"I just fell in love with his music. I thought Yanni was Japanese. I didn't have any idea what a Yanni was. I just thought I was in love with a Japanese man who wrote beautiful music"
About this Quote
Evans is talking about Yanni, the Greek composer whose late-80s/90s crossover success traded on lush, borderless "world music" atmosphere. The misread - assuming he's Japanese - is less about her personal cluelessness than about how that era packaged non-American artistry into a soft-focus, vaguely Asian/mediterranean "foreign" aesthetic for Western audiences. His music was marketed as placeless serenity; her imagination obliges by supplying a fantasy of origin.
The subtext is refreshingly un-defensive. Evans doesn't scramble to correct the cultural assumption; she leans into it, which makes the admission both charming and revealing. She frames desire as sound first, biography second. In a celebrity ecosystem that prizes authenticity and research, she offers the opposite: the permission to be moved before you can name the source.
It also hints at a more intimate truth about taste. Falling in love with "his music" becomes a way of falling in love with the version of yourself that the music produces - tender, open, transported - and the "Japanese man" is the story her mind invents to keep that feeling coherent.
Quote Details
| Topic | Love |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Evans, Linda. (n.d.). I just fell in love with his music. I thought Yanni was Japanese. I didn't have any idea what a Yanni was. I just thought I was in love with a Japanese man who wrote beautiful music. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-just-fell-in-love-with-his-music-i-thought-102264/
Chicago Style
Evans, Linda. "I just fell in love with his music. I thought Yanni was Japanese. I didn't have any idea what a Yanni was. I just thought I was in love with a Japanese man who wrote beautiful music." FixQuotes. Accessed February 3, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-just-fell-in-love-with-his-music-i-thought-102264/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I just fell in love with his music. I thought Yanni was Japanese. I didn't have any idea what a Yanni was. I just thought I was in love with a Japanese man who wrote beautiful music." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-just-fell-in-love-with-his-music-i-thought-102264/. Accessed 3 Feb. 2026.



