Quotes About Challenges

We're probably doing better business than we thought we would do especially considering the disappointing way the record company has handled the album.

Bananarama were written off from day one. Nobody believed in us but us. We kept having hits despite the record company, despite the press.

We were ready to launch Barry White, but the record company wouldn't put it out. Said it wouldn't sell.

I had ballooned out to close to 400 pounds at one point. And in the '80s, we were just beginning to get on video and disco. So therefore, I did not fit in, and my record company let me go because they said, 'Look, you're just not marketable enough with the weight problem.'

When I made 'A Few Small Repairs' and it did well, I followed that up with having a baby, and that was not received well at my record company. I was written off, and that had a bearing on my career.

I don't know what record company would sign a 45-year-old former 80s pop star.

In the early Nineties, after my first round of financial problems, I started a studio in Kensal Road in London right at the time when no record company wanted to hear anything from Leo Sayer.

You got to understand: when you go into a record company and give them a something that doesn't sound like what's on the radio, it's hard to sell it.

Getting a record deal is a meaningless thing now.

It was actually really hard to get a record deal after 'American Idol.'

When I tried to get a record deal, only one label wanted me. The rest said 'oh, we've already got a girl with a guitar.' Can you imagine them ever saying that to a guy?

At my second record label, they told me and other female artists that some of us were going on the chopping block. I was 19... and it was devastating.

I've never conformed to what my record label has said and, yes, that has meant that it's been a long journey for me.

I got out of the business because I went from being the biggest artist on my record label to someone they didn't even want to have around.

I've dealt with a record label in the past.

Yes, alas, I've been on some recording sessions where the music wasn't good. Not so many, really, considering how many I've done. It's a very awkward situation because to do a recording well you focus on the positive of what will make the piece better.

Piper took me one step further in that it got my first real recording contract but the band just didn't quite mature. It didn't break things open, but it got me to the door.

I've lived with my dyslexia and gone on to have a successful recording career, but academically I never had a chance in hell because I didn't fall into that bracket.

Everything has changed since I started recording in 1972. But the very things that have opened this industry, like the digital platforms to reach more people, have also killed things that were happening before in the recording studio. Now, most of the time, there are no real musicians in the studio; it's people with sequencers and things.

Yes, I would say I had quite a rough time from 1992 to 1996. After the highs of the Eighties, work became slow from around 1987 to around 1997. I was running a small recording studio in Shepherd's Bush but wasn't making a great deal from it.

Records are made to be broken.

I have to say when a man lives for himself, it's hard to live with him. That's pretty much the story of all my divorces. I've been making records since I was 22 and done things my way, and it's hard for me to compromise. And of course, to have a successful relationship, one has to compromise. Sometimes I'm not good at it.

Records are always meant to be broken.

Udaya Laxmi is not the only athlete who has been asked by the administrators to go after my records; they now want to take away the only record I hold, in the 400m hurdles that I set at the final of the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984.