Music History Quotes

#1. I think one of the ways that these young singers got started is that they would end up in clubs. And a lot of them were mafia owned. And so there was almost an unspoken kind of mafia sponsorship, which is just a very interesting part of that area's music history.

John Lloyd Young

#2. The Fiesta Tour McDonald's exhibit is a one-of-a-kind compilation of items and great moments in Latin music history. Every item has a unique story, including the outfit which I wore during the 2008 Premios Juventud awards.

Thalia

#3. I have this ideal listener, as John Cage did. This listener doesn't bring expectations that my music will fit into some part of music history, or that it will do any particular thing. This listener is just open to listening.

Missy Mazzoli

#4. Man, I would demand that artist come to the table with better variety. I would demand that musicians know music history, not just Hip-Hop, so that we could understand. The better your 'listening ear' is, the better your music will be.

Pharoahe Monch

#5. For centuries, everything was taught through music. History was taught through music; language and mathematics were taught through music.

T Bone Burnett

#6. I grew up in Southern California, so the whole concept of a local music history is still kinda novel to me.

John Darnielle

#7. Now we're in an age of singles. It's actually always been more about singles for most of music history.

Christopher Bollen

#8. If we look at music history closely, it is not difficult to isolate certain elements of great potency which were to nourish the art of music for decades, if not centuries.

George Crumb

#9. When you look back on music history, it falls into these neat periods, but of course, the period you yourself are living through seems totally scattered and chaotic.

Eric Whitacre

#10. Music history has flowed under the bridges for many years.

Gavin Bryars

#11. I was able to endure and play a special part in music history. And I always managed to keep working, even if I wasn't a big solo artist.

Merry Clayton

#12. I was reading everything under the sun from music history to feminist literature to Shakespeare, which is why I'm not a complete idiot at this time.

Emilie Autumn

#13. Only a tiny portion of music history involves a singer and a lyric. Songs in music are generally thought to be a minor form.

Russell Smith

#14. I was a history major in school. I review the past a lot and think about music history and how culture unfolds.

Bruce Pavitt

#15. Music is part of history, and our history has lessons that cannot be separated from our greatest music.

Mstislav Rostropovich

#16. Michael Jackson doesn't really belong on this planet. He's the most important figure in the history of music. He'll be remembered far longer than George Bush will. 200 years from now, people will be talking about Michael Jackson, and no one's going to mention George Bush.

Brett Ratner

#17. I don't know why we, in the art world, cannot unpack things and sort of make hybrid notions of a practice. We're very rigid. It's funny, though; in music, we have no problem sampling, mixing and remixing. But in the art world, why can't we take little parts of history and mix it together?

Mark Bradford

#18. People sing each other's songs and they cultivate standards. That's the reason why we have folk music and folk stories. History is told through song.

Brandi Carlile

#19. I have always been obsessed with America, the geography, the history, and, of course, the music. I've been lucky enough to have travelled through the country a lot, and, in a kind of anorak way, I've noted which states I've visited and which ones I've been to most often and all that sort of detail.

Tim Rice

#20. Right around the end of the fifties, college students and young people in general, began to realize that this music was almost like a history of our country - this music contained the real history of the people of this country.

Jackson Browne

#21. Truth has a resonance to it that fills the cracks where falsehoods lie.

Rick DeStefanis

#22. Because of the fashion, the young people don't have any access to the history of music, unless people like me revive it. There are very few people to revive it, because you can't earn any money doing it.

Bill Wyman

#23. I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.

Tom Stoppard

#24. And it's a crime because the great plays of history, going all the way back to the Greeks, are part of everybody's heritage. It's just like in music, Beethoven or Mozart, that's everybody's heritage.

Tony Randall

#25. Every time you go in, it's like starting over. You don't know how you did the other records. You're learning all over. It's some weird musician amnesia, or maybe the road wipes it out.

Beck

#26. Being Irish and a citizen of the world, has made me truly appreciate Irish culture, music and history. Whether you're first, second generation Irish or even with no connection to Ireland, you should visit in 2013 for a unique experience.

Liam Neeson

#27. You will be most readily cured of vanity or presumption by studying the history of music, and by hearing the master pieces which have been produced at different periods.

Robert Schumann

#28. If anybody had a sense of history, it wasn't me, I'll tell you that. I, I was just enjoying life and, and making a living and, and, you know, listening to all this good music. No, there was never in my mind any kind of sense of history, nothing.

Cosimo Matassa

#29. Music, for centuries and centuries, was used to teach everything. It was used to teach language, mathematics, history. The news was music. Everything traveled by song. It was used to teach ethics. It was used to create conscience, probably more than anything.

T Bone Burnett

#30. In the history of pop music, a lot of great records cost an enormous amount of money. There used to be a time where people that had means to experiment would do it, you know?

Thomas Bangalter

#31. History doesn't repeat itself, but it harmonizes, and what it usually makes is the devil's music.

Stephen King

#32. A billion hours ago, human life appeared on earth. A billion minutes ago, Christianity emerged. A billion seconds ago, the Beatles changed music. A billion Coca-Colas ago was yesterday morning. - Robert Goizueta, chief executive of the Coca-Cola Company, April 1997

Tom Standage

#33. My YouTube videos have literally millions of views ... Yet I'm still airbrushed out of the BBC Stalinist revision of history; the chart shows have been instructed not to play my music!

Jonathan King

#34. As far as the creative side of making great, great albums and really trying to go down in history? I don't see that happening lately, you know what I mean? You have a lot of guys is talented, but at the same time, timeless music is more important to me.

Raekwon

#35. Hip-hop's always reached out to kids. If you look at the last 10 big albums it might seem ironic. But when I look at the history of this music it's always had a lot of positivity.

LL Cool J

#36. Classic music will always come across better on the ice because skating has such a rich history, rooted in tradition.

Gracie Gold

#37. Believe me when I say that some of the most amazing music in history was made on equipment that's not as good as what you own right now.

Jol Dantzig

#38. People like Frank Zappa and Bryan Ferry knew we could pick and choose from the history of music, stick things together looking for friction and energy. They were more like playwrights; they invented characters and wrote a life around them.

Brian Eno

#39. Music, art, writing - it gives us a sense of who we are, a sense of our history, a sense of our future and it should provide some kind of comfort. It's not just entertainment for entertainment's sake, it's an investment.

Sheryl Crow

#40. We have such a great depth of human history in all of the arts, whether it's opera or mathematics or painting or classical music or jazz. There's so many things to study, new books to read, and certainly always ways to transform old ideas and to come up with new ones.

Patti Smith

#41. The technical history of modern harmony is a history of growth of toleration by the human ear of chords that at first sounded discordant and senseless to the main body of contemporary professional musicians.

George Bernard Shaw

#42. I believe the history of American music is just as important as anything political because it's changed generations of people.

Dave Grohl

#43. It's the team that matters. Where would The Beatles be without Ringo. If John got Yoko to play drums the history of music would be completely different.

David

#44. Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history, and race. At its best, hip hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such topics.

Michael Eric Dyson

#45. 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

#46. Though I know consciousness kind of boxes you in, it still encompasses the artists that I knew were conscious throughout history of music - they're the ones that you look at as the legends.

Will Ferrell

#47. I did some stage when I was a kid, around 16 or so. I was living in Melbourne and had a band. I was quite young. We weren't very good. Then I found a band in Perth. We played around for three years. We're in the 'History of Rock'N'Roll,' a book about Perth music.

Paul Eenhoorn

#48. I'm sort of obsessed with Harlem. Just its history. My father did the music for a play called 'The Huey P. Newton Story,' and they did a lot of work in Harlem. So as a little girl, I spent a lot of time in Harlem Library.

Tessa Thompson

#49. Janice Gould is one of our best poets. The music of her poetry will delight you, and her gentle courageous accounts of tribal, family, and personal history make this book unforgettable. Doubters and Dreamers is a master-piece.

Leslie Marmon Silko

#50. Jazz is an idea that is more powerful than the details of its history.

Pat Metheny

#51. I love the history of popular music. I love to know what people are listening to, even if I don't like it.

Tim Rice

#52. There are a lot of chapters to the banjo's history. Part of it are the roots in Africa, where it's a more primitive instrument. Then it comes to the United States where it morphs into the slave music that they created here, which was very African in origin.

Bela Fleck

#53. In a way, the history of jazz's development is a small mirror of classical music's development through the centuries. Now jazz is a living form of original music, while classical music has gotten to the end of its cycle in terms of exploring its form.

Mike Figgis

#54. Take Bach or Schubert: Their music was dedicated to God but filled and shaped their worldly lives. If you are a committed atheist, you lean back and miss all the richness of that history.

Martin Walser

#55. Man I mean, the great thing about playing clubs in Harlem is people have an appreciation not just for the music but for the history of the music.

Christian Scott

#56. I know there's some kind of history to mountain music-like it came from Ireland or England or Scotland and we kept up the tradition.

Loretta Lynn

#57. I'm not giving up my history and what I've done in my music because I love it and I'm very proud of it. I just want to open it up for more people.

LL Cool J

#58. I believe that all of these studies, activities and outings are memorable in their own way, and that they do have subtle effects on our lives. On a deep level, what we see as art, hear as music and learn as history touches us and we are moved.

Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

#59. Diogo and the other OPA irregulars had breached a high-value research station, faced down one of the most powerful and evil corporations in a history of power and evil. And now they were making music from the screams of the dying.

James S.A. Corey

#60. It was Muddy Waters who took the Delta blues north to Chicago, electrified the sound, and changed the course of popular music as we know it. That's pretty much the judgment of history, and it is mine as well.

Tim Cahill

#61. I'm completely absorbed by Peter Guralnick's definitive, two-part biography of Elvis Presley: 'Last Train To Memphis' and 'Careless Love.' Meticulously researched, this is a compelling mix of history, myth-busting, and, of course, some timeless music.

Mark Billingham

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

Brian Eno

#63. We are mosaics - pieces of light, love, history, stars
glued together with magic and music and words.

Anita Krishan

#64. Your personal history is a part of what happens with your hands and your head as you play music.

Dave Grohl

#65. I can speak French, understand Gaelic and know my history. That's the training music has given me.

Eddi Reader

#66. If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music ... and of aviation.

Tom Stoppard

#67. I was listening to a lot of Norwegian black metal and death metal. There's a great history to Norwegian black metal. That music is very dark and violent, but it's also beautiful.

Brie Larson

#68. My Dublin wasn't the Dublin of sing-songs, traditional music, sense of history and place and community.

Colin Farrell

#69. I don't know anything about the history of music.

Sia Furler

#70. In my opinion we learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men's behaviour. We study it, as we listen to music or read poetry, for pleasure, not for instruction

A.J.P. Taylor

#71. You have a history of art-music that you equate with music. That's what I love about that term art-music. It separates itself from music-music, the music people have always made.

Frank Fairfield

#72. The history of music is mortal, but the idiocy of the guitar is eternal.

Milan Kundera

#73. I think it's really cool, but Jimmy Eat World and Gin Blossoms did it better than anyone. People don't realize just how awesome the Arizona history is, especially for alternative music. Growing up, that's all I ever wanted to be was those two bands.

Nate Ruess

#74. Most of the best music in American history was made by people with no options.

Isaac Brock

#75. I enjoy practicing law too much to even contemplate retiring, but I often think about engaging in serious study of the history of art, of the intricacies of classical music. I could write a fugue, or perhaps learn to play the cello.

Karen DeCrow

#76. Bob Geldof is a nauseating character. Band Aid was the most self-righteous platform ever in the history of popular music.

Steven Morrissey

#77. The art music of the West has developed through out its history by means of individual geniuses, and out of the soil supporting them; non-Western musicians were born, and grew like the grasses of the field.

Toru Takemitsu

#78. I'm extremely happy about music altogether, and the history that I've made. How I changed the world, music-wise, music over the internet and stuff like that.

Lil B

#79. I'm not ashamed, or embarrassed. I'm happy that I grew up listening to gospel music and came from where I came from. I feel like I have a history and a story. That's what I am and that's what I'll always be from. I was never running away from it.

Katy Perry

#80. You can't fake this music. You might be a great singer or a great musician but, in the need, that's got nothing to do with it. It's how you connect to the songs and to the history behind them.

Etta James

#81. If you think of the history, in the days of Brahms and Beethoven and all these guys, almost every concert was a new music concert. To play something old was really an exception.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

#82. When we create, we become stronger. When we create, we feel better. When we create, we can use our own two hands to create a new world. And this new world will be as we want it to be.

Valentina Knurova

#83. Music makes me alive in a way that nothing quite does. Good art, good film, good books, good dance. Exhibitions, history. Nature makes me feel alive. Georgia in the rain - that makes me feel alive. Compassion makes me feel alive. Hard fought victories for social rights.

Emily Saliers

#84. You have to get past the idea that music has to be one thing. To be alive in America is to hear all kinds of music constantly: radio, records, churches, cats on the street, everywhere music. And with records, the whole history of music is open to everyone who wants to hear it.

Jerry Garcia

#85. I'm always going to get more of a charge playing Chicago than I will Duluth or some place like that. Just because of the history and the people there are way more knowledgeable than a lot of other cities. It's an amazing music scene with some great bands and great musicians.

Matt Cameron

#86. We've come from the same history - 2000 years of persecution - we've just expressed our sufferings differently. Blacks developed the blues. Jews complained, we just never thought of putting it to music.

Jon Stewart

#87. Life is what we are alive to. It is not length, but breadth. To be alive only to appetite, pleasure, pride, money-making, and not to goodness and kindness, purity and love, history, poetry, music, flowers, stars, God and eternal hopes, it is to be all but dead.

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

#88. We live in a post-authentic world, and today authenticity is a house of mirrors. It's all just what you're bringing when the lights go down. It's your teachers, your influences, and your personal history. At the end of the day, it's the power and purpose of your music that still matters.

Bruce Springsteen

#89. New Orleans has a unique history as a great melting pot of all kinds of cultures, and that manifests itself now through the food, the music, and the kinds of people who live there.

Scott Bakula

#90. There is an old Arabic proverb, 'When the king puts the poet on his payroll, he cuts off the tongue of the poet', so throughout the ages, people in power have liked to control music, they used to throw songwriters in jail throughout history, and were assassinated.

Pete Seeger

#91. But ignorance of divine revelation affects all of thought and life, from one's view toward history and philosophy, to one's interpretation of music and literature, to one's understanding of mathematics and physics.

Vincent Cheung

#92. I can write for weeks or months sometimes and edit it down to a song. I feel like it's a piece of music that will hopefully stand the test of time and hopefully capture a moment in history if I'm doing it correctly and honestly.

Macklemore

#93. I am inspired by music, travel, great architecture, and good, healthy food. I look for opportunities to learn about history, art, and cooking. When I learn, I grow.

Tim Matheson

#94. Very few opera singers in history have been able to cross into popular music.

Renee Fleming

#95. Sound is the most absorbent medium of all, soaking up histories and philosophical systems and physical surroundings and encoding them in something so slight as a single vocal quaver or icy harpsichord interjection.

Geoffrey O'Brien

#96. If you look at the history of popular music, the most successful musicians have started out being really marginal and esoteric. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Madonna. Prince. Bruce Springsteen. Fleetwood Mac. David Bowie. Public Enemy. Nirvana.

Moby

#97. History's greatest composers would be appalled to hear their greatest works reduced to distorted hold music for businesses.

Michael P. Naughton

#98. They both loved piano music and were convinced that Beethoven's Sonata No. 32 was the absolute pinnacle in the history of music. And that Wilhelm Backhaus's unparalleled performance of the sonata for Decca set the interpretive standard.

Haruki Murakami

#99. Today is a sad day in Country music. We have lost another piece of history. George Jones was not only a good singer, but was a good friend. He will be missed by many.

Hank Williams Jr.

#100. Music is there for us to explore. To intentionally limit yourself to one, two, or three genres is limitation at its worst. Music is huge; it's a gigantic history lesson, and if you are true music fan or a musician, you should explore it. It's all right there in front of us.

Phil Anselmo