Quotes About Artistry

I really enjoyed watching a ballerina named Denise Dabrowski who used to dance at California Ballet. She was a beautiful ballerina and role model for a lot of young dancers.

I'll just say that America - us included - has a long way to go to catch up with the animated work being done in a handful of countries, namely Japan.

I think I initially started inventing characters in my songs because I didn't want to write directly about myself. Also, as a kid, I loved all the character names in Beatles songs, like Eleanor Rigby and Lovely Rita and Mean Mr. Mustard and Maxwell and Rocky Raccoon.

What's really fun is to write under different names.

Not to name names, but a lot of pop female artists you see, they don't write their own songs. Lot of top male artists and boy band artists, they don't write their own songs. They're just a product. They sell, they sell, they sell. They don't care about musical integrity, any of that kind of stuff.

Being a full-time musician back before I had my son, it was sort of too much 'me' all the time. I felt like a bit of a narcissist, always doing just my art - even though I feel like artists are doing a service as well. I needed something a little more literal, instead of writing music and hoping people enjoyed it.

I love when I dive into lyrics that give me human complexity and intricate narrative.

It's almost like a theater, where I can play a character in every song, 'cause Kamelot songs are very... There's always a narrative going on. There's a story within albums and in songs, so I get to play a character and sing it in a different way than people might recognize coming from me.

What I'm really proud of Beyonce and Solange, they understand the importance of creating the narrative. It's all about the narrative and how you position yourself with your narrative.

So many actors and musicians seem to be only interested in what's expected of them, and they join the dots accordingly. I don't fit into any narrow categories as an actor or a singer.

I never understood bands who were only influenced by a narrow era of, say, five years of music.

One of the great reasons to be in Nashville is, you get guys like Shane McAnally to write songs with.

I'm one of the lucky artists in Nashville that gets to - I know it sounds cliche - but just write from the heart.

Nashville used to have more integrity than just looking at the bottom line.

There is nothing else to do in Nashville except for write songs.

Nashville is the business center. They forget that the bottom line of it all is still the song.

All I knew when I moved to Nashville was that I wanted to make music in whatever shape and form I could.

We're not just going to take some songs from a focus group in Nashville where people are sitting around in a circle having appointments trying to write catchy songs so they can sell them to a band like us.

Even though there are incredible songs floating around Nashville, it's important for me to have my voice heard.

A lot of people in Nashville think that the best song is the catchiest or the one that sells the most copies. They're editing songs in a way that make them seem more consumable, I guess. I'm trying to edit them in a way that makes them more honest.

I Hope' is the fourth song that I'd ever written in Nashville. I didn't know that it was as special as it was.

My raps be crazy, and my hooks are nasty.

When I started making music, I figured the name Rico Nasty would give a background of who I am.

I was born Chinese, and I write in Chinese. I don't think there's any need to evade this... to a writer, as to a person, what matters is not his political label or his nationality, but whether he is a person and whether his work is worth looking at.