Quotes About Artistry

We have been trying to play a lot of different kinds of music, and probably the next album will go back more towards the direction where you couldn't classify each song as a certain kind of music. This album you can.

I think at the end of a show, you have to walk out with a message. That's my hardest struggle right now; that's what I'm working towards.

The most important thing is, how can I move forward towards something that I can't articulate, that is new in storytelling with moving images and sound?

If age someday grounds my feet and wilts my port de bras, what vestige of the old life will be left? The signs that I was a dancer will gradually fade like stripes on a beach towel. Even my knowledge of the art form, reaped in sweat over decades, could be lost over time.

The thing about Nashville that's amazing is everyone plays... so you don't meet up for a drink, you meet up for a pick. It's an incredibly creative town, just bubbling with energy.

If PJ Harvey ever came to town I'd definitely go try to go see her.

I feel like Britney kind of has her own genre: If you look at songs like 'Toxic' and 'Piece of Me' and 'Oops! I Did It Again,' they all were sort of influential and led the way.

My first album didn't come out until I was 27, which in pop years is late, you know. But when it came time to arrange it, I became a kid in a toy shop. I had a harp and a saxophone quartet and a symphony orchestra. I went berserk for a time.

My interest in his new toy, the Theremin, isn't very big. It simply does not fit into my way of playing music. I do not want to fiddle around with my hands in the air.

Initially, when people asked us when 'Toy Story 2' was going to come out, we'd say, 'We have no interest in sequels. We just want to do original stories.'

When we made 'Toy Story,' we knew, even back then, that this was going to be the ugliest film we would ever produce.

With certain ideas, you can predict commercial success. So with a 'Toy Story 3' or a 'Cars 2,' you know the idea is more likely to have financial success. But if you go down that path too far, you become creatively bankrupt because you're just trying to repeat yourself.

The sound of 'Take Her Up to Monto' and 'Hairless Toys' is the sound of me and the producer in the studio doing whatever we like. There is no reference. It's too easy to be referential now; I'm trying to find something else.

When one puts up a building one makes an elaborate scaffold to get everything into its proper place. But when one takes the scaffold down, the building must stand by itself with no trace of the means by which it was erected. That is how a musician should work.

I think you could go back to any filmmaker or musician or artist, and look at what their input was in their formative years, and you could trace all the lines.

Even now, I have traces of the good little girl. When I am not performing, for instance, I am really very quiet and ordinary.

When I'm not in the booth, I'm one of the most laid-back guys. But growing up, I liked DMX, Jay-Z, 50 Cent, and T.I. - dudes that went all out on the track. My first songs were energetic because I liked their energy.

I know when I am on stage and I'm kind of on the right track - hopefully most of the time. But a lot of time I'm not.

I always just sit down at the piano and make the main hook - what I want the track to be about melodically - and then I'll build everything else around that. But growing up, I did not play any instruments.

I mean whatever I do it's important that I put my stamp on it and keep it in my world, whether I'm doing a dance track or something like the Russian album for example.

I'm also working on a track for Howard Hewett, and a theme for a new NPR show.

I'm on a single track here - I work to direct what I want to see onstage. I basically have been feeding my own needs - to be working on a specific project at a specific time, and fortunately more often it works than fails.

I'm a huge fan of 'Heart On My Sleeve' - I think it has a 'Take That' feel to it! John Shanks and James Morrison wrote the track, and we spoke to Sony and asked if we could reference a 'Greatest Day'/'Rule The World' sound to make that epic ballad. I think it does the job.

I don't listen to much rap, really. I can rarely listen to a whole record of it, because musically, it's very formulaic, and oftentimes it doesn't have the best hooks on every track.