Music Quotes

"They told me that they are starting a classic label, and wanted me to be the first artist. So I signed, and am producing myself, and writing my own music, but I'm their first artist on their classic label. And I have creative control"

Teena Marie, Musician

"There were times I used to go to parties when I was, you know, like 15-, 16-years-old, and I'd always bring my guitar, and all my friends would be like, sing one of the Smokey songs. And everything I sang was his music, and I could sound just like him"

Teena Marie, Musician

"I think that's the problem in a lot of music. We've got these record labels"

Teena Marie, Musician

"I still have a passion for the music, which is such a beautiful thing. I still wake up in the middle of the night out of a dream and have a melody in my head, and run to my piano"

Teena Marie, Musician

"Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable"

Leonard Bernstein, Composer

"I'm very much a traditionalist, but I think it's important to know about tradition so that you can evolve the music you are deciding to make"

Chely Wright, Musician

"A jazz musician can improvise based on his knowledge of music. He understands how things go together. For a chef, once you have that basis, that's when cuisine is truly exciting"

Charlie Trotter, Celebrity

"But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense"

Charles Ives, Composer

"I got started when I was 3 years old because my father was a music teacher and my lessons were free. Instead of learning to walk, you learn to play the piano"

Carla Bley, Musician

"But I never listen to music while I'm writing"

Stephen Greenblatt, Critic

"There was a lot more music than the size of the place would indicate"

Bruce Cockburn, Musician

"It is my hope that during my brief passage through this universe, that I may share with you the joy of hearing the music of the stars... knowing that the composer was from a distant place and the songs were written eons ago, which now fall gently on this place for all to hear"

Richard H. Baker, Politician

"One thing I am certain of is that, if I have done anything good in music, it was, first, because of my father, and second, because of my wife"

Charles Ives, Composer

"You must surrender whatever preconceptions you have about music if you're really interested in it"

Cecil Taylor, Musician

"You feel the music needs something but you don't know what. So you start searching, fitting, measuring, trying. Every time you try another angle. And sometimes that's frustrating, especially if you don't come up with something for three days"

Beth Gibbons, Musician

"We're thinking about printing the lyrics with the next record so that people can find their own meaning in them. But then they would start having a life of their own, and I think the Portishead music should stay a whole in which the lyrics come second, actually"

Beth Gibbons, Musician

"You know, I think when people fly the nest a little too soon, as far as getting involved in movies, anything beyond the music can make it suffer, I just want to make sure that I'm not that guy"

Bubba Sparxxx, Musician

"Any band that is out there chasing it is doing more destruction to music then someone who is out there playing what they truly feel"

Bret Michaels, Musician

"Give me a laundry-list and I'll set it to music"

Gioachino Rossini, Composer

"Just listen to all this sweet, sweet music. I'm working the music"

R. Kelly, Musician

"I've programmed myself musically to come up with love-feeling tracks that are romantic, sexy, but classy, all in one. And that's the challenge. Once I create that music, then the lyrical content starts to come - you know, the stories and things like that"

R. Kelly, Musician

"The industry does have some influence on who gets other awards. With the Mercury Prize, they don't. Jon comes from the business, but his heart is still very much in the music. Currently, we have about 12 major names that have said they want to be a part of MUDDA"

Peter Gabriel, Musician

"I am still working with music, but Gordon and I no longer perform together"

Peter Asher, Musician

"Back when we were first making records, you didn't just make the music, you put a great deal of energy into the way it looked, and every word that was written on the whole thing"

Ann Wilson, Musician

"Music is there to enrich your life and make you aware of things in a slightly different way"

Andrew Eldritch, Musician

"I've been looking forward to doing an album, but it's really sad to see how many doors have been closed because of the gay thing. I thought it was about the music"

Jai Rodriguez, Actor

"People can't just listen to the music and have their own imagination and take them where they wanna go"

Ann Wilson, Musician

"I used to be with a publishing house called Roosevelt Music. A gentleman there told me he had seen Peggy Lee perform Fever in Las Vegas and I found out later she wanted to record it"

Otis Blackwell, Musician

"My music is homegrown from the garden of New Orleans. Music is everything to me short of breathing. Music also has a role to lift you up - not to be escapist but to take you out of misery"

Allen Toussaint, Musician

"I really wanted to pursue music, but all those other girls are doing it and it is annoying"

Alexa Vega, Actress

"Music is a dialogue"

Alex Van Halen, Musician

"We should read music in the same way that an educated adult will read a book: in silence, but imagining the sound"

Zoltan Kodaly, Composer

"The blues are like the fugue in 18th century. It's probably the music that belongs most to our time"

Michael Tippett, Composer

"Quite a few musicians came to our house. And my ma took me to hear many more, hoping to encourage in me a love of music. But she wouldn't consent to my having music lessons, for she feared I might end up as she had done - unable to play except from paper"

Mary Lou Williams, Musician

"Music is amazing. There's some metaphysical comfort where it allows you to be isolated and alone while telling you that you are not alone... truly, the only cure for sadness is to share it with someone else"

Wayne Coyne, Musician

"It really is no different in the way that we make records and shoot music videos. I don't think of the movie as being a great leap out of my current profession"

Wayne Coyne, Musician

"Electronic music used pure sounds, completely calibrated. You had to think digitally, as it were, in a way that allowed you to extend serial ideas into other parameters through technology"

Luc Ferrari, Composer

"I think it's a reflection of the music business in general, which to me seems very fragmented"

Kathy Valentine, Musician

"Throughout the years I have tried to hone my skills to gain mastery over the music in my head"

Kip Winger, Musician

"At the moment, in Britain we're facing such enormous cutbacks in education programs and music programs and art programs that you feel you are knocking your head against a brick wall"

Peter Maxwell Davies, Composer

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