Top 100 What Is Music Quotes
#1. What is music? Music is language. A human being wants to express ideas in this language, but not ideas that can be translated into concepts ...
Anton Webern
#3. What is music about? You can't listen to one era, one composer, and know what music is about.
Twyla Tharp
#4. What I'm trying to do is break the genre from what is rap and what is music.
Wyclef Jean
#5. Whether something 'has color' or not is as hard to define verbally as are such questions as, 'What is music?' or 'What is musical?
Josef Albers
#6. I think the labyrinth is an interesting metaphor for our lives as musicians. We're always being drawn toward the center of it because that's where the mystery is. What is music? It's a journey.
Sting
#7. What is music. A passion for colonies not a love of country.
Gertrude Stein
#8. What is Music? How do you define it? Music is a calm moonlit night, the rustle of leaves in Summer. Music is the far off peal of bells at dusk! Music comes straight from the heart and talks only to the heart: it is Love! Music is the Sister of Poetry and her Mother is sorrow!
Sergei Rachmaninoff
#9. Beware the flatters of th world,
For what is music to the ears
May be poison to the soul.
Henry H. Neff
#10. What is life but a Spectrum and what is music but life itself.
Billy Cobham
#11. What is music anyway? It's a form of communication, and that's why I play the kind of music that I think - that I hope - can communicate with people.
Kenny G
#12. What is music in America? It's this stand-in for political action in a lot of senses. We have no democracy and we have no art culture, and we've long considered politics nebbish-y and hopelessly unsexy. So a lot of what would be considered political activism is channeled into cultural work.
Ian Svenonius
#13. My voice is a combination of how I grew up and what I was listening to growing up. I like a lot of different kinds of music and am always being inspired in different ways by different artists for different reasons.
Tess Henley
#14. I love what I do: there is no pressure. The music doesn't like pressure.
Burning Spear
#15. At the piano, I'm able to communicate in a way that is very intimate and direct. My approach at music is a bit like talking to a friend. You don't have to be very complicated when you speak. If you say what's in your heart, it's usually very simple.
David Lanz
#16. I hope that what you take away from my album is not just the music - which I did want to be fun, and I did want it to be about individuality, but please also take away from it that there's no dream that's too big.
Lady Gaga
#17. It's about giving the people what they want. So many people have told me that they've made love to my records so what I've delivered this time is an album about sex. Pretty much every song has that theme. Straight no chasers, it's booty music!
Tyrese Gibson
#18. I am very happy to be alive. There is much fun to be had. Music, movies, books, paintings, drawingsI hope you have these things where you are. If you have them, what does the real world matter anyway?
John Frusciante
#19. The essence of higher instrumental music lays herein that one is able to express in tones that what one is unable to say in words.
Richard Wagner
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. Now, what of the entertainment that is available to our young people today? Are you being undermined right in your homes through your television, radio, slick magazines, and rock music records?
Ezra Taft Benson
#23. I guess I would definitely feel a bit of a void in what people are getting from music these days. And I think that the problem lies not so much on the listener. People kind of listen to what is presented to them, whether it be on the radio or at a local venue.
Ben Lovett
#24. 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
#25. If a composer is to reach his audience emotionally - and surely that's what theatre music is all about - he must reach the people through sounds they can relate to.
Richard Rodgers
#26. 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
#27. I don't think that TV on the Radio is some dark mysterious band that no one can know about. We write music because it's an immediate form of communication. We're able to put on record what's happening in our times, and we want that message to be heard by the most amount of people.
Dave Sitek
#28. Music is just something that explains people lives for them - that's what people call roots
Chronixx
#29. Now chart music is a genre all of its own and it's slipped away from what I understand pop music as. It's pretty difficult to take; it clogs up the airwaves.
Johnny Marr
#30. I try to show what it is about language and music that enthralls, because I think those are the two elements of poetry.
Rita Dove
#31. From my perspective, music allows me to escape from the world of what is happening right in front of me ... to the world of my thoughts, my dreams, my hopes and ideas - for the world, for my own life, for the day, even for the moment.
Danielle De Niese
#32. Money is just a piece of paper. Money burns. You know what I mean? Money is nothing substantial to me. You know what I mean? It's the enemy of music.
Christofer Drew
#33. Our sense of what American English is has upended our relationship to articulateness, our approach to writing, and how (and whether) we impart it to the young, our interest in poetry, and our conception of what it is, and even our response to music and how we judge it.
John McWhorter
#34. It's still hard for me to understand, what is to me, the morbid fascination with celebrity. I just want to sing, I want to work on my music, I want to make my movies, that's all I want to do. I understand, you know, the interest but I really don't understand the fascination with it.
Marc Anthony
#35. Music to me is life. It's what gets me going.
Apolo Ohno
#36. 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
#37. You can say what you think music is, but the only way it really is, is how people experience it.
Stone Gossard
#38. Religious people were big on saying "the tongue is a mighty weapon, so use it wisely," and then forsaking this claim when the music director slept with the minister's wife or when the youth minister did what he did.
Tiffany King
#39. 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
#40. You can't make everybody happy. We just put our head down and went forward. We said, 'This music is bigger than all of us.' That's how we felt. We said, 'You know what? We'll prevail. We'll bet on these songs.'
Jonathan Cain
#41. The evolution of the music is what allows it to survive.
Eric Church
#42. It's pretty clear now that what looked like it might have been some kind of counterculture is, in reality, just the plain old chaos of undifferentiated weirdness.
Jerry Garcia
#43. Art is basically communication, and I think everyone who's a music lover has had that experience where a record or a recording has kept you company when no one else is around. And I think that is what I'm hoping that people get out of my music.
Conor Oberst
#44. If the music is good, and if it makes sense as a strong structure and as a drama, and things happen as a result of what happened before, not just as a string of unrelated events, then the question doesn't come up.
Missy Mazzoli
#45. Music is so hard to talk about in many ways, It communicates beyond what our language can put across, and having to sit there and analyze it and talk about it is a struggle for me.
Jeff Martin
#46. Art and music is part of what it means to be a human being. And if you're neglecting that, you're basically ignoring a huge side of the brain and a huge side of what it means to be human.
Joshua Bell
#47. The daisies and buttercups nodded in the breeze, like skinny-necked old ladies listening to dance music.
What if necessary evil had an opposite? This is what it would be. This unnecessary good.
For the first time in days, Mo smiled.
Tricia Springstubb
#48. I think music should be judged on what it is. It should be very high and above everything else. It is a beautiful way of bringing people together, a little bit of an oasis in this messed-up world.
Sonny Rollins
#49. I often find myself listening to a record because a lot of people or magazines have told me it's good and I'm supposed to like it, and I try to stay in touch with what's happening and I'm also a fan of music. I find myself trying to like something that I really don't think is that great.
Trent Reznor
#50. You're always learning so much from people and how they work and what their processes are. Some people like to listen to music before they get into it, and some people can talk all the way up to, "Action!" Everybody is different.
Evan Peters
#51. We should be happy. We should be enjoying that there is all this bounty. Somebody can take an iPod and have all the world's music at their beck and call in an instant. What an amazing thing!
Gregory Stock
#52. Music belongs to everybody. Having a little clique of the industry tell us what our culture is ... I don't think that's healthy. And the Internet is helping us get away from that.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
#53. If you are trully in a place that is way from the noise of civilization,you can actually experience what real slience is about.It is filled with sounds of nature.There is a musicality,a harmony to it...
K.J. Kilton
#54. What a thing it is to have music that plays your terrible thoughts. I imagined that one piece could drive more delicate women than myself to insanity.
Jackie Kay
#55. 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
#56. For me, if the music is good, whether the artist is famous or unknown, I love being part of the music and contributing what I can to the bass end.
Tony Levin
#57. 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
#58. I listen to music mostly in the evening. I've come to love what is called world music, like the Zimbabwean Oliver Mtukudzi and the Colombian singer Marta Gomez. I also love the Irish folk singer Mary Black. Other favorites include Chet Baker, Eva Cassidy, and Billie Holiday.
Jeannette Walls
#59. Creativity is much better when it's free. Someone can take it and sell it if that's what it needs, and from that standpoint, you have to have a label. If you could make your music and just give it away and somehow make a living - that would be the best scenario.
Matthew Sweet
#60. But what I think my emphasis is, is on the fact that I like music a lot.
Bill Bruford
#62. I think that people will always want music; I think that the form that they will get it in, or distributed to them from, and the price they pay for it is what's up in question.
Ronald Perelman
#63. 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
#64. At the end of the day, I want the music industry to be larger than what it is today.
Daniel Ek
#65. Obviously there is stuff that I wouldn't play in a club that I play at festivals, and vice-versa, but my sets are still dominated largely by my own music. I think that's what makes me stand out a bit. My music is also festival- and club-friendly, so it generally works out well.
Avicii
#66. 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
#67. The thing is, I really can't relate to anyone my own age. Not in a superior way - an inferior way, if anything. Socially, I have no idea what my friends are talking about. I don't listen to any new music. I feel very secluded.
Michael Cera
#68. But my everyday music is classic rock. It's what I relate to the most and where my heart is.
Nicole Richie
#69. Radio and TV can still push a band, but things need to be shaken up. There is the Internet, but mostly what I see there is little kids on YouTube playing music.
Chris Cornell
#70. Music expresses both in lyrics and in tune something of the orientation of the composer and author as to what the truth of religion is and how we ought to practice it
Robert Godfrey
#71. I'll always want to play and share my music with as many people as I can, but the emphasis is more on how do I find a happy place, what's my balance, what's my ideal.
Lissie
#72. Ah, dear Jude; that's because you are like a totally deaf man
observing people listening to music. You say 'What are they
regarding? Nothing is there.' But something is.
Thomas Hardy
#73. To do it always right, that is what music is to me.
Chuck Mangione
#74. You can see it on the Internet: There's an argument going on continually about, 'What is folk music?' And I don't really want to get involved in that. It's an endless argument, a 'How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?' kind of argument.
Roger McGuinn
#75. What do artists do? Artists give people something they didn't know they were missing: a dance, a piece of music, a painting, a piece of sculpture. Catering to that need is the best business strategy.
Daniel H. Pink
#76. Enough of clouds, waves, aquariums, water-sprites and nocturnal scents; what we need is music of the earth, everyday music..music one can live in like a house.
Jean Cocteau
#77. I call him truly learned who brings everything to bear on the truth, so that from geometry, music, grammar, and philosophy itself, culling what is usefule, he guards the faith against assault.
Clement Of Alexandria
#78. It's hard to know if what you do is actually working for anyone else or not. There's so much music out there. Why would someone ever listen to what I do?
Matt Corby
#79. I don't think shoving my butt into people's faces will tell them anything about who I am. How is that connecting to your audience? What is that doing for your music?
Kiesza
#80. I think this is the beginning of a really cool period in music because what we've been living through has been mostly super-testosterone rock, and there's nothing wrong with testosterone but it is damn boring.
Sam Endicott
#81. The music industry is not what it used to be. Being in a good band is great, and I've been lucky to be in great bands. I've done solo stuff, and that's been great. I also produce rock bands and I do co-writes, where I write with different singers in bands and songwriters.
James Iha
#82. They look at what's more important, like subjects to help with the SAT's, etc. They miss that music is vital. It offers a break from a stressful day of science and math and it's different.
Justin Guarini
#83. Music television is all about the media-oriented version of what it is to be a rock star; it's not about what Bob Dylan or Jimi Hendrix were about - which included great images, sure, but they had spiritual and political and revolutionary content, too.
Patti Smith
#84. I'm not afraid of being thought of as someone who is associated with film music. Why not? If it's a good song, what does it matter?
Bryan Adams
#85. Sometimes, I think the way the music business has been destructive and the way the fans are been put through it and try to navigate through it, so much is so foreign to what musicians would actually want to do or what would be natural to them.
Beck
#86. What happens with sassy music is you get floated away from yourself, then snap back to reality too hard. I hate that. The only antidote is to just stay depressed.
D.B.C. Pierre
#87. Fashion is everything. Art, music, furniture design, graphic design, hair, makeup, architecture, the way cars look - all those things go together to make a moment in time, and that's what excites me.
Tom Ford
#88. Here it is: our collaboration with Project Spark . Instead of a traditional music video for GUILTY ALL THE SAME (feat. Rakim), we are giving you this as a starting line for you guys to create and share. This is the first interactive, remixable game. We look forward to seeing what you make with it.
Joe
#89. What singing means to me, I never did consider myself a singer, I just let people watch me feel music and how it comes through me. I've worked on it and practiced a lot. I mean, music, I dance to it, and singing is just one way of getting it out of me.
Erykah Badu
#90. Being the foundation is what I live for, some people call it being in the pocket, some people call it a groove. I think it's the heartbeat. There's nothing that feels better than that.
Tommy Shannon
#91. My music is - I don't want to say my main focus, but it's what comes most naturally to me.
Gerard Way
#92. What I consider to be the barometer for what is a rock artist and what is not, is somebody who has a certain element of blues, even a hint of soul or blues music, derivative of African-American blues, folk, spiritual, or gospel.
Ian Astbury
#93. Well, what I love about '80s rock music is the amazing, fantastic melodies.
Julianne Hough
#94. Most people think its sex, money, and drugs but Hip-Hop is about lyrics, storytelling, and everybody having a different style. That's just another idea of beautiful, being yourself and creating music that represents you and what you like.
Rapsody
#95. My definition of country music is really pretty simple. It's when someone sings about their life and what they know, from an authentic place.
Taylor Swift
#96. I've been very lucky, man. Like you say, though, the writing is what kicked all that in and made it possible. It's something that I have always been very thankful of, that that kicked in, and that I could be free with the music.
Tony Joe White
#97. I've written about a lot of different things, but the whole idea of writing for another character is unusual for pop music. Most of the repertory is love songs, and most of mine isn't. I don't know if that's a mental defect, or shyness, or what.
Randy Newman
#98. What's scummy about the music industry is that everybody loves you when you're dead.
Nikki Sixx
#99. Music is what I love to do, so you'll never have to worry about me not doing that.
Rihanna
#100. It is an awesome tragedy in this life that, when asking what a person is and they reply doctor or lawyer or engineer, we don't say Well thats a nice little hobby, but why don't you take up writing or painting or music?
D.A. Botta
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
