Top 40 Quotes

#1. 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

#2. My audience is the baby-boomers, the bulk of the population. This is also a group that is being ignored by most record companies because they're not the Top 40 hit singles market. They forget these people still listen to music.

Helen Reddy

#3. Drugs, sex, booze, all the stuff that we wanted to do. The problem was that we didn't want to learn the top 40 'cause most of the music was awful and we had this other idea about what we wanted to do.

Wayne Kramer

#4. I feel like I'm doing something in Atlanta that nobody ever did as far as rap. If it happens to end up on the top 40 or the pop charts, it doesn't mean I meant to go pop. It's just where the music took me. It started at the bottom, and it rises.

Nayvadius Cash

#5. I listen to top 40, old country, blues ... I'm really into Roger Miller.

King Tuff

#6. Hip-hop is not something we do, it's something we live. It's the way we dress, the way we talk ... everybody bobbing to the same beat. It's a culture, and you have to find your own place in that culture. Top 10 or Top 40 can't dictate that. They can only dictate what's marketable.

Erykah Badu

#7. Being shoved into the top-40 scene was an unusual experience. It was great I'd become accessible to a huge audience but not terribly fulfilling.

David Bowie

#8. On 'American Top 40' the Kasem voice soared and swooped, like an expert aural acrobat, through promos, jingles and dedications, usually rising to a dramatic peak for the top-selling song of the week.

Richard Corliss

#9. I was holding someone captive and all that was going through my mind was a Billboard Top 40 love song. I was going to hell.

Goldy Moldavsky

#10. I got my influences from '70s bands - Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, blah blah blah. When I was growing up, we had all these crazy bands on the Top 40. Today, if Pink Floyd released 'Money,' it wouldn't even get played.

Al Jourgensen

#11. When I play live in restaurants and cafes, I don't play my own stuff. I play jazz and 'American Songbook' standards, and I'll fuse it with top 40.

Darren Criss

#12. There's no pressure for me to go out there and say, I've got to have a top 40 hit because it's not going to happen.

Elton John

#13. I love Top 40 pop, don't get me wrong; I just don't think that there's anyone in Top 40 pop that's 'real.'

Lorde

#14. You can get in a car in Maine and drive all the way to California and hear the same Top 40 songs on the same chain broadcasters," bemoaned the report.

John Seabrook

#15. You can live well here. Compared to the top 40 metro areas in the nation, Charlotte has the 12th lowest cost of living.

Harry Hoover

#16. When I was in top 40 bands, I always had to learn new material and new styles.

Kenneth Edmonds

#17. I think I get a lot of ideas from when I was a kid, listening to Casey Kasem's 'American Top 40.'

Sufjan Stevens

#18. Maybe it's because One Direction was just on 'SNL,' or because I'm playing The Wanted on my Top 40 show, but in terms of boy bands, we're seeing this resurgence, and it's happening, whether you like it or not!

Carson Daly

#19. I have specific playlists for arrivals in different cities. Tokyo skews new wave, Paris more jazz, and New York is Top 40.

Chris Benz

#20. I don't think that I'm a top 40 artist in any way. So I don't think I'm that mainstream.

Lisa Marie Presley

#21. When I used to play nightclubs, you had to play Top 40 or favorite oldies that maybe people could relate to.

Rick Danko

#22. You couldnt get a job playing in a club unless you played so much Top 40 and so many Beatles songs. I just went into a sort of revolt.

Gregg Allman

#23. I credit God with giving me the idea for 'Top 40.'

Casey Kasem

#24. I'm a huge Top 40 lover.

Katharine McPhee

#25. In some circles, admitting you love Top 40 radio is tantamount to bragging you gave your grandmother the clap, in church, in the front row at your aunt's funeral, but those are the circles I avoid like the plague or, for that matter, the clap.

Rob Sheffield

#26. I listen to all sorts of things. I get kind of embarrassed with my iPod, because I am a top-40 type of girl; I am not the kind of person to introduce people to new music.

Chrissy Teigen

#27. My writing voice is a little quirkier, more singer-songwriter-y than the Top 40 stuff I cover.

Sam Tsui

#28. My mom was a folk singer and Celtic harpist. My dad was in a barbershop quartet and my great grandma was an opera singer. As I grew up, I discovered pop music and Top 40 radio, but it was in the '90s, so music was very different then - it was really lyrical.

Skylar Grey

#29. I just felt it was my job to show that there is no easy way to success, and that anyone who gets even just one Top 40 hit deserves their moment in the sun. I accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. That is the timeless thing.

Casey Kasem

#30. This music isn't Top 40, we really stand out from anyone.

Dustin Diamond

#31. I listen to all kinds of music, but I've always been a really big fan of Top 40 radio. If I'm in my car, that's what I listen to.

Aaron Tveit

#32. There's top 40 R&B/hip-hop, which is probably sexy but you wouldn't listen to it for a musical awakening.

Lotic

#33. You still have Top 40 radio now, but it's 40 different stations. There aren't many hits that everybody knows, and there aren't many real superstars.

Al Yankovic

#34. I love all types of music. I love top 40 dance pop, hip-hop, I don't even know what they call it now. I'm a huge fan of all that.

Dustin Lynch

#35. When I was young, I used to hear people say, 'He's a golden boy. Look at that guy. Can you imagine what he's going to be like when he grows up?' Well, I unfortunately bought into that. And I hadn't even found myself. Quite honestly, I was running from myself. But I knew how to work Top 40 radio.

Glenn Beck

#36. I had always sung in my dad's shop. I worked there after school, and I'd be singing along with the top-40 records of the day.

Neil Diamond

#37. Super casual music listeners. That's most of the people in the world. And you have to understand, that's why Top 40 radio exists. It's not there for people who seek out music and who love music.

Michael Stipe

#38. The Top 40 is geared toward 20 and under, not 20 and up. That's the audience I'm geared to.

Michael Bolton

#39. I'm a Top 40 record guy. I remember the hits and don't remember the flops. Something in my brain blocks them out.

Steve Cropper

#40. In the Top 40, half the songs are secret messages to the teen world to drop out, turn on, and groove with the chemicals and light shows at discotheques.

Art Linkletter

#41. I want to be played on the radio. I want to have Top 40 hits,

Avril Lavigne

#42. The listener has a responsibility that not everyone wants to take, especially if you are putting on the new Top 40 record.

Taylor Ho Bynum

#43. Right now I'm listening to a lot of Top 40 music, because THAT'S MY JOB.

Al Yankovic

#44. I want to go back to the format that radio started with rock n' roll, with country artists and rhythm and blues with that oldies type feeling. I want to put it all together and create a Top 40 of rhythm and blues and country and straight blues with Wolfman at the reins.

Wolfman Jack

#45. Well, I was in a band. I was the singer with a band called the Soul Satisfiers. I sang then quite a bit of Jazz and some Top 40 stuff.

Gloria Gaynor

#46. 'American Top 40' allowed me to be current without my having to force change to keep up with things. The new songs kept us up to date, so every show sounded fresh.

Casey Kasem

#47. Ooh! Jesus Christ had dreads, so shake 'em.
I ain't got none, but I'm planning on growing some.
Imagine all the Hebrews going dumb ...
Dancing on top of chariots and turning tight ones.

E-40

#48. There are about 300,000 neighborhoods in the United States, and more than half of them have at least one millionaire living there. Most millionaires drive American cars. Out of the top 30 or 40 makes and models, Ford is number one, with about 10 percent of the market share.

Thomas J. Stanley

#49. This is what oligarchy looks like: Today, the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. The top one-hundredth of 1 percent makes more than 40 percent of all campaign contributions. The billionaire class owns the political system and reaps the benefits from it.

Bernie Sanders

#50. The top 15 contenders for the Republican nomination own at least 40 guns among them. If we elect a Republican president no one is hopping over the White House fence ever again.

Conan O'Brien

#51. the man with one hand turned on an enormous radio and tuned it to a mastermix station where the songs are not sung so much as bleated. Bleated and repeated.

David Sedaris

#52. After 40 years of not playing, I admit I'm totally in love with my guitar. It's a Froggy Bottom acoustic steel string guitar. All I have to do is hit a couple of clean chords and the endorphins are right there. It's like the top of my head has come off and stardust and magic have fallen in.

April Gornik

#53. We need to be clear in calling out evil for what it is. When people will behead a child, and when people will leave people starving on top of a mountain without food or water - 40,000 of them - I don't care what religion it is: It's evil.

Mike Huckabee

#54. In 2012, 40 of the top companies to work for were also among the top companies in social media.

Jay Baer

#55. I took my acting very seriously. I did over 40 films, and naturally, some of them were called B-movies because the woman was at the top of the billing. Women couldn't star in their own movies.

Mamie Van Doren

#56. Top management should spend 40 to 50 percent of its time educating and motivating its people ...

Buck Rodgers