Quotes About Popular Music

#1. Folk-punk artists like This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb or Paul Baribeau were popular in the Florida punk community. I saw people early on combine roots music with more aggressive music.

Benjamin Booker

#2. It really is, to see that this kind of music is still so popular.

Wanda Jackson

#3. We were playing popular music, but we were doing our own arrangements because we were too lazy to sit down and figure out the originals.

Tommy Shaw

#4. I think I'm writing for an intelligent stranger - you know, in my mind I can't remember who coined that phrase first. I don't want to write anything that makes me cringe, first of all. I cringe a lot - mostly when I hear popular music.

Jason Isbell

#5. We are living in a time when American popular music is finally being recognized as one of our most successful exports. The demand is huge.

Billy Joel

#6. Give the People what they want - and they'll get what they deserve.

The Kinks

#7. The good and bad are all tangled up together. American popular music is loved around the world because of its African rhythm. But that wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for slavery.

Pete Seeger

#8. Popular music is popular because a lot of people like it.

Irving Berlin

#9. Patrick actually used to be popular before Sam bought him some good music.

Stephen Chbosky

#10. Ibiza is a popular vacation place for a lot of the players in Spain. If you go in the summer, there are some of the world's most famous movie and music stars, so nobody cares about soccer players.

Xavi

#11. Although we are being presented in Carnegie Hall, we have to furnish a budget for our guest stars, and for the music writing - which is a huge budget in any orchestra that plays popular music.

Skitch Henderson

#12. Now, in music, it seems more like the popular crowd suppresses anyone who is different.

Liz Phair

#13. Irving Berlin said, "Popular music is popular because a lot of people like it." That doesn't mean it's good or bad - that's the equivalent of arguing the merits of hotdogs versus hamburgers. What the hell difference does it make?

Lester Bangs

#14. Given that there was that era of girl group music and it's still very popular, but I think if you looked at the chart from that time you would see many more men on it. Because the industry, they were catering to young girls. I mean, that's what they thought their audience was.

Lesley Gore

#15. I don't see that there are any particular changes in popular music.

Lester Bangs

#16. It just sort of happened. I wrote like what I'd always read and what was in the movies ... I'm sure popular music is supposed to be like this.

Warren Zevon

#17. I think popular music in this country is one of the few things in the twentieth century that have made giant strides in reverse.

Bing Crosby

#18. I play popular songs. This is not some obscure, unusual music. This is popular music.

Frank Fairfield

#19. I don't know if I was as ambitious as to change the world, but I do feel like - the reason why I called the album "Our Version of Events" was that I feel a lot of people are not represented in pop music and popular culture.

Emeli Sande

#20. I'm sure if we had made an album that was more traditional would have been released immediately. When we actually play this music on stage and people become familiar with it, it will become more popular.

Mick Taylor

#21. If you can imagine a man having a vasectomy without anesthetic to the sound of frantic sitar-playing, you will have some idea of what popular Turkish music is like.

Bill Bryson

#22. What is classical music if not the epitome of sensuality, passion, and understated erotica that popular music, even with all of its energy and life, cannot even begin to touch?

Lara St. John

#23. The music of the most popular operas is so highly esteemed, it can stand endless revivals.

Bruce Beresford

#24. Blues music is becoming more and more popular than it ever was. I'm always meeting people on the road that are really young, and are guitar players. male and female.

Mick Taylor

#25. The idea that rhythm is intrinsically human - not just primitive - that we all have hearts that beat at a steady rate and don't stop ... reminds me of life itself. In that sense my music is like certain popular music where the rhythm drives from beginning to end.

Michael Torke

#26. Popular music is a microcosm of the culture, Eliza. It reflects the mentality of the population.

Tiffanie DeBartolo

#27. For instance, I'm always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.

Brian Eno

#28. The imminent demise of the large record companies as gatekeepers of the world's popular music is a good thing, for the most part.

David Byrne

#29. Rock musicians, and a vast array of popular-music musicians, due to their wealth, acquired through the mass of their notoriety, are able to be listened to and heard and thus are able to effect change on an international level.

Bill Dixon

#30. Contrary to popular cable TV-induced opinion, aerobics have nothing to do with squeezing our body into hideous shiny Spandex, grinning like a deranged orangutan, and doing cretinous steps to debauched disco music.

Cynthia Heimel

#31. If Broadway musicals were as popular as they were in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, then people like Sufjan Stevens and Iron & Wine would be writing for Broadway, which would be amazing. As it stands, it's the worst stuff that's mired in pop music.

Colin Meloy

#32. The music that was popular in your youth seems to be the music you recall most vividly - and most nostalgically - for the rest of your life. But so is the music that was popular in your parents' youth.

Robin Marantz Henig

#33. It may not be the most popular but there is a place for it. I think about the kind of music I love, acoustic, melodic, and I guess it kind of took a bit of courage on my part to think I could be one of those songwriters.

Helen Slater

#34. The Mozart Effect comes to mind: the popular idea that listening to classical music makes students better at math.

John Medina

#35. Patrick used to be popular, until Sam bought him some good music.

Stephen Chbosky

#36. The fact that file sharing goes on, and is as popular as it is, is an incredibly positive thing for the music industry. The fact is that music is so popular that people are willing to break the law to get it.

Dave Rowntree

#37. Commercial music, for the most part, is popular music and you always have to keep that in mind.

Kenneth Edmonds

#38. Who was it had said when you fall in love all the popular songs suddenly seemed to mean something.

Dolores Hitchens

#39. The pieces that have survived, the ones that we all love, were not all popular in their time. Just look at Beethoven's late string quartets. The music that the musical community selects, however, is usually the very best.

David Finckel

#40. Contrary to popular opinion, classical music does not have to be enjoyed amid exclusive circles, there need not be any snobbishness attached to it. It's there for everyone. I play for the people.

Andre Rieu

#41. Popular music is like a big party, and it's a thrill sneaking in rather than being invited. Every once in a while, a guy with his shirt on inside out, wearing lipstick and a pillbox hat gets a chance to speak.

Tom Waits

#42. 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

#43. I grew up in the 1930s Great Depression when many families struggled to make ends meet, and in an area where old-fashioned country gospel music was popular. Later, as an adult with a more mature outlook on Christianity, I realized that a lot of that music was rather shallow.

Jerry Bridges

#44. I think country music is popular - has been popular and will always be popular because I think a lot of real people singing about a lot of real stuff about real people. And it's simple enough for people to understand it. And we kind of roll with the punches.

Dolly Parton

#45. Soul was the music made by and for black people. For most of the Sixties it was thoroughly divorced from white popular music, but by the end of the decade several artists with their roots firmly in both soul and R&B traditions had crossed over.

Jon Landau

#46. Pop comes from the word 'popular,' which means that it could be anything that appeals to any group of people. When you talk about general masses, I think there's elements in every kind of music that can reach a broad audience.

Anwar Robinson

#47. We [No Doubt] were making music that was the opposite of grunge and what was popular on the radio, and we were fine with that. And for a garage band, we were massive! We were already successful in our own minds.

Gwen Stefani

#48. Mumford and Sons and Adele are both incredible artists and are great for popular music. There's a lot of club music with heavy beats, so to have that Mumford record and hear banjos being used is so cool.

Dave Haywood

#49. The doctor used to tell me that every person about to die becomes a music box playing the melody that best describes his life, his character, and his hopes. For some, it's a popular waltz; for others, a march.

Patrick Modiano

#50. 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

#51. I feel the popular music of a certain time really tells you a lot about what life was like in that period.

Paz De La Huerta

#52. RADIO IS DEAD. The once-bright star that was public broadcasting has been destroyed by greed and corproate muscle to the point that even the music that is completely repugnant is positioned to be popular.

Corey Taylor

#53. Popular music has always had its really horrendous stuff.

Rickie Lee Jones

#54. To the average mind popular music would mean compositions vulgarly conceived and commonplace in their treatment. That is absolutely false.

John Philip Sousa

#55. Copland was one of the first American composers to forge a truly modern style of American classical music while also making use of American popular music - including jazz.

Terry Teachout

#56. The country experience was more of a departure. When you consider my education and my upbringing, you can see that was more of country rock outgrowth of my popular music aspirations.

Tom Wopat

#57. Michael Jackson will always be my favorite pop musician; he was for years and years until his death, which was horrible to me. So I like pop culture. But to me, even if it's popular, there is a quality in the music you have to be able to appreciate.

Michel Gondry

#58. Because in classical music cello is not regarded as a popular choice, it's always playing the long, boring notes.

Luka Sulic

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

Steven Morrissey

#60. Writing is not work. In fact, there's nothing better. Writing is something that if the music business went completely away tomorrow - radio stations quit existing and music quit being popular and it was old hat - I would still write songs.

Toby Keith

#61. In rap, as in most popular lyrics, a very low standard is set for rhyme; but this was not always the case with popular music.

James Fenton

#62. It is as though they simply cannot contemplate the notion of a short, slight man who dresses and moves like a popular (mis)conception of a homosexual being attractive to millions of women.

Dave Hill

#63. It seems to me that the American popular song, growing out of American folk music, is the basis of the American musical theater ... it is quite legitimate to use the form of the popular song and gradually fill it out with new musical content.

Kurt Weill

#64. 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

#65. [Europe has] this tradition of self revelation in popular music. We have it here - it's called Country Western Music ... I think that's where the deeper and more complex subjects are treated.

Leonard Cohen

#66. I only hope that one day, America will recognize what the rest of the world already has known, that our indigenous music - gospel, blues, jazz and R&B - is the heart and soul of all popular music; and that we cannot afford to let this legacy slip into obscurity, I'm telling you.

Quincy Jones

#67. When you can discover where the fresh colors of the faded flower abide, or the music of the broken lyre, seek life among the dead. Such are the anxious and fearful contemplations of the common observer, though the popular religion often prevents him from confessing them even to himself.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

#68. Jazz really does try to include everything. It's always been popular music. But the wonderful thing about jazz is its willingness to take chances.

Madeleine Peyroux

#69. [T]he best, truest popular music is one born of journeys and arrivals, of long odysseys and lightning epiphanies.

Gerri Hirshey

#70. One of the things that's clear to me from interviews that I've read is that the more popular successful jazz musicians had audiences above and beyond the music community.

Branford Marsalis

#71. My mum was very good at making me take up musical instruments, so although there was no popular music she made me learn the recorder when I was three, the violin when I was five and the piano when I was seven. I took up the guitar myself when I was 14.

James Blunt

#72. Explicit material is available in a variety of forums - from popular music to television to the Internet.

Tipper Gore

#73. In the early 60s, folk music seemed to be very popular. In the early 70s, people like James Taylor, John Denver, Jim Croce and Cat Stevens brought back the interest in acoustic music. Today, we don't hear anything.

Paul Stookey

#74. Popularity gets up people's noses. But I understand the importance and the function of popular music. There is an artistic purpose. Popular music helps people to develop a curiosity and leads them towards classical music.

Andrea Bocelli

#75. I never thought electronic music would get as popular in America as it has. When I first came to Vegas in 2009 for my residency - we were they only people playing electronic music at that time.

Paul Oakenfold

#76. Tango was very popular in Panama at the time when I was growing up. In the Fifties in Panama, the radio stations played all types of music.

Ruben Blades

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

Renee Fleming

#78. 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

#79. I fell into hip-hop right from the beginning. I was a teenager in the '60s, so I was putting all my pocket money into buying LPs. I followed the ascent of the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and Stevie Wonder. I followed popular music very closely, and I've never stopped.

Simon De Pury

#80. Have you listened to the radio lately? Have you heard the canned, frozen and processed product being dished up to the world as American popular music today?

Billy Joel

#81. Composers are influenced by all the important music in their lives - and I suppose that since radio started playing popular music, that's as likely to be The Beatles or Aphex Twin as it is to be Verdi or Ravel.

Jonny Greenwood

#82. I'm trying to fuse popular and commercial music and just make very creative music. It's popular music: it's everything for everybody.

Theophilus London

#83. It was such an amazing time for music in the Sixties. When popular music hit me, it was like magic was in the air.

Ozzy Osbourne

#84. For me, personally, the most interesting music comes from the popular sector - from film and pop music - since contemporary classical music got stuck and went into directions where it lost a lot of the public by over-intellectualizing.

Aleksey Igudesman

#85. Making an album should be an honest experience. It shouldn't be about trying to gauge where popular music is today; it should be about artistic expression and putting down what you want to put down.

Scott Weiland

#86. I come from a generation that was surrounded by popular music, but I don't know if anybody's ever going to move the ball forward as far and as fast as the Beatles did.

Steven Soderbergh

#87. I want to produce the best popular music I can.

Theophilus London

#88. Without David Bowie, popular music as we know it pretty much wouldn't exist.

Moby

#89. Van Morrison remains a singer who can be compared to no other in the history of modern popular music.

Greil Marcus

#90. Ask anyone. If it hadn't been for Elvis, I don't know where popular music would be. He was the one that started it all off, and he was definitely the start of it for me.

Elton John

#91. I think certain people would be moved to be nostalgic about America's glory days, when the music set the tone for the cultural conversation and popular musicians had this absurd level of authority.

David Longstreth

#92. I anticipated all the changes in jazz because they were all problematical things, that I was dealing with myself. In New York in the late '50s, there were a lot of experiments being made on how to avoid playing popular standards and how to get improvising out of those constricting formats.

Paul Bley

#93. 'New Jack City' was a perfect marriage of music and film. They used a lot of musicians: myself, Christopher Williams. People that were popular because of their music were given the chance to act. And the soundtrack was incredible.

Ice-T

#94. In general the parallel between the popular uses of music and of pictures is close enough. Both consist of 'using' rather than 'receiving'. Both rush hastily forward to do things with the work of art instead of waiting for it to do something to them.

C.S. Lewis

#95. Popular music has always been rooted in the blues, whether it's Adele or Led Zeppelin or Sam Cooke. It's just the beat that changes.

L.A. Reid

#96. For me personally - because I do it myself - the scoring of a picture is fun. I edit the picture and when I've finished I go into my room and I have many many records - jazz, classical and popular music. And I have this all at my disposal. I don't have to get a composer.

Woody Allen

#97. In each medium - popular music, literature, and visual art, respectively - the woman has broken form, shed a skin, with each phase of her career, whereas the man has returned to ever-deepening iterations of the sound or sentence or imagery with which he began.

Stacey D'Erasmo

#98. One of the disadvantages of poetry over popular music is that if you write a pop song, it naturally gets into people's heads as they listen in the car. You don't have to memorize a Paul Simon song; it's just in your head, and you can sing along. With a poem, you have to will yourself to memorize it.

Billy Collins

#99. I like musicianship, and it's quite lacking in most modern popular music. You're always safe with old Chicago, the Allman Brothers, Gov't Mule, or Tower of Power.

Mark Rippetoe

#100. Music is for people. The word 'pop' is simply short for popular. It means that people like it. I'm just a normal jerk who happens to make music. As long as my brain and fingers work, I'm cool.

Eddie Van Halen