Quotes About Artistry

I don't really love the guitar hero trip, anyway, so it's not something I'm actively searching for or after. I don't like what it's about.

I know how to make a record that commercial radio or Triple J will smash now... It's kind of hard to stay true and write what you would write if you didn't have that in your head. Because I know I can get way more airplay and get this much bigger... and that's what I'm trying to avoid doing. Trying to avoid the poisons of success.

Ballet is very stiff and I can do a triple timestep but who knows what I will be like at Ballroom or Latin.

It's getting too late in my life to care about the small things. It's getting too late to not be brave, to not live my life fully, to not try to be an artist. Trivial things like how nice your hotel room is, or if you have to be naked for a while, they fade away.

The first time I heard Jack Teagarden on the trombone, I had goose pimples all over.

Great musicians are great musicians, whether they're playing a trombone or an electric guitar or a xylophone.

Every time I talk about this, I say: when the singer is singing, he must be respected, you must be able to hear what he's saying. You can't put a trombone and a drum up there, and a microphone on the drum, microphones on everybody. You can't hear what he's saying.

When I'm hard at work, when I'm deep in it, there is no other feeling. For me, my work is at all times building a nation out of thin air. It is manning the troops. It is painting a canvas. It is hitting every high note. It is running a marathon. It is being Beyonce. And it is all of those things at the same time.

I hate being put in a box labelled 'tropical house.'

I think my music covers a broader sound than just 'Tropical House'... My goal is to simply be a great producer in my own right without being pigeonholed.

When I started making my tracks in the style that people call tropical house, I didn't do it on purpose to make it sound tropical. I made whatever I felt sounded good. I just wanted to make my own thing, and then suddenly people started calling it tropical ... I'm like, 'Yeah, that's probably a good name for it.'

Once you start writing a character visually, you're in trouble.

I have trouble watching singers because they are so sincere.

When I'm writing a book, you can't think about your audience. You're going to be in big trouble if you think about it. You're got to write from deep inside.

I think Bridge Over Troubled Water was a very good song. Artie sang it beautifully. The Boxer was a really nice record. But I don't think I've written any great songs.

These people that dress up in spandex trousers with all the extraordinary makeup - I find it incredibly repulsive, always have.

Studios are passe for me. I'd rather play in a garage, in a truck, or a rehearsal hall, a club, or a basement.

The problem with country is we've turned the props into the play. Let's not just Solo cup and pickup truck it to death. Let's handle this in a smart way. Nobody is thinking about lyrical content, or how we're moving people, or what's going on in the background of their minds.

The art of a people is a true mirror to their minds.

Even a true artist does not always produce art.

I think the true artist - musician, dancer, writer, actor - a true artist is able to sort of articulate pain and tragedy, in a way that sort of expresses what the listener or the beholder may have been feeling but was less able to communicate.

The true artist is never afraid of anything - including the glories of the past.

To be a true artist, I have to be true to who I am now and write that way.

If I was just to shut up, I wouldn't be a true artist.