Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think the idea is that every time we perform Big Red Machine music it should be different somehow - like, different people, different songs maybe, definitely different versions of the songs.
'Oppressed' is one of the terms that's very, very sellable and easily thrown around these days because everybody feels it, no matter what side you're on. We thrive on it. We're addicted to it.
You have to hone your craft, but you also have to be born with a certain amount of talent, and I never took the talent for granted - I've always worked really hard to be as good as I could be.
We are all going through some sort of struggle, so I try to keep that in mind when someone makes me angry. I also know that being positive is a choice, and I try to make that choice every day.
I thank Marc Jacobs so much for giving me the opportunity to design a shoe for Louis Vuitton, but the thing that broke my heart most was when they said, 'You're finished. The shoe's finished.'
Obviously it always takes longer to finish an album than you think it will. That's always going to be the case. Everything takes longer than you think it will. Occasionally things happen fast.
We have been playing to a 70-30 black to white audience. And we are just doing what should come next, trying to attract a larger house, trying to reach an audience that's half black and white.
No U.K. rapper has been in my position; there are loads of big rappers like Tinie Tempah or Skepta, but no one has done what I have: had mainstream success with underground music and pop music.
Because they're my stories, they're my version of events of the past three years. But I really hope people can hear their own stories within the songs and they can become our version of events.
I always think its easier for me to write without thinking about the strict meter that's required for songs and song structures and things like that. It's much easier to just write on the page.
The dinosaurs aren't remembered for much more than their bones. When humanity's gone, what do we give to this little planet that we're on, and what could we do collectively, removing the pride?
I'm a firm believer that when children have a strong conviction about something, it's often because there's some powerful experience from a past life. Something that they didn't get to fulfill.
I think [song 'Can't Stop Workin'] it's the constant work; performing and traveling. It gets to be a bit of a strain. But if you pace yourself, which I've managed to do, you can go pretty well.
In an abusive relationship - we'll talk about men and women - women are often restrained, by words or out of fear, from leaving. They will tolerate abuse up to and including being put to death.
Frank Martin is a rarity. Dexterous as a player, writer and singer, he is thoughtful and skilled in his approach and passionate in his delivery. He is a unique, first-class musical personality.
You can't quite believe what you are hearing - and it's not necessarily something that you can listen to all the time because it's too intense - but it changes the way you go about making music.
There's still anti-Semitism everywhere, and unfortunately, what has happened with our people no longer being the underdogs in this region, peoples' perception of Israel has changed dramatically.
My mother was a music teacher and my grandfather was a professor of music, and there was a lot of singing in the family. It wasn't like trained singing or anything like that, but it was singing.
You have to be ready to give everything you have, and you have to make sure you've really got a lot to give. Because if ... you're not ready to give everything you have, ... then you're nothin'.
Even though I've been making electronic music since I was 14, it's hard for people to see you as a producer with a musical identity when you're contextualized in a band that performs on a stage.
Gone are the days when my heart was young and gay, Gone are my friends from the cotton fields away, Gone from the earth to a better land I know, I hear their gentle voices calling Old Black Joe.
In the '80s, they were using an awful lot of technology but hadn't really figured out how it worked yet... You had these really great, simple pop songs turned into these gigantic overproductions.
I don't use the computer. But my secretary does. I want to take some computer courses because I'm interested in some of the access to some of the illegal things on the Internet. I'm just kidding.
When I came up in a band - not just in a band, but a kind of underground DIY community - there was such a clear cut distinction between what pop was and what not pop was in very simplistic terms.
The moment of drifting into thought has been so clipped by modern technology. Our lives are filled with distraction with smartphones and all the rest. People are so locked into not being present.
I'm gonna sit here on this runway until I'm at the end of it. Because that's that thing that people slave over. That's that thing that people are slaves to. That's that thing that I'm a slave to.
I feel that all girls like clothes and I'm more of a creative person. If it's writing the album or developing the makeup range, it's just about being creative. That for me is where I am happiest.
I used to think of 'alternative rock' as a radio format, kind of the way 'indie rock' used to have more meaning. But it means different things depending on where you are or what country you're in.
I would love to live in Japan again, but would need to really commit to learning the language before doing it. Both my parents speak Japanese fluently, so I suppose it would feel like a tradition.
Any parent would have reservations if their kid came home dressed like a skinhead, but mine understood that punk kept me focused on something when so many of my friends were out robbing 7-Elevens.
My main influences are pop and folk music - Bob Lind, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, the Motown collection, The Zombies, Elliott Smith, and a ton of 70's AM radio hits. I love powerpop too.
We're not always in the position that we want to be at. We're constantly growing, we're constantly making mistakes, we're constantly trying to express ourselves and trying to actualize our dreams.
Both of my parents were super music lovers when I was growing up - they had a massive record and tape collection. I think my dad even had a couple of laser discs, but that was a short-lived thing.
I studied German at school. I lived in Berlin for two years and had a German girlfriend for five years, so I don't find speaking German particularly difficult. Singing was slightly more difficult.
When you stand up acoustic in front of an audience, you really are a man without any clothes on. And that can be fun - it depends how much of an exhibitionist you are, I suppose. I quite enjoy it.
I am never excited to play through a song all the way, because it can reveal more flaws that mean more work. For some reason, I always have an irrational fear that the song will never be finished.
I tend to like to write a song and then think about it for a while. I record a demo of it and then put it away and wait until I've gotten more thoughts on it or get sure exactly how to approach it.
We have gone through some difficult times like everyone else and perhaps our working together and respecting each other's abilities, in addition to that little thing called love, helped us survive.
I'm one of those people that I make a song... then I write another song and then I'm like, 'But this song is so much better than this song,' and then I kind of ditch that song. It's a long process.
The more I come to recognize my story's place in God's grander Story, my once-bewildered questions are turning to psalms of thanksgiving at the wonder that I have been included in what He is doing.
People know I'm smart. And people know that, whether it's SNL or Jimmy Kimmel, it's a trend to take the piss out of celebrity -- just as much of a trend as wearing a gray hoodie or driving a Prius.
If we go on your iPhone and go to the dictionary and look up 'humble,' 80 per cent of the definition is negative. It's a controlling word. It's a way to control the masses and to control the sheep.
I'm not focused on radio or whether I'm going to get all the audiences... all I wanted were great songs that were universal to any listener - Black, White, Green, Yellow; any kind a age difference.
The Master lives within everyone. When you give food to the one who is starving, when you give water to the one who is thirsty, when you cover the one who is cold, you give your love to the Master.
'Unbelievers' was a song that we felt like we could tackle, so that's one of the reasons we wanted to start playing it live, we really believed in that song and we still believe in that song a lot.
Clearly it is not the lovelorn sufferer who seeks solace in chocolate, but rather the chocolate-deprived individual, who, desperate, seeks in mere love a pale approximation of bittersweet euphoria.
I feel I must acknowledge that gay people are, generally speaking, funnier, more self-sufficient, and better in crises and I should step aside and let them handle the business whenever it comes up.
Everybody knows we're big liberals and I was a very outspoken Hillary Clinton supporter, and I still am. It's impossible for us to separate the songs we're writing from what's going on in the world.
I used to drink a bottle of vodka a day, every day, for about 40 years and it never occurred to me it'd kill me. If I'd have continued it might have killed me. My doctor said I should stick to wine.
But synthesizer music has been accepted as emotional for long enough that it isn't a huge reach, conceptually, to think of a fake voice as 'emotional', especially since there's a human composing it.