny thing about wine criticism or, for that matter, music criticism. At times, those are useful guides, but ultimately it's all about how you react to that music or wine.

Mike D

#3. I got the writing bug in the fourth grade when a poem of mine was published in the school newspaper. Music criticism came a little later, when I was in high school.

Ann Powers

#4. I do see value in music criticism. Most of the criticism I have received over the years has been very good.

Van Morrison

#5. I gave up music criticism because of the increasingly obvious conflict of interest. I couldn't say anything bad about the records when I might be meeting that person's manager backstage an hour later.

Stephin Merritt

#6. I am no more annoyed when I think of the expression, than I should be annoyed by a man's opinion of a picture of mine, who had no eye for pictures; or of a piece of music of mine, who had no ear for music.

Charles Dickens

#7. It's dangerous to buy into praise and criticism for what you do when you're trying to present your music to people. I don't ignore it completely, but I don't dwell on it too much.

Conor Oberst

#8. The trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades.

Mark Twain

#9. Speaking out against rap music is useless, and it's futile. The reality is there's criticism for everything, but Jay-Z is one of the most remarkable artists of our time of any genre, and as a hip-hop artist he carries the weight of that art form with such splendor and grace and genius.

Michael Eric Dyson

#10. I divide criticism into two categories - one coming from those who understand music, who are worthy of being critical because they are knowledgeable about what they are saying; and then there is another category of people who would criticise you anyway, whether your work is good or bad.

A.R. Rahman

#11. Instead of books, art, theatre, and music being consigned to specialized niches, we might have a criticism that better reflects the eclecticism of our time, a criticism that takes in various arts all at once.

Lee Siegel

#12. The immoral profession of musical criticism must be abolished.

Richard Wagner

#13. Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical.

John Cage

#14. On Art Garfunkel - He makes Paul Simon look like LL Cool J.

Ian Gittins

#15. Music resembles poetry, in each
Are nameless graces which no methods teach,
And which a master hand alone can reach.

Alexander Pope

#16. I had another dream the other day about music critics. They were small and rodent-like with padlocked ears, as if they had stepped out of a painting by Goya.

Igor Stravinsky

#17. All serious art, music, literature is a critical act. It is so, firstly, in the sense of Matthew Arnold's phrase: "a criticism of life." Be it realistic, fantastic, Utopian or satiric, the construct of the artist is a counter-statement to the world.

George Steiner

#18. And - holy shit was this song bad. It was like the singer was stabbing my ear with a dagger made of dried turds.

David Wong

#19. ...there is a void in my guts which can only be filled by songs.

Jessica Hopper

#20. We knock upon silence for an answering music.

Archibald MacLeish

#21. Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or
perhaps of subconsciousness - I wouldn't know. But I am
sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

Aaron Copland

#22. Everybody comments that I'm white. I'm surprised I haven't gotten more criticism for it. I'm always expecting any day now it's gonna come. I guess I just attribute the lack of hate to people hearing the music and hearing how much I genuinely love it.

Mayer Hawthorne

#23. The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#24. Will we march only to the music of time, or will we, risking criticism and abuse, march to the soul-saving music of eternity?

Martin Luther King Jr.

#25. Criticism does not disturb me, for I am my own severest critic. Always in my playing I strive to surpass myself, and it is this constant struggle that makes music fascinating to me.

Jascha Heifetz

#26. I don't really mind criticism in music or in shows and stuff like that at all. I mean, it doesn't really worry me even if it's like out of place. At least it's relevant.

Mick Jagger

#27. When I composed, I heard my music played by the orchestra within days of completion of the score. No master at a conservatory, no matter how revered, can teach as much by verbal criticism as can a cold and analytical hearing of one's own music being played.

Andre Previn

#28. We would go out and play these songs and people could interpret them however the hell they wanted.

Carrie Brownstein

#29. Because it exists as a living sonority, music is animated by voices, and these voices do not evaporate when music confronts the insights of contemporary literary criticism, or philosophy of language.

Carolyn Abbate

#30. What we don't need in country music is divisiveness, public criticism of each other, and some arbitrary judgement of what belongs and what doesn't.

Charley Pride

#31. My music appeals in America. There is less of the purist criticism I get here. And to be a hit in the U.S ... what singer doesn't have that dream?

Katherine Jenkins

#32. Ignore all hatred and criticism. Live for what you create, and die protecting it.

Lady Gaga

#33. Because I was a dancer when I was a kid, I have so much empathy for these young girls who are so drawn to something lovely in music and in movement, and yet they encounter a world full of judgment and criticism of 11-year-old artists and bodies.

Sharon Lawrence

#34. I know the Smiths, I snapped, because lord knows you can launch any kind of criticism at me, lord knows I've heard it all before, but don't you dare doubt my musical knowledge. There's not much I can do right, just this one thing, but you cannot take this one thing from me.

Leila Sales

#35. Music is art, and once you become an artist, you need to learn how to accept criticism.

Yanni

#36. You have to be tough-skinned and willing to accept criticism, and at the same time, just try to do music that you like and you are proud of and not just whatever you think it's going to take to get you on the radio.

Alan Jackson