Top 100 On Music Quotes
#1. If I give a little hint or clue as to where my voice could be going, that would [be] read. Because people can listen closely, you know, you can sit with headphones or you just concentrate on music, you can just hear, sometimes, the desires of the voice itself.
Will Oldham
#2. Making lyrics feel natural, sit on music in such a way that you don't feel the effort of the author, so that they shine and bubble and rise and fall, is very, very hard to do. Whereas you can sit at the piano and just play and feel you're making art.
Stephen Sondheim
#3. People are used to seeing kids jump around. You know, the target audience, the audience that's spending money on music, like rock and hip-hop - they're used to seeing people get really physically involved in their music.
Eric Lewis
#4. I'm constantly thinking about what I'll do next. I never count on music being a career of longevity. I mean, longevity is key, and I hope that it lasts, but you just don't know, because it's not in your hands, you don't make the decision.
Beth Ditto
#5. If I'm going to continue to be any kind of spiritual teacher, I've got to go deeper myself. And so for me, [I am] preserving long periods of solitude, silence, prayer, journaling, study, writing. I don't turn on music or the TV unless I really need to.
Richard Rohr
#6. Growing up in Nashville, especially in a music business family, means growing up with knowledge that seems like common sense until later in life when you realize people spend thousands of dollars a semester trying to learn or pretending to learn while looking for some intern job on music row.
Caitlin Rose
#7. I began seriously concentrating on music study after I entered senior high school. I went to a class in the arts section at the YMCA and learned music theory and composition. Today, there are many classes like this available, but this was not so much the case in those days.
Isao Tomita
#8. I couldn't concentrate on music. So I made the choice to give up my career as a musician in the frontline to deal with the business.
Robert Fripp
#9. I was just working on music and reading. It was relaxing. I would just stay up so late for no reason because I was bored.
Jack Tatum
#10. I don't put categories on music, myself. So either people go with it or they don't, and sometimes the names sound a little silly.
Chaz Bundick
#11. I rely on music heavily, just in life and in my work.
Sandra Bullock
#12. If there were a race among all artists to the human heart, my money would be on music to win. It knows a shortcut.
Marie-Helene Bertino
#13. Me, I've concentrated on music pretty much to the exclusion of other things.
Lou Reed
#14. I had my baby around 20 and I was always working on music, but I was always working on music, but I was doing other stuff as well.
Jhene Aiko
#15. Music was my life ... It was everything to me, even though I was in school majoring in English. I was still very focused on music and always finding ways to perform, so that was what set me up to want to become a recording artist.
John Legend
#16. I'm one of those people who sort of feeds on music.
Iron & Wine
#17. Sometimes it's a struggle to make everything work. I usually work on music from nine in the morning until three in the afternoon. Then there are the family activities. Then I work again at night - from nine to as late as two.
Hans-Peter Lindstrom
#18. I didn't grasp the basic principle of being a promoter, which was: Put on music but also generate an income. I was on the dole most of the time.
Alex Kapranos
#19. I'm trying to satirize what it's like to be a recording artist in 2011. I realize that standing on a soap box and ranting and raving about my opinions on the digital age and its effect on music is only going to get you so far.
DJ Shadow
#20. When I came here it wasn't that I was anti-Music Row, but it was like I was going against the grain of what everybody on Music Row was doing, and that's what has made me successful.
Ricky Skaggs
#21. I just change with the times. I really don't have a say in what's going on. Music was here before me.
Snoop Dogg
#22. I honestly just love being in my studio working on music. That's all the inspiration I need. And I don't write with an end result in mind, I just write for the simple love of writing.
Moby
#23. All I want to do with my life is try and make music that I really love, and so every day I try and work on music.
Moby
#24. I love playing and working on music. It is something that I feel really lucky to be able to spend my life doing. And I don't sleep much!
Pat Metheny
#25. It's annoying when you've got a guitar and you're working on music and then you have to go and do the shopping or someone calls your mobile and you get distracted or you have to go out and do something.
Michael Kiwanuka
#26. I do focus my energy on music, but it's just the way that the industry works. I kind of have to take what I can get when it comes to acting and show up so they'll hire me. And music I get to do when I have time. It's not that I focus less, it's just the way it works.
Zoe Kravitz
#27. I've been a solo artist for a year now, and I think I should start thinking about the future now. Every spare time I get, I want to be in the studio and work on music for 2015. It's a lot of work.
Shane Filan
#28. Critics make pipi on music and think they help it grow.
Andre Gedalge
#29. Until MTV, television had not been a huge influence on music. To compete with MTV, the country music moguls felt they had to appeal to the same young audience and do it the way MTV did.
Charley Pride
#30. I think that the people who put caps and the people who put genres on music are the people who are killing our music industry.
Austin Carlile
#31. I definitely have a different perspective on music in general. But once I actually have a guitar in my hands, I think I disappear into the same black hole that I was disappearing into when I was 15.
Bill Orcutt
#32. I spent 80% of my time working on this, and 20% of my time working on music. Why do you think the song 'Niggas in Paris' is called 'Niggas in Paris?' 'Cause niggas was in Paris!
Kanye West
#33. When you put on music, just feel it; it's a different sense. I walk around with music in, and it can just change my world in seconds.
Albert Hammond Jr.
#34. Sometimes when I get home after a long day, I'll turn on music - I love Latin, disco, and pop - and do my own workout, even if it's a short one. Know a good song to work out to? 'I Will Survive.'
Summer Glau
#35. I'd be hanging out in my bathrobe all day, stinky, just writing, and my mom allowed me to do this-as long as I was writing songs. She said, 'As long as you're seriously working on music, I'll support you. Don't get a job, because if you work, it will crush you.
Rufus Wainwright
#36. The advent of electronically synthesized sound after World War II has unquestionably had enormous influence on music in general.
George Crumb
#37. When I do have time to work on music, I'm kind of selfish, and would rather work on my own stuff than someone else's.
Moby
#38. I took the ET job because I wanted to stop traveling and they said I would only work half a day. Then I could work on music the rest of the day. They put in my contract that I wouldn't work after 1 P.M.
John Tesh
#39. I never gave up on music, and I feel like music never gave up on me.
Bobby Womack
#40. In this day and time you can't even get sick; you are strung-out! Well by God, I'll tell you something, friend: I have never been strung-out in my life, except on music!
Elvis Presley
#41. I put on music and I'm washing my car. And I put on music if you have somebody and you're trying to make love. You put that on in the background and you go, maybe this will be romantic.
Chris Isaak
#42. Ask me about the challenge of becoming as good at music as I am at motorsport, and I have to say: my career has been racing, and I don't plan on music becoming my next career.
Jacques Villeneuve
#43. Working on music is the funnest thing for me, and I love it, and I could do it all day, all night.
Julian Casablancas
#44. Being on stage is so much fun and enjoyable. Because it's a lot of fun, we work really hard on music programs and our eyes automatically open up. Because this is where I'm most confident and where I'm at my best, I found a way to enjoy all of it. And I'm still searching for more ways.
Kim Tae-yeon
#45. Losing my sight had nothing to do with my focus on music. My passion for music was already there, so it would be a mistake to give too much significance to my blindness.
Andrea Bocelli
#46. Before I settled on music, I wanted to be an archaeologist, an astronaut, all sorts of really diverse things.
Joan Jett
#47. The main thing that excites me and makes me want to get out of bed is the thought of being able to go into my studio to work on music.
Moby
#48. It was stumbling on to really the bible of the blues, you know, and a very powerful drug to be introduced to us and I absorbed it totally, and it changed my complete outlook on music.
Eric Clapton
#49. If I'm in the studio, I'm completely on music. I try to go to that place and that's the toughest thing for me to do. When I'm with other musicians, sometimes I go back to, almost like, childhood, because that's what I always wanted to be.
Jamie Foxx
#50. Deeply listening to music opens up new avenues of research I'd never even dreamed of. I feel from now on music should be an essential part of every analysis.
Carl Jung
#51. The thing that helped me get into the film business was that I went to school in Athens, Georgia and managed to get on, um, working on music videos for a band called R.E.M. and that kind of opened up a lot of doors for me.
Alton Brown
#52. 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
#53. I knew I could never give up on music. Completely devoid of any religious or iconic context, I felt like music was handed down to me - this is what I was going to do.
Justin Vernon
#54. I've worked with a lot of people on music and often times those things don't work out.
Joaquin Phoenix
#55. I don't know if I have a 'Greatest Album Ever.' I really liked 'The Blueprint' by Jay-Z. The production on that album was really great. 'All I Need' was the first song I used for walk-on music in 2002 for my second time ever on stage, so that means a lot to me.
Hannibal Buress
#56. I see people who work on their look and they work on their poster and their website and you know, the music will speak for itself no matter what. So if you put maybe like 95% of your energy on music and 5% on playing out and telling people about it. That's kind of a good equation.
Kaki King
#57. I was lucky enough to have parents who started me on music very early, but most kids don't get that kind of exposure.
Joshua Bell
#58. If someone is sad, they put on a song, or if someone wants to rock out, and they want to get into a good mood, they put on music. Just being able to be a part of something like that I feel like was my ultimate push to do music.
Adam Hicks
#59. Punk was more based on social change than on music, so it didn't bother me too much. It wasn't really a musical threat.
Steve Winwood
#60. I like being 35, I like having a bit of money to spend on music and useless gadgets. The net is providing new ways to communicate and cooperate that just didn't exist in the 80s.
Malcolm Wilson
#62. I just became obsessed with looking for new singers, unknown singers, people that maybe have been forgotten, and really checking them out and analyzing what they do - and obsessive listening. I think that's the core of my work on music - has been just listening to things and listening to singers.
Cecile McLorin Salvant
#63. Usually, whenever my mom would come over I would try and put on music that I thought she would like just to make her feel more at ease.
Britt Daniel
#64. There is no comment on pictures but pictures, on music but music, on poems but poetry. If you do, you do. If you don't, you don't. And that's all there is to that.
William Carlos Williams
#65. Success is based on music, not where you're from.
Estelle
#66. We all sit in front of our mics and our scripts lay on music stands. Then the silliness begins!
Tara Strong
#67. Emma and I exchanged a glance, very aware that they were not going to sleep. And just to make it obvious, Sara leaned over the railing at the top of the stairs and said, You may want to put on music, or the TV, and turn it up.
Rebecca Donovan
#68. Punk's influence on music, movies, art, design and fashion is no longer in doubt. It is used as the measurement for what is cool.
Malcolm McLaren
#69. When I work on music, I never think about vocalists. They're the last person I'm making music for.
Ayshay
#70. I was never in the business of trying to put my name out there - I was really focused on music and records and being in the studio.
Ariel Rechtshaid
#71. My soul travels on the smell of perfume like the souls of other men on music.
Charles Baudelaire
#72. The best thing about being a DJ is making people happy. There is nothing like seeing people get up from a table to dance or the expression on their face when they hear a song they love. I also love to educate people on music they have never heard.
Chelsea Leyland
#73. If i were to lose my memories, I would rely on music. There is so much of my story embedded in each.
Jason Mraz
#74. I always felt that the music sells by itself. The music has always been the successful aspect on my career, and that means that, to me, I can always still stay very focused on music.
Enya
#75. Not everyone agrees on music. Some people like rap, some like country - it's all an opinion. F the critics.
Vanilla Ice
#76. I could be worried about it if I had the wrong attitude. I don't think that I want my life and my daily occurrences to influence the direction. I don't want my daily life or my happiness to be a direct influence on music or my sadness.
Justin Vernon
#77. What makes critics dictate what is cool and what is not. What gives them the pass to say that their opinion on music or movies or anything is what should be cool and what shouldn't. I don't think it should be up to one person.
Vanilla Ice
#78. Music is an art that goes well beyond science. Proof can be found in the huge amount of studies that have been carried out throughout the world based on music-therapy and the important results achieved.
Andrea Bocelli
#79. I like the influence of pictures on music and the other way around.
Volker Bertelmann
#80. When I am trying to write I turn on music so I can hear what is keeping me from hearing.
James Richardson
#81. I've learned over the years that geography is not that important, except that I seem to work better in the country than the city. I get more done. There's just less happening around me, and I have more time and concentration to work on music.
Steve Reich
#82. I like to give stuff away for free and play shows for cheap and not rely on music as a job.
Girl Talk
#83. I've had down periods in the past few years where I haven't been writing or working on music, and during that time something always felt like it was missing, but when I bring it back into the equation, everything in my life makes sense again. As corny as that sounds.
Keiynan Lonsdale
#84. Americans spend more money on music than on sex or prescription drugs
Daniel Levitin
#85. I'll give up this sort of touring madness certainly, but music-everything is based on music. No, I'll never stop my music.
George Harrison
#86. I think that music is a very, very powerful thing, especially when you have a movement like this [CBGB club] to shed new light on music and the power of it.
Ashley Greene
#87. Paste magazine has served as a tremendous window into culture for my house. I can think of no other publication that provides such critical yet entertaining thoughts on music, movies, books and gaming as Paste. My mailbox would be a dark place indeed without it.
Derek Webb
#88. I knew when I went to a very hippie high school that focused on music that I wanted to do something in the industry.
Tove Lo
#89. I've been making music for thirty-six years and, you know, I'm still just as in love with working on music now as I was thirty-six years ago.
Moby
#90. Music is my one necessary tool. I put on music that fits the mood of what I'm writing, to help me stay in the zone and get the emotional tone right.
Stephenie Meyer
#91. Maybe Simon Cowell for his effect on music. I call him Slimy Cowpat.
Mick Hucknall
#92. The scholarship on music and poetry in Mexico - and Latin America more generally - has yet to receive substantial historical attention.
Stephen Neufeld
#93. My producer, Michael Knox, he's kind of my eyes and ears on Music Row. While I'm out on the road, he's looking for songs, and then he and I will get together and go over songs.
Jason Aldean
#94. The way I work on music is that I go into my studio, and I start playing music, and I see what happens, and ... I never think about it.
Moby
#95. But it is equally necessary to consider the implications for a society if there are fewer and fewer young people making music because we are economising on music schools or musical education in schools.
Johannes Rau
#96. By the age of 13, I knew I wanted to be a comedian like Morecambe and Wise. So, obviously, I thought I'd better start practising my interviews for Parkinson. Don't look shocked - I wasn't the only teenager to imagine that. Though I may have been the only one to have chosen T'Pau as my walk-on music.
Miranda Hart
#97. 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
#98. I love Shakira - she is such a beautiful person. She does so many good things for the world on top of making good music. And she is an awesome mom. When you are Latina, it is all about family, and to see that she prioritizes family and her career at the same time is really nice.
Becky G
#99. I started writing music when I was 15 in my bedroom, and I'd post them on MySpace, and from there it shifted to doing covers on YouTube and building my Twitter.
Tori Kelly
#100. Music is music; you don't have to put a label on it.
Joe Perry
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