Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I want to go back to the format that radio started with rock n' roll, with country artists and rhythm and blues with that oldies type feeling. I want to put it all together and create a Top 40 of rhythm and blues and country and straight blues with Wolfman at the reins.
Growing up, my parents always played artists like Alanis Morissette, Aerosmith and Michael Jackson, so I just grew to love their music. And I just love so many diverse artists for different reasons; some for their instruments, some for their edge, some for their vocals.
I started with soul music and icons like Aretha Franklin and Etta James and then moved to R&B and artists such as Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill. Electronic music came later on, when I was in high school and I was really influenced by artists like Skrillex and Major Lazer.
I think the key to great art and great artists is to just fully be yourself and not be scared of that, and be the extremes of your personality. Show the extremes of your personality and embrace the imperfections. Embrace the things about yourself that you might not like.
We believe a large-scale, next-generation venue will not only become a premier destination, but also drive growth in London's overall music and entertainment market, benefiting artists and fans, and serving as a long-term investment in the future of this incredible city.
I'm gonna make music, and I'm gonna capture every aspect of being a human being. That's really all I'm trying to do. I think that artists and pop culture identities are used to simplify what it means to be a human and pigeon-hole people into looking up to one role model.
Somebody approached me about working with Michael Jackson, and I did say no because I like working with new artists or people that I've worked with in the past. I can develop them from the ground up. There's no set standard that I have to live up to or anything like that.
I think Paris smells not just sweet but melancholy and curious, sometimes sad but always enticing and seductive. She's a city for the all senses, for artists and writers and musicians and dreamers, for fantasies, for long walks and wine and lovers and, yes, for mysteries.
My manager lives on my block; four of the apartments in my apartment complex of seven are people I know. It's a really close-knit community, and almost everyone on these few blocks are artists or graphic designers, because we live right on the cusp of a warehouse district.
Radio in my beginning days was going into a room for four hours, playing a bunch of music, and screaming about the artists... radio now has come out of the radio, on to the net, and on to video and on stages; it's a multiplatform thing. It's nothing I expected ever to see.
I always thought it was strange when these artists like Kurt Cobain or whoever would get really famous and say, 'I don't understand why this is happening to me.' There is a mathematical formula to why you got famous. It isn't some magical thing that just started happening.
I think you have a lot of really good artists today. You have your Beyonce, Usher, Nicki Minaj and the like. But our generation, the artists were stronger. You're talking about myself, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Roberta Flack, Gladys Knight, The Temptations, The Four Tops.
My father, George, has also affected the choices in my life regarding films. I like films that take chances or say something different or experiment. Growing up with him, I was surrounded by different artists - not just actors or film-makers but cartoonists, poets, writers.
I feel like too many people on the West Coast, they're too needy. They feel they need Snoop or Game. I never did any tracks with any West Coast artists. Not because I didn't want to, but because I didn't feel like that's what I had to do in order to get on. I just did music.
I kind of rode this weird line between athlete and artist. It was a little different because most of the athletes were total jocks, and most of the artists dressed in black and were kind of considered a little on the fringe. But I hung out with both crowds in my high school.
The truth is that I didn't start out making commercial movies. My films were not film festival movies with the possible exception slightly of 'Super,' but I was able to nurture my gifts through the works of artists making lower budget films that needed a place and an outlet.
Women come up to us all the time and give us the most amazing compliments, like, 'Salt-N-Pepa was the soundtrack of my life.' They remind us that we meant so much to them. Sometimes artists don't really grasp that. But when you talk to fans, you get in touch with your legacy.
When I and the other young artists were working in comics, our work carried with it a particularly American slant. After all, we were Americans drawing and writing about things that touched us. As it turned out, the early work was, you might say, a comic book version of Jazz.
In Hollywood, they think drawn animation doesn't work anymore, computers are the way. They forget that the reason computers are the way is that Pixar makes good movies. So everybody tries to copy Pixar. They're relying too much on the technology and not enough on the artists.
The earliest maps were 'story' maps. Cartographers were artists who mingled knowledge with supposition, memory and fears. Their maps described both landscape and the events, which had taken place within it, enabling travellers to plot a route as well as to experience a story.
Look at Macklemore! Perfect comparison, we're two artists from the same city who both had meteoric rises at different periods. I probably sold more albums, because in that era you couldn't steal them; you had to go to a record store to buy them. But Macklemore had more power.
Anyway, you know, when Richard Meltzer said rock and roll died in '68, what he means is Jefferson Airplane were no longer his buddies, that's what he really means. He means it in a political way: that was when the artists and the audience found themselves on different levels.
To be honest, the first time round, I didn't think 'Fame Academy' was the worst premise in the world. You got people on, and they would write songs and develop themselves as artists. But then, instead of getting a little bit more credible, it got a little bit more ridiculous.
We are probably the only artists in the world who have a 2,000-page book on a work of art that doesn't exist. But in this way, these projects reveal their identity through this whole process. When I'm starting, I only have the slightest idea of how the work of art will exist.
Some artists will tell you that's all they want to do is write their own music, and that's great, but George Strait, Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, Garth Brooks, they didn't write everything they recorded, and they've had major, major careers. I think it's all about the best song.
We started Airbnb because, like many across the U.S. and in New York, we were struggling to pay our rent and decided to open up our living room to fellow artists coming to town for a design conference. Sharing our apartment allowed us to stay in our home and start our company.
I met India Arie, who is one of my favorite artists of all time. It was really sweet; I was broken up with a month before, and she stayed up texting me all night and was helping me through it. Her text message looks like a song of hers. She's sort of become my fairy godmother.
I'm pretty much a dinosaur in the studio. I like things hand-drawn, even today. The story artists use Cintiqs, but I'm the only person who hasn't completely converted to computers. I like the Cintiq, but there's something about the raw emotional power of using paper and pencil.
I like work, I like song writing, and I like the history of Atlantic Records. They've sat in the studio with so many artists - like Ray Charles, for example - and created something amazing. As a label, they seem to be great at growing bands rather than telling you how to do it.
There are no categories in contemporary art. There are no rules. Artists are given the freedom to make and create whatever they please and call it whatever they please. I identify with that system, or lack of system, much more than I do the landscape of contemporary publishing.
I want to invite the mainstream into my world and to my sound and to what I'm doing. And I want mainstream artists to respect me and accept Latino artists as equals without us having to sing in English. I want them to know that I can compete globally, with whomever, in Spanish.
I think that when you're making your way up in the music industry, you have all these heroes and the reasons why they are your heroes. As soon as you get into the industry, your guidelines change a little bit. For me, my heroes now are great people first and great artists second.
All true artists in the world from all countries and all genres are influenced by Michael Jackson. There were music videos before Michael Jackson, and there were music videos after Michael Jackson. He brought such a huge change in the marketing and positioning of the music video.
Balance in general is difficult, but I refuse to go through life and just have work and not have good balance. I want to be an example, not only to my own children but also to artists and other entrepreneurs, that you can be a workaholic and also be a good husband and good father.
In New Orleans, bounce music was prevalent. That was all they wanted to hear. It was new and trendy, and it was hot, and it was taking off. Artists were coming out of everywhere. They did some great songs, some really catchy, fun songs. That was just the feel of New Orleans music.
It's usually a big kind of vent of frustration or anger or sadness that puts me in the right frame of mind to write. It's such a cliche to say that artists write when they're down, but it's true for me. It's a relief to get out what's eating away at my heart or my soul or my head.
The tradition of classical music and the opera is such that it used to be the place where social intercourse could take place between all parts of society: politicians, industrialists, artists, citizens, etc. That tradition, I think, still exists, but it's much, much more diluted.
In 1964, Jeanne-Claude and I became illegal aliens. That's when we moved here from Paris. And for three years, we were illegal aliens living in an illegal building. At that time, some artists started to move to SoHo, and they put A.I.R. - artists-in-residence - up on their windows.
In 2013, the week before I dropped 'Crenshaw,' 'Complex' wrote an article that said that Nipsey Hussle is one of the top 25 underperforming artists. I was so offended that I responded with my own opinion about these journalists - their point of view is not validated in our culture.
The big pay-off was to work as an artist and gain some shred of respect from your friends, who were also artists. But there was never any notion that you could make a living out of art. On the rare occasions you had a gallery show, and sold a little work, well, that was just gravy.
Great sculptors and artists spend countless hours perfecting their talents. They don't pick up a chisel or a brush and palette, expecting immediate perfection. They understand that they will make many errors as they learn, but they start with the basics, the key fundamentals first.
I haven't talked to any young artists for a long time. But if we did sit down, I'd definitely tell them my viewpoint. If it was Lady Gaga, I'd say: 'You're talented, and you've obviously got the goods... what the hell are you doing with your image? How can anyone take you serious?'
I am not comparing myself to great artists, but when you see conceptual artists at work, on some level it's reassuring to know they can paint figuratively. Likewise, when you listen to the '50s jazz people who do these vast solos, you buy into it more if they open by playing a tune.
I see everybody arguing about what the value of music should be instead of what I think the bigger conversation is, which is that music has value, it's subjective and we're moving to a new era where the audience is taking more responsibility for supporting artists at whatever level.
Early on, I started realizing the power of hip hop as a fan. I remember taping DJ Red Alert and DJ Marley Marl on the radio. I recorded their shows to hear my favorite artists and songs at that time. I realized then that hip hop culture could move the world, because it was moving me.
On the radio there's only a certain amount of artists: Jay-Z, Beyonce, Kanye, T-Pain, Lil Wayne, T.I., Mary J Blige, Alicia Keys. Other artists are achieving things that are really special, they have a hard time getting people's attention. Music has been just a little bit lacklustre.
There are people out there who are into traditional country music and for those people you have artists like Brad Paisley and Josh Turner and Alan Jackson. Then you have artists with a progressive style of country music, like myself and Eric Church and Luke Bryan and Miranda Lambert.
That is our first amendment, freedom of speech. But I also believe that we have an obligation to the youth to be somewhat responsible in what we say on records. But I think that comes with age. I think that comes with artists growing up and becoming assured of who they are as people.
Artists and scientists are very close. They always have been, but I think we've just been divided out over the last few centuries into specialisms. Leonardo da Vinci was drawing helicopters and all kinds of things. We're artificially divided. I think we're closer than we think we are.
Whether looking at pop music, hip-hop or R&B, it's rare to find an artist who hasn't been touched or affected by the power and soul of gospel music. In fact, many of today's popular artists such as Whitney Houston, John Legend, and Katy Perry started their careers in the church choir.