Top 81 Quotes About Motown
#1. Marvin Gaye is an inspiration to me. He was one of the first Motown musicians that my mom and dad introduced me to, and I always thought it would be a good idea if I was ever an artist, and now I am, to make a record called 'Marvin Gaye.'
Charlie Puth
#2. Artist development is something that I've been passionate about from my days at Uptown and Motown Records.
Laurieann Gibson
#3. I love to sing old Motown songs to myself, or some Patti Smith Edith Piaf or Billie Holiday. That gets me in the mood for singing.
Siobhan Fahey
#4. I was really fortunate growing up to have a broad musical education. My parents listened to all kinds of music, rock, soul, Motown, jazz, Frank Sinatra, everything.
Mayer Hawthorne
#5. Once you're a Motown artist, you're always a Motown artist.
Smokey Robinson
#6. I've discovered that Motown and Broadway have a lot in common - a family of wonderfully talented, passionate, hardworking young people, fiercely competitive but also full of love and appreciation for the work, for each other and for the people in the audience.
Berry Gordy
#7. Outside the bedroom Jane fumbled around and in her purse and produced a pack of cigarettes, but couldn't figure out whether to smoke one or not. "Holy Motown Jesus with Pips, what the fuck is going on in there?
Christopher Moore
#8. I honed in on a great time, the Motown era, the '60s and '70s. That type of music has always been a staple in my life.
Raphael Saadiq
#9. My dad was a soul fan and a singer himself, and he loved vocal harmony, stuff like the Beach Boys and Motown like the Four Tops, which was a big influence on me.
Katy B
#10. My parents had a huge pile of records - vinyl! - that I loved, especially the Motown stuff, Steely Dan, Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding.
Jonny Lang
#11. My main influences are pop and folk music - Bob Lind, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, the Motown collection, The Zombies, Elliott Smith, and a ton of 70's AM radio hits. I love powerpop too.
Greta Salpeter
#12. I was never really that interested in the punk movement. I was a blues guy: I liked Motown, James Brown.
Gary Oldman
#13. With the '60s era and Motown, my grandparents actually introduced us to that when I was younger, so I grew up listening to the Jackson Five, Aretha Franklin, The Temptations, The Supremes and Diana Ross' solo stuff. I just loved it.
Jordin Sparks
#14. Motown's policy was to build one act at a time or their favorites.
Brenda Holloway
#15. I grew up in Marcy Projects in Brooklyn, and my mom and pop had an extensive record collection, so Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and all of those sounds and souls of Motown filled the house.
Jay-Z
#16. We call 'Ain't No Mountain' the golden egg that landed us at Motown.
Nickolas Ashford
#17. I've performed in Auburn Hills, at The Palace, so I haven't really been in downtown Detroit, but I've been able to be here, and I can really see, what the city was. Like, I can feel why Motown started here and how amazing it was.
Jordin Sparks
#18. My listening changed when I heard music from Stax, Atlantic, Motown because by that age I thought anything that my parents listened to must be square. So I had to find my own rock n' roll, as it were, and I found it in black soul music.
Robert Palmer
#19. I don't think you can recreate anything from the past. You can not do it. If you're going to go out and imitate a Motown sound, you can't do it, it's impossible because of the studios and players involved and the atmosphere.
Elton John
#20. I love Motown, that whole era. Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson. I just put on Pandora, and put it on Motown, and it makes me smile; makes me smile so much.
Tika Sumpter
#21. I grew up not far from where Motown was founded, maybe 300 miles from Detroit and I've always liked - I used to like the way they made records. I still do, I just haven't had a chance to hear as much. They used to entertain me.
Rick Danko
#22. Motown was about music for all people - white and black, blue and green, cops and the robbers. I was reluctant to have our music alienate anyone.
Berry Gordy
#23. I love Motown, but I've obviously always been more of a Memphis soul fan. If it's Stax or Motown, I go Stax.
Justin Townes Earle
#24. When we were first started we were doing a lot of Motown stuff, but actually playing it more in a rock way. Everybody in the band sang and we did a lot of harmonies.
Roy Wood
#25. I'd heard a lot of Motown and Stax when I was a kid, but the more well-known end of it. On Jam tours, we had a DJ called Ady Croasdell who ran a '60s club. He turned me on to underground stuff and what people call northern soul. It just blew my mind.
Paul Weller
#26. Well, I had an after hours club in Vancouver and when any of the Motown acts would call.
Tommy Chong
#27. I've bought clothes based on record covers. Particularly from the formative music that turned me onto it in the first place when I was a kid, with the Beatles and the Small Faces. A lot of those Sixties soul artists were in really sharp sharkskin or mohair suits, and Motown artists looked amazing.
Paul Weller
#28. I grew up around music. My father was a professional musician. We used to have a trailer house that we travelled in. I've always loved music. Started out loving to sing to the standards and songs of the early 50s, then that interest shifted to rock and roll, Motown, folk.
Timothy B. Schmit
#29. Without the Fender bass, there'd be no rock n' roll or no Motown. The electric guitar had been waiting 'round since 1939 for a nice partner to come along. It became an electric rhythm section, and that changed everything.
Quincy Jones
#30. My musical influence is really from my father. He was a DJ in college. My parents met at New York University. So he listened to, you know, Motown, and he listened to Bob Dylan. He listened to Grateful Dead and Rolling Stones, but he also listened to reggae music. And he collected vinyl.
Talib Kweli
#31. I went from elementary school to proper training, operatic training, and I went on to the Motown University and learned a lot of things from some wonderful people.
Martha Reeves
#32. I kind of grew up with hip hop and of course being from Detroit I'm a Motown man. Music is in our blood. When you're from Detroit, music is in your DNA.
Eric Thomas
#33. Music has always been a big part of Cheech & Chong's career, so it's just natural. You know, I was a musician before I met Cheech and had a record with Motown, and so I've got the cred.
Tommy Chong
#34. It's marvelous when you visit Tokyo: they have these clubs, and they'll have 'Motown Night' or 'The Beatles - Totally Authentic and Live!' You know it's shrunk, but at least there's some sort of youthful figure to it. Whereas, the blues scene in Europe is more like, 'Here we go again.'
Robert Palmer
#35. And for some reason, when I'm sad, I do listen to Leonard Cohen, I do listen to Joni Mitchell. I do find myself going to the music that's actually reflecting my mood, as opposed to sticking on Motown, which might actually bring my mood up.
Glen Hansard
#36. I grew up listening to oldies, like Motown. That's from my mom.
Ryan Lochte
#37. Music has always been in my family, but it was mainly keyboards. I learned to play classical piano, but when I first heard the amazing bass guitar of James Jamerson, who played on all the big Motown hits of the '60s and '70s, I knew bass guitar was my instrument.
Suzi Quatro
#38. Rock and roll came in and changed my life and changed the whole music scene forever, and then I grew to love R&B and Motown and all black music, gospel music. But I never dismiss any form of music. I listen to everything.
Elton John
#40. I never went to the Beatles' concerts to scream. I never screamed at anybody's show. I was on my feet with the entire, all of the crowned heads of Motown, and we were shrieking our guts out.
Linda Ronstadt
#41. For me, the highlight was meeting all the Motown acts, as I adore black soul music. I met Stevie Wonder who I love, and Diana Ross And The Supremes. I also met The Carpenters. I was actually there in the studio when they recorded We've Only Just Begun.
Tony Blackburn
#42. When we did a lot of that Motown stuff there were four of us on the front line. When we started the evening we'd start from one end of the band and just go along. The lead singer would change all the time. That's the first time that I actually managed to put it into a record.
Roy Wood
#43. Growing up in Hitchin was comfortable and easy enough. My parents had some great records - and some not-so-great ones - and that's where I got introduced to Motown and the Stones and Springsteen.
James Bay
#44. I know that's blasphemous when you are from Detroit, but I was never a fan of Motown stuff. I don't care for the production much.
Jack White
#45. My favorite period is when we lived in the land of the three-minute song. The Motown thing - I thought they were genius in knowing that's as much as a listener can take.
Meshell Ndegeocello
#46. When I joined, I was one of the first artists to sign on to the Motown West label when they opened their first studio in California. At the studio, you'd run into Stevie Wonder, you'd run into Marvin Gaye ... it was very special.
Thelma Houston
#47. Growing up, I never listened to English music. I was more into Motown, as well as early rock n' roll like Chuck Berry and Little Richard.
Alex Winston
#48. One thing I can say about the Motown acts is that we were a family. That's not a myth.
Smokey Robinson
#49. There were many stars in Motown's firmament - among them, Stevie, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Martha Reeves and Diana Ross - but I happen to have loved the Four Tops most of all.
Jon Landau
#50. I listened to a lot of Marvin Gaye and Motown records.
Charlie Puth
#51. Remember Motown? Not just the driving music that swept the nation and the world, but the vibrant energy of the Motor City itself, symbolizing the heyday of America. Today, a derelict Detroit is testament to what America has squandered and what it has become.
Gerald Celente
#52. A big part of the Motown formula was, they took music and turned it into this sort of automotive assembly line. They were cranking out 10 songs a day in that studio, or more.
Mayer Hawthorne
#53. I grew up in Ann Arbor, about 25 miles west of Detroit. And when you grow up in that area, you get a healthy dose of Motown automatically.
Mayer Hawthorne
#54. Motown will always be a heavy-duty part of my life because those are my roots.
Smokey Robinson
#55. People still look at Michael Jackson as being a Motown artist.
Smokey Robinson
#56. With my music, I don't have to stay in one lane. One day I'm in Motown, and the next day I'm in reggae.
Estelle
#57. Charles and I are from Augusta, Ga. - so we come from James Brown territory, soul music and Motown. And Charles has always had a lot of Southern rock in there as well.
Dave Haywood
#58. Once you're a Motown artist, that's your stigmatism, and I was there from the very first day.
Smokey Robinson
#59. Motown was the mecca. It was every writer's dream to work there.
Valerie Simpson
#60. I left Motown because of the regime of people who were there.
Smokey Robinson
#61. Even before coming into the industry, I was a big fan of Motown, the Jackson 5, Gladys Knight, the Temptations, Diana Ross and The Supremes.
Stephanie Mills
#62. My parents brought me up on all different styles of music, like my Mum would listen to Motown R&B and my Dad was quite 80's driven, so I was always surrounded by music growing up.
Ella Henderson
#63. I don't ever balk at being considered a Motown person, because Motown is the greatest musical event that ever happened in the history of music.
Smokey Robinson
#64. One of my strongest memories is my father playing bongos in the living room in Detroit listening to Motown radio. He was this skinny white bald guy, but he was really moved by blues and Motown and funk.
Sufjan Stevens
#66. That culture, of looking at catchy music as a negative thing, is weird. It has nothing to do with me, or the music I was into growing up. The Stones and the Beatles only tried to write hits. Every Motown song, every Credence Clearwater song - they were trying to write hits.
Dan Auerbach
#67. Ron White was not one of the very first original members of the Motown staff, but eventually he was.
Smokey Robinson
#68. I made a good living for a teenager. And I had to learn all different kinds of music - jazz, swing, Motown, pop - and that inspired what kind of music I started to write.
Idina Menzel
#69. The Beatles were huge. And the first thing they said when you interviewed them, 'Oh yeah, we grew up on Motown.'..They were the first white act to admit they grew up listening to black music.
Smokey Robinson
#70. I was in about in the 8th grade when I started recording R&B, so much of what was on was the Motown sound, and The Beatles had pretty much come over and taken America by storm.
Betty Wright
#71. My mom was a huge Adam and the Ants fan. My granddad listened to a lot of Motown and Elvis and Johnny Cash. So I was kind of well-rounded.
Hayley Williams
#72. I knew I wanted to do music at eight years of age. I listened to a lot of Motown growing up, and it got to the point where I started mimicking people - Michael Jackson or whoever. People started to notice I could hold a tone. The bug was always there.
Conrad Sewell
#73. I grew up listening to Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and lots of blues, R&B and Motown.
L'Wren Scott
#74. My dad liked a lot of Motown, but I didn't listen to it until my teenage years.
John Legend
#75. 'Let's Get It On' is a classic Motown single, endlessly repeatable and always enjoyable.
Jon Landau
#76. Growing up, I listened and was influenced by a lot of those around me. I have a big family, and my dad listened to '80s music, my mom listened to Motown, my brother listened to reggae, and my granddad was the one that got me into jazz and swing music.
Ella Henderson
#77. I grew up when the whole Motown thing was huge. The charts in those days were dominated by groups more than solo artists at one point.
Simon Cowell
#78. Growing up, I liked all the stuff that everyone else was listening to, like Motown, but the biggest group of all was The Beatles.
Eddie Murphy
#79. Driving home I switch on the radio and one of those old Motown voices comes on and reaches my heart.
Ellen Van Neerven
#80. We came from the '60s era, when we started and made so many hits. The song value from the '60s was so darn good, you've got The Beatles, The Beach Boys, all of Motown, and plenty of other people, too ... amazing records, amazing songs.
Mike Love
#81. No. I know that's blasphemous when you are from Detroit.
Jack White
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