Quotes About Music

Listening to songs is like eating and writing songs is like vomiting. You're putting a ton of stuff in, it combines in unpredictable ways, and comes back out in a big mess.

I am definitely still the same kid that I was picking up the guitar at 15. But, I have definitely learned to be more flexible and roll with the punches. It's such an unpredictable business to be in and it's insane how things change so last minute.

What I've discovered and really confirmed to myself is that opera really likes loud colours, and you need something bold, something savage, unpredictable, passionate. You can't really run a two-hour opera round some muted murmuring.

I bring my classical training - some of it, but not all of it - and also my background and culture, to spirituals. And I try to leave room for that unpredictable factor, where the feeling of the song is allowed to come through. The same ethos can be applied to singing Mozart, or Schubert, or Bach. It's not just about what's on the page.

I let the song come to me. Then that thing comes to you, and you just know what that thing is. Music isn't like a 9-to-5 job. You never know. It's just the most unpredictable thing.

My thing is whatever comes at me, I'm there. But DJ-ing and music is my passion... I'm going to be unpredictable.

I don't know that there's a division between American and British, European, South American, Asian sensibilities when it comes to rock n' roll or, really, any form of music. Songs travel, and people take them into their lives in all different kinds of unpredictable and really untraceable ways.

I'm unqualified to do anything other than music.

I have never done any other job. I have sung in bands since I was 15. I left school completely unqualified. I have no other training.

I love music with a violence and a fury that feels unqualified.

To have John Mellencamp compliment my songwriting? That was unreal.

I'm literally tone-deaf with singing. It's unreal.

Hearing a whole entire room sing back to me, 'I guess it's true I'm not good at a one-night stand,' you know, I just can't explain the feeling. It's unreal. You feel like you've just read your diary to thousands of people and they've gone, 'It's okay. We still love you.'

Chance The Rapper is just unreal: he's changing rap and really creating this whole amazing new style.

To me, if you're going to talk about funk, you have to go back to George Clinton and Bernie Worrell. Those guys are the giants. I've played with Bernie, and it was unreal. He's the master.

Quavo's energy in the studio in unreal.

As soon as 'Hide Away' came out, it was like everyone knew who I was, and I started getting all this attention. It was hard to get used to at first. I just remember that I suddenly couldn't walk down the hallways without hearing a classmate or teacher playing it - it was unreal!

I always said I just wanted to be an artist that made like $500 a week from music and anything on top would be a bonus, so everything that's happened to me now is unreal. Like, I really can't believe it. It's like when you watch a Netflix show and the main character becomes a superhero; I feel like I became a superhero.

Surface R&B doesn't work any more. The whole heartthrob thing, songs about unrealistic love and tearing your shirt off every show - that's not really where it's at any more. It's becoming harder for those guys to sell records, and harder for them to succeed.

I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it's not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That's how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren't for them, I wouldn't be a musician.

With a computer, you have access to so many drum sounds and samples that your snare drum will be unrelated harmonically to your kick drum.

The story of Alexander Hamilton lends itself to hip-hop treatment. Hamilton's personality is driven and unrelenting, and the music has that same quality. The music and the man mirror each other.

I liken movies to playing a piano: Sometimes you're playing the chords and different notes with unresolved cadences and playing all major chords that are all over the place, and you're enjoying yourself with a great, simple melody.

In times of joy and sorrow, love or hate, peace and unrest, music has always been an important outlet for expressing our emotions individually and as a nation.