Quotes About Originality

I was required by Capital to release one every six months and the fastest I could do with all my touring was every nine months, and it would spook me every time because I never had what I needed and I really didn't want to do covers.

When you're an artist, you can only do your own stuff. Even if you only write for other people, you're really more focused on yourself. So while everybody's out touring, I'm working on records.

I would never take part in one of those Eighties nostalgia tours, although I've been asked many times, because it's like admitting you have nothing new to offer. As long as I can keep making music I'm happy with, and people want to come to my gigs to hear it, I'll carry on.

I feel like I want to keep moving toward idiosyncracy. Personal, personal, personal.

I work off of my early demos. I'll keep adding on top of that, but I usually gravitate towards whatever that original idea was.

I don't like to go trampling on other people's sounds. That's really about it - I don't gravitate towards it, I try to move away from it.

I would hate to be a new artist or writer in town today. But somehow the cream continues to rise. If there's one who's great, he just jumps out of the pack like you can't believe.

I'm very lazy when it comes to making the original sound. I don't go through amplifiers and different compressors and signal parts. I just grab something, whether its an old guitar or a children's toy that happens to be lying around, and record it straight into the computer.

Initially, when people asked us when 'Toy Story 2' was going to come out, we'd say, 'We have no interest in sequels. We just want to do original stories.'

With certain ideas, you can predict commercial success. So with a 'Toy Story 3' or a 'Cars 2,' you know the idea is more likely to have financial success. But if you go down that path too far, you become creatively bankrupt because you're just trying to repeat yourself.

If anyone said to me 'invent a new monster so we can sell more toys', I'd kick them out of my office.

The sound of 'Take Her Up to Monto' and 'Hairless Toys' is the sound of me and the producer in the studio doing whatever we like. There is no reference. It's too easy to be referential now; I'm trying to find something else.

Encourage your kids to be creative. When you see them tracing a character from TV or a comic, say something like, 'That's nice. Now how about you create a character yourself?' Keep kids curious and excited about creating.

I mean whatever I do it's important that I put my stamp on it and keep it in my world, whether I'm doing a dance track or something like the Russian album for example.

I want to make music and songs about things that real musicians and artist aren't able to make songs about - you wouldn't hear Justin Bieber making a song about homework, or, like, you wouldn't see someone make a song with their parents on the track.

I'm not looking to go out there and make a rhythmic Timbaland track.

By the very nature of his art, which depends on invention and innovation, a story teller must depart from the beaten track and, having done so, occasionally startle and disagree with some of his associates. Healthy disagreement we must have.

I don't think I'm repeating anything I've done before, but sometimes I lose track.

You have to create a track record of breaking your own mold, or at least other people's idea of that mold.

If you look at my track record, there was nothing on radio that sounded like 'Oh Carolina,' 'Mr Bombastic' when they came out.

When I get inspired, I give out free music. If you look at my track record from the beginning, that's always what I've done. I've never changed.

Rap is like any other genre: There are the people who are very creative with it and do remarkable things... and then there's that whole quadrant that sounds alike. There's great stuff that's taken the genre to a new level over the years, and 'Regulate' was one of those tracks that was kind of a landmark.

I'm not following anybody's tracks, I'm making my own baby.

Moreover, if a song is a hit, film makers come to us with requests to score similar tracks. In the process, commercial songs sometimes sound repetitive.