Top 100 Quotes About What Music Is
#1. What is music about? You can't listen to one era, one composer, and know what music is about.
Twyla Tharp
#2. I've been working at performing for five years now. I've been working in Australia and Spain and England. When I was only 15 or 16, 1 was performing in bars; I could have had legal problems, but it's also the only way to get to know what music is all about.
Andy Gibb
#3. Maria was staring at me like I was wearing purple socks.
'Wow," she said. "That's exactly what music is.'
And then she started crying again. But this time, she wept quietly.
'You understand," she said. 'You really understand.
Sherman Alexie
#5. To do it always right, that is what music is to me.
Chuck Mangione
#6. Lights are to drama what music is to the lyrics of a song. The greatest part of my success in the theatre I attribute to my feeling for colors, translated into effects of light.
David Belasco
#7. You know what music is - a harmonic connection between all living beings.
Robin Williams
#8. My happy place, huh? Well, yeah, I guess that's what music is for me.
Rachel Harris
#9. To me, that's what music is: creating a mood, and taking the listener to the place that you're going.
Paul Rodgers
#10. You know what music is? God's little reminder that there's something else besides us in this universe; harmonic connection between all living beings, every where, even the stars.
Robin Williams
#11. I'm going to make music that reflects me and my life now. So I think people who like my music and who listen to me should appreciate change as well, because I've definitely evolved, and that's a great thing, to celebrate that is what music is all about.
Lizzo
#12. It's all about theme and development anyway. That's what music is about.
John Otto
#13. It's hard as a person to just put your life out there for the world to judge. That's what music is and what you're supposed to do with the art, live and release it to the world.
Rapsody
#14. There's many different genres, and when you see R&B and pop and house, as well as electronic, come together, that's the reality of what music is.
David Guetta
#15. Thus the slogan should be reversed: Catholics taught the world what music is supposed to sound like, and, more importantly, what it is supposed to mean.
Richard Morris
#16. Listening is more important than anything else because that's what music is. Somebody is playing something and you're receiving it. It is sending and receiving.
Carla Bley
#17. Music is shared. It's a shared feeling; that's what music is all about. When you listen to a song with someone else, it becomes more than just a song. It defines relationships.
Tom Odell
#18. Learning from other people is what music is all about.
Neil Young
#19. It's a great honor when somebody takes your song and does something different with it. That's what music is all about: to constantly change what somebody else has done.
Laurent Brancowitz
#20. That's what music is to me. Like, stuff that I really like to play loud. And I've got my quiet CDs, too, that I listen to around the house, but if you can't go there, then ... Everyone gets so upset with me, I can't win.
Liz Phair
#21. That's what Proust calls it. On those rare occasions when the miracle of an analogy had made me escape from the present. That's the only real life, the only thing that makes you know you're alive - the backward ache. That's what music is.
Adam Haslett
#22. My poetry, I think, has become the way of my giving out what music is within me
Countee Cullen
#23. I mix up all styles on my albums because that is what music is about now.
David Guetta
#24. I sing louder and he looks right at me, finally getting it, because what I am saying with the rise of my voice is that I know he understands what music is about, he has seen the Lord in it, even if it's not my Lord.
David Levithan
#25. There is too much emphasis on technical perfection nowadays, and not enough on what music is actually about - irony, joy, human suffering, love.
Mstislav Rostropovich
#26. Our language for describing emotions is very crude ... that's what music is for, I guess.
Ben Goertzel
#27. That's what music is for me. It's a place to go to.
David Gray
#28. That's what music is: entertainment. The more you put yourself into it, the more of you comes out in it.
Kurt Cobain
#29. How strange it would now - like speaking without a voice. Is that what music is then, a ventriloquist with his doll ?
John Marsden
#30. Bob Marley is a huge influence. I love reggae music, but I also love the purpose of the songs he writes and the style of the music - it takes your worries away and makes you feel good, and I think that's what music is about.
Colbie Caillat
#31. You can't have Bach, Mozart and Beethoven as your favorite composers. They simply define what music is!
Michael Tilson Thomas
#32. Just imagine, life to be a dance with different kind of rhythms depending on what music is playing in the background. Sometimes we may dance alone and that's OK, as some songs are simply meant to be danced like that. Practice! Don't stop! It's your dance!
Nico J. Genes
#33. When you sit down to write something, there should be no guidelines. The main idea is not supposed to be, 'How many different ways can we sell it?' That's so far away from the true spirit of what music is.
Prince
#34. Being honest is my job. That's what music is for me.
Erykah Badu
#35. I love what I do: there is no pressure. The music doesn't like pressure.
Burning Spear
#36. There's part of me that feels a privilege not to do music, but to do what everybody should be allowed to do, which is to do what you're driven to do.
Greg Saunier
#37. Telescopes and bathyscapes and sonar probes of Scottish lakes, Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse explained with abstract phase-space maps, some x-ray slides, a music score, Minard's Napoleonic war: the most exciting new frontier is charting what's already here.
Randall Munroe
#38. Music, first of all, is completely about abstraction, which is exactly what architecture is not. In a way, it has been incredibly constructive to know what true abstraction is. So you don't fall into the trap of thinking that what you do is abstract.
Rafael Vinoly
#40. But I love to write music. What I would love to do is give some of the songs I write to someone like Taylor Swift because I feel like she could sing them.
Keegan Allen
#41. I am of the opinion that the appreciation and the desire for what is good takes more study and insight than does the understanding and test for the best music and art.
Laurance Rockefeller
#42. The holy trifecta of directing and filmmaking is character emotion, camera movement and music. When you hit those three, that's magical. That's what I'm trying to do.
David O. Russell
#43. Music, I think, is best when it honestly explores personal demons, and it stirs around in the silt of the psyche to find out what's really there.
Tom Morello
#44. Music is a reflection of who you are, and if those things that you mentioned are what your music is all about, then I guess that's who you are.
Lil' Wayne
#45. 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
#46. I'd never been around a capella or really knew much about it. I feel like I know a lot about music, but what I didn't anticipate is that when every actor has to sing a different part and then do all their choreography on the same beat or on the same word, it's really hard.
Jason Moore
#47. I wish the music business was a much easier thing, but you know what? Nothing easy is worth anything. So it is what it is. There comes a time when things can work out and everybody can be happy. And that's what it's all about in the end - everybody being happy and working it out.
Nas
#48. I don't think anyone can measure up to what my father had achieved. I'm just happy to at least play some of his music, but he is really the one who was the pioneer, the one who started all this. He's really The King.
Natalie Cole
#49. Sound is what drives my solos, not verbal concepts, I never think 'I'm going to use a Lydian Dominant scale and then go up a half-step', even though that might be exactly what I end up doing ...
John Scofield
#50. I'm a very optimistic person. I have the chance to listen to so much phenomenal music. Connecting with social networking to create music is a progression of what electronic music does anyway - it connects people.
Paul Van Dyk
#51. What I'm doing is basically the same as Bob Dylan did with folk songs and Woody Guthrie songs, the same as folk music's always done. I'm not going to sing about ploughing, but I'll write a song that sounds like it should be about ploughing.
Justin Townes Earle
#52. I'm an anxious person. What I like best is to smoke cigarettes and listen to music. A perfect day for me is a day with coffee, cigarettes, and music, to quote Jim Jarmusch.
Claire Denis
#53. There's a basic rule which runs through all kinds of music, kind of an unwritten rule. I don't know what it is. But I've got it.
Ron Wood
#54. When I use weed creatively, I'm much better at drawing or making something or playing music. But what I do for a living is mostly performing as an actor or writing, and for those things I need to have my faculties sharp.
Nick Offerman
#55. If Barbra Steisand wants to make a picture called 'My Pink Fingernail,' the studios will go, 'Gee, Barbra, what a wonderful idea! Money is no object! Take two years in preproduction and write the music, and you'll direct.'
Mickey Rooney
#56. I suppose my approach to religion is like my approach to music - I take what I want and leave the rest.
Lana Del Rey
#57. As a director, the biggest job is to discern the imperfections in emotional tone and then view it in the global picture of what you're trying to do, if that makes sense. It's a rhythm, like music is a rhythm or composition and art is a rhythm. Dialogue is a rhythm as well.
Robert Stromberg
#58. 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
#59. People hate to describe their music. What we have come to call it is "beat up your mom" music. As far as describing what it sounds like, I guess you'd have to listen.
Marilyn Manson
#60. I'm really in touch with my fans. Through their emails, letters and stories is how I decide what music I'm going to perform.
Jenni Rivera
#61. What I like about electronic music is you don't really need to be that learned or educated in any particular context. You can just make sound, noise even, whatever it may be.
Justin Broadrick
#62. We wanted to establish a new fan base over here. And second, we wanted to challenge ourselves. We wanted to bring what is ostensibly new music to fresh ears and see what lights them up.
Bob Weir
#63. I want to be someone who is respected and not just in terms of my music. I want to be respected in terms of the way that I treat people ... Music is my creative outlet in terms of expressing what is important to me; what has importance, what has a value. And I wanna be respected for that.
Macklemore
#64. Dick Clark was a really great influence in my career; he helped me a lot with his whole organization, and they were awesome to me at all different points - but one thing that I really disagreed with him on was when he said that what I do, pop music, is a disposable art form.
Cyndi Lauper
#65. Well, we play Country music; we're just not sure what country it is.
Jerry Jeff Walker
#66. The "real stuff" is what he calls the music that is piped in through the speaker in the machine. The music that comes from inside my head is not considered real.
Francisco X Stork
#67. It's very strange what happens when I start working for a film. In my life I've done a lot of stuff - I did a lot of dance music, a lot of TV shows and lots of different types of films - and every time it is a new experience.
Claudio Simonetti
#68. Music to me is life. It's what gets me going.
Apolo Ohno
#69. Classical music is an unbroken, living tradition that goes back over 1,000 years, and every one of those years has had something unique and powerful to say to us about what it's like to be alive.
Michael Tilson Thomas
#70. The thing that pleases me the most about it is that young people like it. It's given kids from 6 to 16 an alternate view of music to what's been available for the past 20 years.
George Harrison
#71. It's weird because music is this thing that you love doing, and it comes completely from a place of creativity, and then that transfers into having to manage a business and make decisions and figure out what is the best route to go in terms of getting your product to as many people as possible.
Macklemore
#72. It is a well known fact that most artists produce their best work early in their career. They may refine what they do but you usually get the measure of what they are about on their first outing.
Bill Drummond
#73. I've never believed in cheapening music by going according to what some people think is public taste.
Les Baxter
#74. Music is an emotional experience, and that is what imprints itself on the soul. And I think for me, any great art is art which communicates human emotion.
Greg Lake
#75. I think that's what's really beautiful about music, that it is little pieces of your heart and soul.
Darren Hayes
#76. What's funny for me is that I made a lot of the music I make with intentions of it being a song you listen to, to chill out.
Flume
#77. The idea that music is art has been something we advocated for years. And yet it doesn't receive the same treatment as art in the sense of the value of what it is, especially nowadays when it's been devalued and diminished to almost the point that it has to be given away for free.
RZA
#78. Music has always been there for me and is what's helped me through everything. It's like my solace.
Sharleen Spiteri
#79. What I like about pop music, and why I'm still attracted to it, is that in the end it becomes our folk music.
Bono
#80. One can't deny what has happened to us in the past. The secret is to enjoy and be proud of the music we've created and the people with whom we have been linked. It's all a long chain of involvement in the world, and we are proud to be yet another link in this chain.
Graham Nash
#81. I think PSP is going to be the most successful handheld entertainment device ever. What it will do in terms of the versatility, obviously you can download music to it, and you'll be able to enjoy all your great tunes on it.
Ian Jackson
#82. What do you think happens to a composer who is sincere and loves to write and has to wait thirty years to have someone play a piece of his music?
Charles Mingus
#83. We think that this is just our world and we don't know what other people are thinking. Music actually is a phenomenal connector in that respect. It's a special language that defines certain boundaries and connects people in a particular way, a very emotional way, I have found.
Annie Lennox
#84. All those governments and this and that, these people that say they're here to help, why them say you cannot smoke the herb? Herb ... herb is a plant, you know? And when me check it, me can't find no reason. All them say is, 'it make you rebel'. Against what?
Bob Marley
#85. Music is always key to me, whether it's 'Miami Vice' or not 'Miami Vice.' It's dictated by the story, about what Crockett and Tubbs and Isabella and Trudy are doing.
Michael Mann
#86. I see everybody arguing about what the value of music should be instead of what I think the bigger conversation is, which is that music has value, it's subjective and we're moving to a new era where the audience is taking more responsibility for supporting artists at whatever level.
Amanda Palmer
#87. I think Westlife is very unique: we have a certain sound; we do our thing our way, and we don't try to change too much. I think that's what the fans love about us. We keep giving the fans what they want every year. The style of music never really changes too much.
Shane Filan
#88. Music is what I have to do, I only answer the questions so that I can do it.
Jack White
#89. I'm not a lyric writer to make statements. What I enjoy doing is making paintings with lyrics, creating colorful images. I think that's more what entertainment and music should be.
Chris Cornell
#90. The music industry is a world of smoke and mirrors: they tell you exactly what they think you want to hear. And they are bare-faced lying. I tend to stay away from that.
Kelis
#91. Blues is to jazz what yeast is to bread
without it, it's flat.
Carmen McRae
#92. My dad's intense love for art and music is what drove me to learn music
Shreya Ghoshal
#93. Music is the highest art, no question. But literature is a friendlier one. It depends on us more, bores us more quickly, can't go on if we don't, can't stop saying what it means, can't stop giving us something to forgive.
James Richardson
#94. A lot of country music is sad. I think most art comes out of poverty and hard times. It applies to music. Three chords and the truth - that's what a country song is. There is a lot of heartache in the world.
Willie Nelson
#95. A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.
Bob Dylan
#96. When I think of music, I think of music in its totality, complete. From the lowest blues to the highest symphony, you know, so what I'd like to do is exemplify each style of as many periods as I can possibly do.
Donny Hathaway
#97. I hate fame. There's this assumption that everyone wants it - that by being a musician, I've signed up for it at some point. But personally, what I signed up for is sharing my music. I've always said I'd rather have four No. 10 songs than one No. 1 hit.
Chet Faker
#98. Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck
passing by a music school?
Are the people inside the school musical and the ones outside unmusical?
What if the ones inside can't hear very well, would that change my question?
John Cage
#99. MUSIC expressed what cannot be said and on which it is IMPOSSEBLE TO BE SILENT.
Victor Hugo
#100. I think the whole question of meaning in music is difficult enough even if you hear me playing live right now in the same room! What I mean and what you take from it may be two quite different things anyway.
Evan Parker
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