Quotes About Artistry

I'm trying to play tunes in a new way, using all the same scales, harmonies, structures, but twist everything a little bit so that it comes out sounding different.

There have to be moments when you glimpse something decent, something life-affirming even in the most twisted character. That's where the real art lies. See, I always suspect characters who are painted as lovely, decent human beings. I would always question where the darkness lies.

Every song you write you think is the last one you're going to manage. You put everything you've got into the song, and you've twisted it and pulled at it and dug in and found a way to complete it. To get another one is the trick.

What started it all was the Kanye album, 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.' We started listening to that and just fell in love with it, fell in love with his production style.

For 'Twisted Fantasy,' I probably spent 180 days in the studio.

It's so refreshing to just play straight-ahead music with lots of twists.

All of our songs take these really big creative turns and twists throughout the process, so sometimes songs will start out as a melody or some musical chord progressions.

My favorite songwriting trick is writing something like 'XO.' In my brain, I thought, 'This is probably going to be a love song. How can I change that and find ways to twist that.' As a songwriter, it's your job for the song to take twists and turns that people don't expect.

I feel like the reason people feel like they know me is because I'm giving you myself in the music. There's where the connection comes from; you can't Twitter that.

Hopefully, one day I won't have to be so caught up in all of that day-to-day, the Twitter and the Instagram. But I also would like to, at some point, turn off and take a break and also be, like, an artist.

Lots of headless chickens running around - artists with 14 million followers on Twitter, some making millions, none making cultural impact.

I'll read on Twitter, 'Do you still do music?' Music is all I do, all day.

If you play more than two chords, you're showing off.

I had no aspirations to be a musician, but I picked up a guitar for two seconds and haven't put it down since.

What is a good performance? It lies in the hands and head of a performer... the shortest way between two people is not a straight line.

I can do whatever I want now. I can drop seven songs in two weeks and fans don't care about whether it's from an album or not. They just care about the music.

It's a two-dimensional gig being a singer, and you can get lost in your own tedium and repetition.

There's no particular role that comes to mind that I'd like to take on, but for me, it's about playing interesting characters and not just two-dimensional ones.

I am inspired and would love to work with Jack Garrett, Tyler Joseph of Twenty One Pilots, and Jack Antonoff.

All that stuff about heavy metal and hard rock, I don't subscribe to any of that. It's all just music. I mean, the heavy metal from the Seventies sounds nothing like the stuff from the Eighties, and that sounds nothing like the stuff from the Nineties. Who's to say what is and isn't a certain type of music?

'Mercy,' I love conceptually because I feel like you can either think about it as if it were a girl - which it sounds like it could be about a girl - but I like to picture it as 'pleading for mercy for my career' type of thing.

When you're from the East Coast or you're from the South, people expect you to sound a certain way. So if you don't sound that way, people won't label you as that type of artist. For me, I had a whole new lane to create for myself being from Pittsburgh and being a Midwest artist.

No matter what type of equipment you have, you still have to have a certain talent to be able to make a good record.

I'm 38 years old and Limp Bizkit is just something I do. If I was a painter, it would just be a type of painting I make.