Quotes About Artistry

I can be a little messy and wild and carefree with my creativity as a solo artist. In a group, there's a certain structure, and everyone has a part to play, and being a solo artist, I can do as I please.

I came in after the Smokey Robinsons, Temptations, Clovers, and Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters. I came along at that level, when there was harmonizing.

There's something cool about playing 'Tempted' and then picking up the mandolin and playing 'Dark as a Dungeon' and standing on the classics. It's nice to just let soul rule.

Today, it's very tempting to create songs by cutting and pasting in the studio.

It's very tempting for certain generations to say, 'Well, I just want to be in a band, and I want to be a rock star,' or whatever. That's not what it's about. Firstly, you've got to be in it for the love and the passion that you have for the music, and then you take it from there.

So, it ended up being what you have there, seven songs brand new and ten live songs which is a good mix.

I'd rather write one good book than ten mediocre ones.

I want to be able to say that a rap career could be ten albums.

I have a hard time listening to things I've recorded. I don't necessarily go back and enjoy it. Occasionally I'll have the iPod on shuffle and something will come on. Nine times out of ten I'll wince and go on to the next one.

I'm in a position where, theoretically, I could play the same ten concertos and make a very good living bouncing around playing Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky and Barber, but I really think artists should keep pushing limits and trying new things.

If I had made another 'Maxinquaye,' I'd have had ten times as much success. I ain't going down that path, because that way you're totally controlled by people around you. I don't want to be controlled.

People who are creative, who do it as a lifestyle, it's kind of silly to make that claim you're done, because you just never know when that spark is going to hit you again. You can't necessarily predict how you're going to feel. In ten years I'll be 58, and I might still feel like making a punk record.

When Jack Black and I started Tenacious D, there were about two seconds in the beginning when we thought maybe we'd have a go at serious music. But we quickly abandoned that when we realized that everything we did tended to come out funny.

I have so much music inside me I'm just trying to stay afloat. I don't tend to write for a particular band - you have to just write the songs and then let God into the room and let the music tell you what to do.

Honestly, I don't feel pressure to live up to anything I've done because I tend to not listen to my work once a year passes.

We've learned a lot of dance genres that a lot of girl groups tend not to learn, and we think those things will be a point of differentiation when we perform on stage.

I tend to overthink things. I'm not the guy who screams 'This is a world smash!' when I finish a song.

When you're in the moment and not over thinking the song is when things tend to really work. You're not so focused on the minutiae. You're focused on the overall feel, and that's the stuff that I get from the demos.

Freddie and Brian tend to write the majority of the material.

I try not to have actors in mind when I write because the tendency then is to be influenced by either their last performance or your favourite of their performances.

In the '70s, there was no shortage of people taking themselves too seriously, as 'artistes,' if you will. I think we all had a tendency to do that at some point in our career. So looking back on that, it's fun to laugh at it.

When it's a rapper's album or a singer's album, there's a tendency to want a text-based or theme-based narrative.

There is a tendency for writers to be most exciting by whatever they just wrote. Sometimes that excitement is warranted. Sometimes on further listen it's not as good as something they did a couple of years ago, but it's just not in their sights at that particular time.

The world is so caught up in the 'American Idol' idealistic sort of tendency in regards to just thinking that this whole thing is what everybody wants, but it doesn't help you make a better record.