Quotes About Music

When I did 'Bird,' it was a surprise to some people, first because I wasn't in it and second because most of the films I'd been doing were cop movies or westerns or adventure films, so to be doing one about Charlie Parker, who was a great influence on American music, was a great thrill for me.

I really liked the Mariachi singing in Westerns.

If you scroll through all the movies I've worked on, you can understand how I was a specialist in westerns, love stories, political movies, action thrillers, horror movies, and so on. So in other words, I'm no specialist, because I've done everything. I'm a specialist in music.

I intend, before the endgame looms, to die sitting in a chair in my own garden with a glass of brandy in my hand and Thomas Tallis on the iPod. Oh, and since this is England, I had better add, 'If wet, in the library.' Who could say that this is bad?

Surf music is actually just the sound of the waves played on a guitar: that wet, splashy sound.

I would break a lot of cymbals. You whack the cymbals hard enough, and they will crack in half. Drums are not actually as sturdy as they look. They're actually somewhat fragile instruments.

The phone started ringing when I dropped 'Whack World.'

When I was 15, I went to see the Stranglers at Bath Pavilion. I saw Jean-Jacques Burnel take off his bass and whack a skinhead over the head with it because he gave a Nazi salute. I thought: 'This is brilliant!'

Kendrick Lamar is not a whack rapper, not at all. Do I think he's a super-mega-lyricist? Not really.

I decided I wanted to use my real name 'Tierra Whack' when I decided I wanted to make music my career.

I played trumpet for Noah and the Whale a couple of times.

I am into nature and seeing whales. I went whale-watching, and I was really looking forward to that, but when you see it on TV and you see other programs do it, you're seeing close-ups of these massive creatures, and the music that's added gives you a certain feeling.

I got the idea for 'Throne of Glass' when I was sixteen. Music always inspires my books, and when I was listening to the 'Cinderella' soundtrack, I thought, 'What if Cinderella was actually an assassin who liked getting dressed up all pretty and going to the ball, but then she wouldn't mind kicking butt?'

I wrote a song with Kara DioGuardi called 'What If,' and it's a really beautiful song. It's kind of like a rock ballad. There's a lot of guitars and drums in it.

Why can't we have a concert with food? Your typical cooking demonstration, there's just no enthusiasm. There's no energy behind it. I said, 'What if we take a cooking demonstration and fortify it with a lot of good music? ... Drive it to the next level?'

In the past, I used to rely on the randomness of working with samples, which was a good way because it threw you in a completely different direction. You just thought, 'What if I take this samba drum and combined it with an '80s synth line or something from this record?'

My parents even let me switch schools, to leave my regular school to go to the producer's school, because I told them producing is what I love to do, and it makes me happy to share my music and my passion with others. I was dreaming to go to that school. I begged them. They were like, 'Yah, know what? If you are happy, we are happy.'

If I went to a major, you never know - what if they don't like the stuff I do? I could just get shelved. And then I'm stuck in a contract, and I can't leave. And if that happens, you're gonna realize, you're going to start hating it, so the power with being indie is you could do whatever you want.

It strikes me as very odd for someone to think, 'You know what, if I put on a bikini, I may shift some more records,' but it happens. If people are comfortable with that, fine, but it's not something that would ever cross my mind.

Then when I was writing alone, I'd just be in my bedroom in London and I had a little studio setup. I was like, You know what, if no one's gonna produce my music, I'm gonna have to learn how to do it myself.

So I had an operation. So what? If I die, I die. I'm more interested in my music.

One day I heard Ray Charles on the radio and I found out he was blind. I thought, 'You know what, if there's room for Ray, there might be room for Jose.'

You know what, if Rick Rubin would produce another Geto Boys album I'd do it.

You know what, if you play 'She Looks So Perfect' backwards... you just listen to it.