Quotes About Music

When I was young I was listening to the Spice Girls and Destiny's Child. I was singing 'Independent Woman' and 'Survivor,' and it was all about Girl Power and being with your friends. I don't think I was singing, 'Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?'

The band I was in, Soul Survivor, moved to Los Angeles in 1964 and tried real hard for two years.

I like 'Bootylicious,' 'Survivor' - my little granddaughter loves 'Survivor.'

I am a co-writer of 'Survivor,' so there's publishing that I'll receive for some of the records.

I look over and Mike's not there, I hear the drums and know it isn't Jeff. I guess there is some survivor's guilt, but I'm happy to be here every day, still doing what I love most.

When you're co-leading a band with someone whose career is bigger than your own, like with my wife Susan, it's different. You have to agree on things musically. It took months for it to come together.

Comedy is like music - there are genres and styles for every taste. Katy Perry is there for people who like frothy pop music. Metallica is there for people who like head-banging metal. And Susan Boyle is there for... well, I don't who the hell is listening to that freak of nature, but that's not the point. In art, there's something for everybody.

Being able to incorporate my language into songs is really cool. It's really cool to see that people are susceptible to it. It helps with writing a lot to turn off one language and then go to another.

I am enormously susceptible to religious environments - the music, the liturgy and the prayers.

When 'Raw Like Sushi' came out in the U.S., I wasn't considered to be black enough. They didn't really know where to put me. The music wasn't 'black black' sounding. It wasn't R&B; it wasn't straight up hip-hop, although obviously in that dimension and world.

I've always worked with my partner, my husband, Cameron, since 'Raw Like Sushi,' and in a way, I feel very free with what I do, but he also has an amazing insight in having intuitions that tend to be right a lot of the time, about where we should go next.

I suspect a singing teacher would have a fit with my diction. They'd probably think I was doing a very bad job.

There's a lot of risk in putting what you suspect you really are into your music.

Popular music is one endless love song that, I suspect, the basically solitary Ella Fitzgerald approached much as the basically solitary Marianne Moore approached poetry: reading it with a certain contempt for it, Moore said, you could find a place in it for the genuine.

I used to listen to so many song bands that were all straight people, and my thinking on it was, 'Well, if I can kind of suspend my own perception of myself and listen to Rivers Cuomo singing about girls, then I don't see why a straight guy can't listen to a band called PWR BTTM.'

One of the arrangements I'm really proud of is '21 Guns' because the chorus has this descending bass line with a suspended type of progression that immediately screamed 'Bach' to me.

There is something suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is, by her nature, equivocal. I shall not be going too far in saying at once that she is politically suspect.

I don't want to name names, but the least I can say about rock and roll is that I'm suspicious.

I was hedging my bets with university. I always wanted to do music, it was just about waiting for the point when I could confidently say 'okay, I reckon there's enough momentum behind this thing to sustain myself.'

I've always played every amp I've ever had full up, because rock and roll is supposed to be played loud. Also, that's how you get your sustain.

For an individual, playback singing is not enough to sustain a career, and it is not really a main source of income.

How many 54-year-old quadriplegics are putting albums out? You just have to deal with what you got, try to sustain yourself as best you can, and look to the things that you can do.

I had no idea that I could sustain a career as an artist. But, I loved music and wanted to be in the music business.

My own personal goal is I just hope to still write songs and kind of let that sustain me as a job. If I could never have a 9-to-5 job, and making a living doing this, it'd just be incredible.