Quotes About Eclecticism

My roots are in everything from doo-wop and blues to the Four Freshman and the Beach Boys and jazz and electronica. But it was put together in a deceptively simple package.

ALL KINDS OF ANIMALS COMING HERE. OCCASIONAL DEMONS TOO. —Ian Anderson, Catfish Rising

Honestly, I've been reading a lot of books on visual art. I've been reading a lot of books by Olivia Lang, I've been listening to a lot of folk and singer-songwriter music, but also a lot of electronic and really hard techno. I'm just trying to create something that pulls from everywhere and that hopefully feels unique.

You really can't pigeon hole yourself into one particular artistic area any more; the days of one vocation in the arts have long gone.

People often ask us if we had direct influences. Honestly, just a lot of different music - not necessarily individual people. We listen to anything from Bob Dylan to Massive Attack to Aerosmith to En Vogue. We very much enjoy all that music.

If you look at my personal library, you will notice that it ranges from Henry James to Steig Larsson, from Margaret Atwood to Max Hastings. There's Jane Austen and Tom Perrotta and volumes of letters from Civil War privates. It's pretty eclectic.

Playing athletics, playing a lot of different sports, going to drama school... I was one of those kids who wanted to do everything, so I ended up being pretty average at everything.

The films that influenced me were so disparate that there's almost no pattern.

Every performer should learn a little bit of everything.

I'm a culture vulture, and I just want to experience it all.

I was raised on 'TRL' and listened to every genre that sounded good to me, from Sum 41 to Jay Z to Band of Horses to J. Dilla to Deathcab for Cutie to Pharrell.

The speciality of the future is generalism.

We don't attempt to have any theme for a number of the anthology, or to have any particular sequence. We just put in things that we like, and then we try to alternate the prose and the poetry.

You can scroll through my iTunes and I've got everything. I've got Ace Hood, Alt-J, Annie Lennox, Arctic Monkeys, Beanie Sigel, the Beatles, Beth Hart, Big Sean, Bob Dylan, Bon Iver, Chief Keef, Coldplay, the Flaming Lips, Mariah Carey, Miley Cyrus, Nicki Minaj, OutKast, Pet Shop Boys, Peter Gabriel, the Smiths, and the list goes on from there.

That's the beauty of Black Eyed Peas, we don't pigeonhole ourselves into just one category. We're the chameleons of hip-hop.

It's hard to pin me down because I'm a bit of Bernie Sanders, a bit of Rand Paul, bit of John Kasich.

I'm such a lover of music that it would be very hard for me to pinpoint it to a particular artist.

I kind of hate the fact that people are always trying to put you into a category. I hate walls, and I hate boundaries. I don't like that. I listen to everything.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.

I think it's so fun that my art isn't centered in one sound or rooted in one lane or whatever. It's just the Bree lane.

I love mishmash and the chaos of art forms.

As a music supervisor, you learn to embrace the best of every genre, and I really have to say there's nothing that I'm embarrassed of.

Los Angeles is a true postmodern city. Here, we celebrate with equal aplomb the high and the low. I am just as influenced by the punk rock attitude of local skate and surf cultures as I am by old-school glamour and stardust.

I like a bit of mongrel myself, whether it's a man or a dog.