Quotes About Music

I don't want to direct music videos at all. Any work I do with a camera I'd like to be for a film.

Music is my life. The only other thing I've done is office work in different places. But no real professional career other than singing.

I've been very lucky to work with many amazing animators and directors who can interpret and extend the music I make. When it's done well, it can create extra meaning and new context for the song.

I started to work up in my old bedroom, playing, writing songs, and it somehow came to me that I could introduce soul music. Nobody seemed to be doing that.

I believe a great performer is someone who sounds just as great live as they do in the studio and vice versa. They should know how to work the stage.

There are rhythmic ideas which sometimes only work up to a point. In writing there are moments when it just comes off the page, it's not just a collection of notes.

Whenever any great song or album gets lost in the ether, someone is deprived of the joy of hearing it, and the great effort of those who created and recorded the work is damaged.

I have a lot of compact discs. I need them for radio play and convenience. Many bands and artists I am a fan of don't always release their work on vinyl, so I take what they feel like giving me.

I guess this is cliche, but I'd love to work with Kanye West, Mark Ronson, Diplo.

I work so I don't need to make rent through my songs, and I think if more people engaged with music without needing it to provide for their welfare, you're not beholden to anyone.

Every leading lady I work with, I'll see if I can get a song out of them and put it on an album.

I just love crafting and shaping sounds. Actually, many of the sounds that I work with start off as organic instruments - guitar, piano, clarinet, etc. But I do love the rigidity of electronic drums.

That makes classical music work, the ability to improvise.

I don't think I'll ever want to do pop music. I think I'll only ever want to do classical crossover because it's something that I love, and pop just doesn't work for me.

I want to work with Justin Timberlake.

I do look at songwriting as a lot of work. I don't overintellectualize music as a special medium that only some people deserve to do. I think it's something you do if you put the work in.

I play and I've played in heavy bands, but when I write for myself, I don't particularly feel like writing huge rock riffs. It just doesn't work for me and my voice.

I'm very ambitious, musically - I want to create great things, not mediocre work.

I often don't go to sleep and work through the night. I can't seem to do my vocal takes if there's light outside. There's a gentleness to the night that leads me in my stride.

I tell you, when we travel with our own band and we're on the road... Well, I can't even believe this is work.

Music informs my work so intensely. The better actor I become, the better pianist I become, and vice versa.

I think there are some things in music that work and don't work. That's learned from counterpoint and rhythm and theory, and they don't work if you don't want them to work.

I don't think there is anything hard at all about having a lot of songs. It makes it easier to be less precious about them, and know that everybody's going to want to work on some of them.

I have always thought it was important to maintain some connection for myself to what it takes to make a song work by myself, to put a song across to an audience by myself.