Pop Rock Sayings

#1. We're a gumbo of American music, and aren't ashamed to play pop or soul or rock because we all grew up on radio.

Jonathan Cain

#2. A rock star is expected to act like a mess, sound like a mess and look like a mess. People don't expect you to show up on time and be a professional. But when you're a pop star, you have to do all that, look perfect and be a role model.

Tove Lo

#3. In Nashville, there is a historic tendency to work the lyric to death while settling for music that works. In pop or rock, it can be the other way around.

Michael Kosser

#4. I've always liked pop music. There was a bit of a misunderstanding with the avant-garde rock scene, because I think I was sort of swimming the wrong way, really.

Robert Wyatt

#5. In country and R&B, there's much more of that division between writers and performers, and that's where you see more of those [crossover] songs, but you don't get a lot of that coming out of the more pop and rock side of things.

Alan Light

#6. GN'R was five guys who were all into different things. I liked pop and disco, Izzy was into New York rock, Slash loved Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin, Axl was into Genesis and Elton John, and Duff was a punk rocker. We all blended that stuff together.

Steven Adler

#7. I was drawn to love songs, but I was just drawn to great music - no matter if it's hip-hop, pop, R&B or whether it's rock n' roll or country. It could be a Garth Brooks song, and if it's a smash, then I'll love the different wordplay and different melodies. That's what I'm a fan of - great music.

Nayvadius Cash

#8. For us, selling a million records in 2005 is the equivalent of selling 2 to 3 million records (five years ago). Rock records aren't flying off the shelves like they used to. Hip-hop and pop are so huge. (But) everything's on the upswing for us.

Jacoby Shaddix

#9. How it shaped my perception is this: I have become so indelibly identified as a character in pop culture that it has forced me to go deeply within myself to get a very very rock solid sense, to myself, of who I am.

Thomas F. Wilson

#10. I have truly eclectic taste in music, and I seem to cycle through phases in terms of to what's inspiring me. I'll go from Beethoven to Sigur Ros; world music, Brit-pop, classic rock, blues/jazz, even the odd bit of heavy metal.

Rachel Miner

#11. I have so many songs, it's ridiculous. I love so many different types of music and tend to write all over the map, style-wise. R&B, rock 'n' roll, screamers, pop, good-time songs.

Taryn Manning

#12. I feel like pop stars can't be rock stars anymore because they have to be role models, and it takes the fun out of it for us, because we just want to have fun with art.

Rihanna

#13. The music that I have always liked has always been more rooted in anger or sadness or alienation or any of those inspirational factors that drove rock'n'roll, gospel, and blues. I tend not to value a more pop aesthetic.

DJ Shadow

#14. My influences are jazz, blues, European classical music; they are rock music and pop music. So many kinds of music. World music from different countries like India and China. I think that would be a shame not to take advantage and do something ... not unique, because I don't have this pretension.

Rokia Traore

#15. I love to sing big rock and roll songs; I love to sing country-pop stuff, and then I love to sing soft, sadder beautiful songs.

Elle King

#16. For the longest time I was brought up listening to only two genres of music, pop and rock. So in the past few years I've been trying to expand my interests because I think that you can only write to the extent of your knowledge, and if your knowledge is limited you can't write past that.

Jacqueline Emerson

#17. I think 'Spider-man' is a pop culture rock show that was meant to be in arenas.

Michael Cohl

#18. That's the beautiful thing about the saxophone. It can peacefully coexist with just about anything - whether it's hip-hop, rap, rock music, pop, R&B or jazz, there's a place for the saxophone in all of those styles.

Dave Koz

#19. I can't tell you what genre Maroon 5 is in. I don't know if they're rock or pop or alternative. I don't know what they are. I have a hard time separating that stuff. I just know what I like when I hear it.

Blake Shelton

#20. The future of rock n roll is Justin Bieber.

Iggy Pop

#21. Maybe one day I'll write my rock album so I can use more obscure references and just be weird. If the lyrics are too crazy, though, then it's not pop anymore.

Chaz Bundick

#22. Pop culture was the new religion. The era of the matinee idol was long gone. At the forefront of all things cool was the pop star, the rock artist. They were the new gods, and to be in a band, to be part of it all, was like joining an international religion, becoming part of a holy order.

Erich Rautenbach

#23. I like pop music. I consider rock 'n' roll to be a branch of pop music.

Tom Stoppard

#24. The music we made then was so amateurish, compared to the rest of mainstream pop or rock and roll. But what differentiated us from what everybody else was doing in the business was the fact that you could tell that these people came from different reference areas.

Kevin Ayers

#25. Juliet, the dice were loaded from the start. / When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong, Juliet?

Mark Knopfler

#26. I started buying records in the '80s. I listened to everything new wave, disco, funk synth-pop, rock, but in my house we were listening to bossa nova, tango, and folk.

Juan Campodonico

#27. After the shooting of John Lennon and the early death of so many great stars and the utter naked venal mercantile marketing of pop music and rock music, I don't think anyone really believes that music is anything more than another commodity.

Stephen Fry

#28. I have always maintained that Iggy Pop is the Heavyweight Champion of Rock & Roll.

Henry Rollins

#29. This is real, this is me,' I said.
She blinked. 'Did you just quote Camp Rock at me? That's not very pop punk."
'I've gotta go my own way.'
'Okay, firstly, that's High School Musical...

Alice Oseman

#30. I don't want to pooh-pooh modern pop. I appreciate that as well, but my personal favorite kind of music is guitar-based rock. I like grunge and garage bands and alternative music, but that's more my personal taste.

Al Yankovic

#31. But I'd play on everything from pop records to a lot of the glam stuff to rock stuff to classical stuff. I used to get called to do all those things, it was great.

Rick Wakeman

#32. I love Rihanna's new album, Skrillex, and Norah Jones. They're are all very different, but I love any rock, pop, and jazz.

Ashley Benson

#33. I'm a pop enigma. I live and breathe every element in life. I rock a bespoke suit and I go to Harold's for fried chicken. It's all these things at once, because, as a taste maker, I find the best of everything.

Kanye West

#34. There's room for everyone. There's room for pop country, for 'rock & roll' country, for stone-cold country, and everything in-between. Great music is great music.

Miranda Lambert

#35. I learned jazz; that comes from blues. I learned rock; that comes from blues. I learned pop; that comes from blues. Even dance, that comes from blues, with the answer-and-response.

Cyndi Lauper

#36. As a kid, my parents had the typical stuff going on in the home, like Bee Gees, The Carpenters. Then I got exposed to what my brothers were listening to: a lot of classic rock, Led Zeppelin. It was around the mid-'80s when the whole Electro-Techno-Pop-House music thing started happening in Chicago.

Kaskade

#37. I explored rock culture and what the guitar can do though people like Jimmy Page and John McLaughlin, and the music moves away from pop.

Johnny Marr

#38. We have a rock audience, classical audience, metal, pop - everything. We unite them all.

Stjepan Hauser

#39. I wanted to be a rock star. I dreamed of it, and that's all I dreamed of. To be more accurate, I wanted to be a pop star. This was in the late '80s. And mostly, I wanted to be the fifth member of Depeche Mode or Duran Duran.

Eric Whitacre

#40. With a pop album you can listen to one or two songs from it, but a music album is really an experience. It's not something a whole lot of rock bands do.

Dylan Baldi

#41. I'd call my music rock but with pop hooks.

Taylor Momsen

#42. If you had a successful TV show, people wanted to see you live. Promoters had had practice with pop groups, and 'Python' achieved a similar status. We also had lots of rock star fans - George Harrison, Pink Floyd, Robert Plant. Promoters saw that and liked it.

Michael Palin

#43. I've always loved the rock & roll element to live shows, because whatever else I do, I'm basically a rock/pop performer, and that's what I like.

Marc Almond

#44. It's like a little folk song. I think it might've been Harry Belafonte or someone like that who did it. And "Merry Christmas, Everybody" by Slade, which is a rock group - a rock-pop group who are very big over there.

Nick Lowe

#45. And it's a ... it's a term 'Punk Rock' that's based on contempt; it's a term that's based on fashion , style , elitism, satanism , and, everything that's rotten about rock 'n' roll.

Iggy Pop

#46. I like all kinds of music - classical, pop, rock, electronic.

Ha-Joon Chang

#47. I think Lady Gaga is great and is changing pop music and bringing back a certain rock 'n' roll spirit, swagger to the game.

Adam Lambert

#48. I couldn't do the heavy rock thing anymore. Noddy Holder was around kicking every singer in the ***. I never wanted to be a pop singer. Christ, how I hated Noddy!

Tom Jones

#49. These were all middle-class kids from literary backgrounds, joining this sort of train going by, this pop train, jumping on. Whereas the rest of the rock scene, you'll find that there's mostly working-class people.

Kevin Ayers

#50. We don't have a lot of men on stage doing flamboyant or theatrical. We have a lot of female pop stars doing it, but where are the guys? Where's the classic pop-rock showman?

Adam Lambert

#51. Composers don't just sit in a room and write things that are in their heads, they actually listen to a lot of music, pop music, jazz, rock and roll, any combination of music that catches their ear.

Hilary Hahn

#52. What I love about '80s rock music is the amazing, fantastic melodies. In pop music, it's all about the techno beat to dance to in the club and the repetitiveness, whereas in rock music there is literally, like, balls-to-the-wall singing and playing. I love it.

Julianne Hough

#53. The whole thing about rock music, pop music, is it's really for kids.

Juliana Hatfield

#54. Latin music has many international influences - pop, rock, country, Brazilian sounds, and alternative styles.

Ednita Nazario

#55. If anyone asks you what kind of music you play, tell him 'pop.' Don't tell him 'rock'n'roll' or they won't even let you in the hotel.

Buddy Holly

#56. Hit songs did not come out of musicals. Pop-rock was creating the hits. There were very few songs that made the charts out of any Broadway musical.

Stephen Sondheim

#57. I'd say that my musical influences are anywhere from pop-rock electronica, new age and classical. But I think that specifically, bands - I love Jem, I love Sigur Ross, I love David Gray, I love Elliot Smith ... a lot of different people. But I don't find lyrical inspiration from anybody.

Emmy Rossum

#58. Starship was a whole different thing. It was pop rock. It made more money and had more hit songs than Airplane. There was no cultural or social ethic behind it. For me, it was like selling out. I was the only one selling out. The rest enjoyed doing what they were doing.

Grace Slick

#59. I did the rock 'n roll-pop cliche of getting burnt out. I'm not the first person that happened to, and I'm sure I won't be the last.

Robbie Williams

#60. I grew up listening to all kinds of music, everything from country to rock, pop, R&B and even rap, so for me, music is music and a great song is a great song.

Jason Aldean

#61. I've never seen myself as a pop singer. I grew up listening to gospel, soul and rock. My approach to pop is that, when I was doing my album, I wanted to have raw, genuine lyrics, but wanted it to be easy to process.

Tori Kelly

#62. I give Iggy credit for deconstructing the very idea of entertainment.

Kim Gordon

#63. I think we as a band, as individuals, understand that all popular music stems from blues and jazz and even pop, but rock 'n' roll especially comes from blues.

David Johansen

#64. I really do listen to all types of music, not only rock, but everything from good pop music - which is usually older pop music - to R&B and indie rock. I love indie rock more than a lot of the commercial stuff that you'd expect.

Amy Lee

#65. The Beatles and Ray Charles were in the same charts together, and that was just called pop music - it wasn't called soul or rock. The best pop music just stands out as something that's just original, and I think it should all be called pop again.

Eliza Doolittle

#66. Tim Thornton's portrait of a pop culture obsession is so convincing that one can't help wishing that his fictional alt rock band actually existed, or suspecting that they did. The Alternative Hero is a weirdly compelling portrait of fanatic fandom which reads like High Fidelity at high volume.

Jay McInerney

#67. I can sing, but I never considered myself a powerhouse vocalist but more of a rock-pop singer.

Nick Fradiani

#68. I felt that the elegance of pop music was that it was reflective: we were holding up a mirror to our audience and reflecting them philosophically and spiritually, rather than just reflecting society or something called 'rock and roll.'

Pete Townshend

#69. Rock and roll by its nature is sexual. So girls playing rock and roll is saying to the world, "We own our sexuality." I think that pop music is sort of about "you can do what you want to me" kind of energy, while rock and roll is "I'm going to do what I want to you" kind of energy.

Joan Jett

#70. In pop music, you say, 'You can do what you want to me.' Rock 'n' roll says, 'I'm gonna do what I want to you.'

Joan Jett

#71. I feel like I'm a rock artist. I don't feel like I'm a pop artist. And I'm alt rock. I'm indie rock. I'm punk rock. Because it comes from the pots and pans. It's a lot of me, but I've got multiple personalities.

CeeLo Green

#72. It's a miracle that David Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop are actually still alive today, given how hard they lived.

Mick Rock

#73. I love jazz and pop rock and country. I grew up listening to Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Def Leppard, AC/DC, Anne Murray - if I hear something really great ... I want to be a part of it.

Natalie MacMaster

#74. inquiries. You will feel it in the music and cherish it as the most magical part of the jazz idiom. If you don't, you can always leave the jazz club and check out a rock or pop covers band. That's perfect entertainment for people who want to live in the realm of perfect replication. Jazz, in

Ted Gioia

#75. You know that everyone thinks that in order to do South Park we must be wild, crazy, rock and roll stars. But the truth is we're just wholesome middle-American guys. We enjoy soda pop, baseball and beating up old people just as much as anybody.

Trey Parker

#76. Pop stardom is not very compelling. I'm much more interested in a relationship between performer and audience that is of equals. I came up through folk music, and there's no pomp and circumstance to the performance. There's no, like, 'I'll be the rock star, you be the adulating fan.'

Ani DiFranco

#77. Being in a rock n' roll and pop world, it's very easy to act like a kid.

Joey McIntyre

#78. Of course we had the best possible classical education, which gave us a very strong foundation and tradition. But we also learned a lot by collaborating with different pop/rock artists and especially by recording and working in the studio.

Luka Sulic

#79. The Bangles are proof that short skirts and electric guitars go hand-in-hand. They are one of the great all-girl groups, backing up their looks with a serious pop-rock pedigree.

Shawn Amos

#80. The female rock-'n'-roll-country-pop songwriter is back, and her name is Taylor Swift. And it's women like her who are going to save the music business.

Stevie Nicks

#81. The classical music industry, has been an industry of covers. So we do covers, and if I compare this with the rock and pop side, what is the most exciting event?

Esa-Pekka Salonen

#82. The biggest question I have is if you're a rock singer or a rock 'n' roll band, or if you're a pop singer ... if you've made your way in another genre of music and now you want to make a country record, why? That's my question. Why?

Joe Nichols

#83. Soho has got to be at its centre. It's got such a history for rock, pop, poetry, jazz, writers, all those things, and I think it should be valued as such, and protected as this centre for bohemia.

Marc Almond

#84. I think there are some good players coming up. I think we are at a point where people can swallow a guitar solo in a pop rock record again.

Gary Cherone

#85. My records are borderline dance records. They've got a real electro-rock heart and soul, and the vibe of the sentiment is pop, but there's a lot of people that were like, 'This is a dance record.'

Lady Gaga

#86. Everybody was sorta going to sleep twards the end of 1983, and I felt that they had to be woken up!

Morrissey

#87. I'm into Incubus. Growing up, I was a huge Taking Back Sunday fan. I'm still a fan, but I don't listen as much as I used to. When I was 13 or 14, I started getting into emo-pop-rock, so that influenced me. I also love Drake ... I have a pretty diverse collection.

Kendall Schmidt

#88. In the '60s, people were still very protective of each field that they belonged to. Avant-garde artists didn't know about rock or pop or jazz. And the jazz people of course didn't want to know about any other music. They were all just kind of protecting their territory.

Yoko Ono

#89. Seriously, he was worse than Captain Kirk. Luke hardly ever had a shirt on.

Kristen Ashley

#90. I listen to a lot of crazy stuff like pop, techno, rock, hip-hop, rap, baladas, bachata ... my iPod is crazy. I like listening to a lot of stuff in different languages, so my music is always out there for me.

Prince Royce

#91. What is a genius? What is a living legend? What is a megastar? Michael Jackson
that's all. And when you think you know him, he gives you more. I think he is one of the finest people to hit this planet, and, in my estimation, he is the true King of Pop, Rock and Soul.

Elizabeth Taylor

#92. Fall Out Boy never pretended that we were anything but pop-rock.

Pete Wentz

#93. Hip-hop is mostly what I listen to, other than jazz. I've given up on pop music and indie rock.

Jess Row

#94. I'm a businesswoman. I am a music lover. I like for people to like my music. When you listen to top 40 radio, you hear pop stuff. You hear rock stuff. You hear all these different influences.

Lee Ann Womack

#95. I think a great artist should be able to create any style, any form, anything from rock to pop to gospel to spiritual, just wonderful music where everybody can sing it ...

Michael Jackson

#96. It's nice that psychedelic music is kind of a buzzword. When I started with Vincent Black Shadow, stoner-rock was getting big, but it was more of a riff-oriented thing. Now people are starting to get into the 60's-Pink Floyd-acid-pop viewpoint.

Mike Romano

#97. I think one thing you could probably say for all my albums is that they're all pretty eclectic pop. There's always a little bit of urban influence, some dance, a little bit of country, singer-songwriter, pop-rock. I like everything! On every album you can find that.

Kelly Clarkson

#98. When I began to cover songs for YouTube, they all tended to be in the super pop-genre.. as in, smash-hit songs. My writing process was heavily influenced by this - I went from a more heavy punk rock style to straight up sugary-sweet pop.

Alex Goot

#99. 'Punk rock' is a word used by dilettantes and heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies, the bodies, the hearts, the souls, the time and the minds of young men who give everything they have to it.

Iggy Pop

#100. I've done the country, done the pop-rock, done the super-hard electro.

Kesha