Quotes About Original Music

#1. There are a lot of disadvantages with the YouTube stigma, because no one wants to be known as just a cover band. It's all about the original music.

Alex Goot

#2. Hip-hop is definitely not what it used to be, which was creative, original music.

Missy Elliott

#3. I'd love to do a modern-day musical that's full of original music. To get your contemporaries to sing and dance without looking foolish and for it to be transformational and magical and all those things a musical is supposed to be.

Danny Boyle

#4. I've always been making original music. I think that when I sat down with Losing Focus, I approached it different. I had a clearer understanding of who I was talking to, because I was able to go out and tour and see them right in front of me. I wanted to speak to them and speak about this lifestyle.

Young De

#5. I have been looking for a name for years and of course it sounds like it would be easy. Americana came along for the same reason. But to me Americana means Original music with prominent folk/rock influence. Ameripolitan is Original music with prominent roots influence.

Dale Watson

#6. A true music, that is to say, spiritual, a music which may be an act of faith; a music which may touch upon all subjects without ceasing to touch upon God; an original music, in short, whose language may open a few doors, take down some yet distant stars.

Olivier Messiaen

#7. I pretty much draw the line when people want you to do original music for commercials.

Colin Meloy

#8. I'm not a household word. The climate for original music is always a bit difficult.

Jane Siberry

#9. I'm very lucky to work in so many different arenas of the entertainment industry and I do enjoy them all, but making music - original music - in the studio or live onstage is definitely my favorite thing to do.

Bill Mumy

#10. It is all about being open and paying attention to the music in your head. I think most people have original music playing in their heads from time to time.

Tommy Shaw

#11. We called ourselves Child, and we played the bars and nightclubs of the late-sixties Shore. We played original music with some covers, and the simple fact that we were so good was all that kept us working.

Bruce Springsteen

#12. Music is the basis of the whole creation. In reality the whole of creation is music, and what we call music is simply a miniature of the original music, which is creation itself, expressed in tone and rhythm.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

#13. I like being in a recording studio. I like watching a song go from the simplicity of the original music.

Grace Slick

#14. 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

#15. I think anybody that is going to be taken seriously in [music] industry needs to produce their own original music.

Paul Oakenfold

#16. When I first tried to get a record deal for my original music, labels didn't understand what these instruments were meant to be doing

Suzanne Ciani

#17. One of the biggest obstacles I've overcome in my life was thinking I didn't deserve to be successful. Artistically I'm not as much of a heavyweight as someone like Paul Simon or Joni Mitchell, because I'm not a creator of original music, and I worried about that for years.

Bonnie Raitt

#18. Well into the '40s, it wasn't uncommon for big-budget Hollywood movies to contain little or no underscoring, and many of today's directors, following the lead of Martin Scorsese in 'GoodFellas,' accompany their films with pop records, not original music.

Terry Teachout

#19. Women do not like CDs of live music. We only like the original recordings. If a song sounds different from the version we fell in love with, then it's awful.

Leslie Mann

#20. In a similar vein the author recalls sending an email to a senior music executive in the early 2000's and getting a reply in the post, hand written on a print out of his original email.

Mark Mulligan

#21. In Jamaica, them always have throwback riddims, recycled old beats, and the hardcore reggae scene is always present. You have faster stuff like the more commercialized stuff, but you always have that segment of music that is always from the core, from the original root of it.

Damian Marley

#22. The kids that are making the ghetto stuff I can't even reach are the ones that are inspiring me to play music for the other kids in the city they don't even know about. If I don't get those kids making music, there won't be an original kid DJing like me in five to 10 years.

Diplo

#23. It's important to respect and exhaustively study the masters of music, but as you grow and develop it's important to use their discoveries, not as a final destination but as a catalyst for your original ideas.

Carl Orr

#24. My original idea for the cover was better - decapitate Paul - but he wouldn't go along with it.

John Lennon

#25. For that you should read the original. In very great poetry the music often comes through even when one doesn't know language. I loved Dante passionately before I knew a word of Italian.

Donna Tartt

#26. Mars is really different, into art. Lydia Lunch is more energy. James Chance is more commercial in a different way, in funk and jazz. They were all doing original things, trying to create their own sound and music. I think they're all great.

Ikue Mori

#27. I think we're returning to more of the original vibration of music and creativity through the removal of this distortion called the music industry. That's where we're heading. And it'll cut out a lot of music if people ever expected to make money.

Jane Siberry

#28. It's heartening to return to live music, heartening for people like me in a band. It's a very traditional thing to return to. It re-validates the original form that we fell in love with.

Mick Jagger

#29. I came into music because I thought the presentation of poetry wasn't vibrant enough. So I merged improvised poetry with basic rock chords. That was my original mission.

Patti Smith

#30. In classical music, love is based on bitin'
imitation. It's not based on interpretation. A jazz musician, if he plays someone else's song, has a responsibility to make a distinct and original statement.

Todd Boyd

#31. There's a difference between music that's original and music that's retro. A lot of bands now are kind of retro 70s whether it's Kraut-rock or ... I've heard people suggest that we're kind of retro 80s.

Bill Orcutt

#32. I'm 100 percent original, and that's what got me here. My rap music is more understandable, slower. It tells a story. You can write a book on each of my thoughts.

Tupac Shakur

#33. I try to be original in every piece of music I do, and of course I probably fail every time.

Herbert

#34. Some of the freshest, most compelling, and most soulful music I have heard recently. Bob Reynolds is an amazing musician, with something very exciting and original to say.

Joshua Redman

#35. Music is one of those things that brings great joy to people, singing is a sort of unifier of people, no matter what political place or original place you come from.

Brian Viglione

#36. Everyone should pursue whatever is original in oneself. That's the way for a long life in music.

Bjorn Ulvaeus

#37. It's just like music when you reckon it up. It's like listening to Pavement it's just The Fall in 1985, isn't it? They haven't got an original idea in their heads.

Mark E. Smith

#38. I didn't really see the British punk movement, if that's what it was, as wildly original, because I had been listening so intently to all the New York music since 1973, really.

Morrissey

#39. So vast is the shadow cast by the MGM production of 'The Wizard of Oz,' so indelible are its characterizations, so perfect its music, and so assured is its cinematic immortality, that most people think of it as 'The Original.' In fact, it isn't.

Kage Baker

#40. If you are approaching the music with more reverence than the original guys invested into it, you are effectively doing it a disservice.

James Hunter

#41. [On being asked how it felt to be the first female conductor of the Boston Symphony:] I've been a woman for a little more than fifty years, and I've gotten over my original astonishment.

Nadia Boulanger

#42. Not only was it enough to be a cover band, it was perhaps the highest calling. After all, if you could play music recorded by others, stay true to the original, and still add fire and flare, why not?

Paul Shaffer

#43. I have been in the music industry ever since I was six years old. I have been inspired by so many great artists and of course trying to be original at the same time. I try not to work under boundaries while I'm making music.

Asher Monroe

#44. Remixes come very quickly, because you already have the melody and the vocals. I have a great passion for music, so it doesn't matter to me if it's a remix or an original production. I don't think about it as, 'Well, I have to spend three hours on a remix or I have to do something all original.'

Tiesto

#45. Looping isn't an effect: it's your playing, only more of it and, if you hang with it, it'll uncover previously hidden facets from the body of your music. Remember: the original source of any loop is whatever your sound is, at the moment of input.

David Torn

#46. The Music of Negro religion is that plaintive rhythmic melody, with its touching minor cadences, which, despite caricature and defilement, still remains the most original and beautiful expression of human life and longing yet born on American soil.

W.E.B. Du Bois

#47. I am now satisfied that the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called negro melodies. This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States.

Antonin Dvorak

#48. If you ask me, rockabilly has had a raw deal for far too long. People never shunned the blues or jazz the way they do rockabilly. But it's the original punk-rock, and it changed the way people looked at music for ever.

Imelda May

#49. I am not really certain how original my contribution to music is as I am obviously an amateur.

Patti Smith

#50. Virgil Donati is clearly the best drummer to come along in the music scene in quite some time. He is extremely unique and has embraced an original sound that has given him a signature that is unmistakable and impossible to duplicate.

Tony MacAlpine

#51. I simply wanted to bring out the ways that each of us (though on vastly different levels) is dedicated to music. That was my original motive, and I like to think that, to some extent, I have succeeded.

Haruki Murakami

#52. The native music of North America, the original-roots music of this country, is also the underworld music of this country.

Robbie Robertson

#53. While I am not a musician, I love music. I have over 15,000 songs on my iPod. Everything from hard core rap to the soundtrack from the original 'Cinderella.'

Lee Daniels

#54. You've got to be original, or there will be nothing distinctive or interesting about your playing

Liona Boyd

#55. I like to write music. And I think exploring with lyrics and figuring out how to make complete songs is fun. I think I have a take on it. I don't know if it's great, but it's an interesting take. It's original.

Stone Gossard

#56. I'm really just concentrating on making good music, whether it's using a sample or doing an original track.

Rahki

#57. And obviously, when I started out, I had a little bit more curiosity than some, and went seeking out the original artists, or in some cases searching up country music.

Elvis Costello

#58. Folk music is the original melody of man; it is the musical mirror of the world.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#59. Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature.

Zhuangzi

#60. I wanted to be different and original but still have it be something my fans could get into. There also are some big, beautiful ballads. I told my producers that I wanted tracks that are going to blow up in the clubs, but I also wanted songs that were very melodic and with a lot of instrumentation.

Aaliyah

#61. Well, the way I play, I try not to be a 'repeater pencil', ya dig? Originality's the thing. You can have tone and technique and a lot of other things but without originality you ain't really nowhere. Gotta be original.

Lester Young

#62. Producers on Broadway approached us with an original script after relaunching ourselves as 'A Great Big World,' and wanted us to write the music. They asked us to make the music we would sing if we could, and so we can go a little crazier. We refer to it as 'our music on steroids.'

Ian Axel

#63. Puffy's contribution to hip-hop culture was the remix. He offered us the music that his mom played in front of him, with newer drums and younger artists. That worked, and will consistently be there. The remix comes right after the original record, that's something Puffy did to influence the culture.

Curtis Jackson

#64. The people at large absolutely gave James Brown respect. He was an original like a Rembrandt or a Picasso

Aretha Franklin

#65. I don't care what you're playing. You can be playing EDM music. Well, guess what? That came out in the early '80s. There's no way to be original. All you can do is put yourself into it and do the best you can.

Brittany Howard

#66. That was part of the whole original concept. We were thinking, it's off-season, let's do a really fun, local-oriented event, raise money for good causes and bring some music to the valley.

Andy Kaufman

#67. My favorite music to sing would be my own songs, my original songs, just because I know them, you know I write the tunes, so my favorite songs are the newest ones that I write. That's what I like to sing the most, because it means something, it's real, it comes from me.

Paul McDonald

#68. I never stopped writing music, I just stopped writing songs. I've been writing music continually ever since the last album of original tunes, "River Of Dreams" in '93.

Billy Joel

#69. I'm dead serious about my craft and just really serious about making music in itself. I take pride in making songs and albums where no two songs sound alike. That's the challenge and that's what it's all about, to keep it original and fresh and funky.

Big Boi

#70. A lot of pop music has come out of people failing to copy their model and accidentally creating something new. The closer you get to your ideal, the less original you sound.

Elvis Costello

#71. No one is original. Everyone is derivative.

Sonny Rollins

#72. I don't think there is a musician today that hasn't been affected by Elvis' music. His definitive years - 1954-57 - can only be described as rock's cornerstone. He was the original cool.

Brian Setzer

#73. I've been very grateful and humbled by the fact that young people really dig Joy Division's music. It's a great testament to the chemistry and the songwriting prowess between the four original members.

Peter Hook

#74. Napster is great so long as they put out tracks on there that have been officially released. I don't really mind people downloading my music; I also see it as a compliment. And if you are a real music lover, you want to have the original CD anyway 'cause then you feel more connected to the artist.

Tiesto

#75. The grace is being able to like rock music,
symphony music, jazz ...
anything that contains the original energy of
joy.

Charles Bukowski

#76. Sixties folk rock was my original muse and the folk audience-people who listen to music off the beaten track-fostered my career. I definitely don't want to abandon the genre but I also need to make sure I'm Dar Williams first.

Dar Williams

#77. When all the original blues guys are gone, you start to realize that someone has to tend to the tradition. I recognize that I have some responsibility to keep the music alive, and it's a pretty honorable position to be in.

Eric Clapton

#78. Once I grew up and realised 'What am I doing?' I started re-listening to the music I was playing and I realised there was so much finesse - it was dynamic and simple but I wanted to be authentic to the original songs.

Eric Hernandez

#79. 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

#80. 'Dance to the Music' was just Sly Stone being his natural crazy self right from the beginning. The man was an original and his first AM hit was nothing if it wasn't the example per excellence of the Sly Stone music machine.

Jon Landau

#81. Opera is the original marriage of words and music, and there's a theatre element, a dramatic element. It's right up my alley.

Shane Koyczan

#82. Country music is completely punk-rock. It's the original punk-rock.

Neko Case