Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My mother is an artist, and I have a strong visual sense. I almost always choose the cover art for my books. I've learned that the more I collaborate, like by having someone do a soundtrack to one of my books, the more I see my own work differently.
Peaky' has attracted a lot of attention from different disciplines in the arts. It was originally going to be a ballet, which is Ballet Rambert, and there is also a lot of music artists who offer their music to the show to be used on the soundtrack.
In the early '80s, my sound - especially that mysterious kind of synthesized sound that was used so much - every relatively cheap TV show eventually had it because it's not expensive. It's just one guy doing the whole soundtrack. So it was overdone.
Pop music provides not just the soundtrack to our lives, as the cliche goes; it releases our emotions and helps us to articulate them. This is why music is so important to adolescents, who are struggling with questions of identity and self-expression.
Talk about songs that make me cry: Track 7 on the 'Phineas and Ferb' soundtrack, 'Summer (Where Do We Begin?).' When you get to the part about sitting with your brother underneath the shade of a big tree in the backyard, ohmygod. Turn on the waterworks.
I hate people walking down the street listening to the soundtrack of their lives which responds to them but not their setting. I hate the overspill of sound which metro and subway riders are oblivious to because they notice no one and nothing around them.
I always wanted to be cheered up. I felt like that feeling of the first day of summer or when a girl would agree to go on a date or you found a $20 bill - that undeniable rush of excitement - I wanted to make a soundtrack of music for that kind of moment.
While writing 'The Orientalist,' I played a soundtrack that alternated between ragtime and Azeri mugams, Russian operas and German and Italian pop songs from the 1920s and 30s. When I finally finished, I gorged on all my music from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.
I think the most-played record in our house was the 'Big Chill' Soundtrack - so Smokey Robinson, Aretha Franklin, the Temptations, Otis Redding. I think that's where I got my love for a good hook, a good soul hook - really smooth and warm and from the heart.
My earliest influence was Quincy Jones. I thought 'The Wiz' soundtrack was the most amazing thing I'd ever heard. It was my first record and you had Michael Jackson, Ted Ross, Nipsey Russell and Diana Ross on it. I even took it to show and tell in third grade!
Some months ago, while I was preparing a new work, I told a young cinema executive my intention of including in a soundtrack two themes from Bach. But when he asked me which has been the last hit from that Bach?, then I knew that I had no longer place in cinema.
Lauryn Hill quietly released 'Lose Myself' as part of the 'Surf's Up' motion picture soundtrack - shocking, I know. It's not only one of the best summer tracks you'll add to your catalogue: it's also one of the most honest and heartfelt songs she's has ever written.
The first record I bought was the 'Edward Scissorhands' soundtrack. I remember being really obsessed with the movie, and all the campiness sort of went over my head because I was so little - it's the same with 'Hairspray.' But I would listen to that soundtrack a lot.
We've been called the soundtrack of people's lives. There have been lots of downs, of course but mostly ups. That EW&F is still clicking at least twenty years on and has a life of its own, that the songs have stayed alive - we're like a good book that people go back to.
In a soundtrack, you are in a way always relating with... a combination of different languages. It has to have the same path and same rhythm. Sometimes it's a polyphony of languages that have to work together in some way. With musical projects alone, you can be more free.
A movie is painting, it's photography, it's literature - because you have to have the screenplay - it's music. Put a different soundtrack to a comedy and it's a tragedy. A movie combines all those forms and forces you to pay attention for two hours with a group of people.
In film, I was surprised when I first saw the movie 'Drive.' I said, 'Oh, God. It sounds great - I love it. Wow, this could be the soundtrack from 'American Gigolo' or 'Cat People.' But I'm surprised that the director would agree with a composer to write that kind of sound.
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.
I'm a big collector of vinyl - I have a record room in my house - and I've always had a huge soundtrack album collection. So what I do, as I'm writing a movie, is go through all those songs, trying to find good songs for fights, or good pieces of music to layer into the film.
I play the guitar. This year at the Sundance film festival, I joined the band from 'The Guitar' on stage. We warmed up for Patti Smith, and then the director Michel Gondry got on the drums to play some songs from the soundtrack to his film Be Kind Rewind with Mos Def. It was pretty mad.
One of the most interesting things, at least for me, are the soundtracks for 'The Social Network' and 'Drive.' Basically, it's what I did in 'American Gigolo.' I could have done the music for those movies blindfolded. And one of them won an Oscar, and the other is this massive soundtrack.
Every time a meteor comes close to the earth, we all think about the end of the world - but our internal soundtrack doesn't turn off. We're also thinking about pizza or passing a slow tractor or making a turn, and for a magical instant, our lives seem to be in conversation with the stars.
My favorite films, I would put my answering machine up to the television set and hit record. I'd tape my favorite movies and then I could go back and listen to them again. I only had the soundtrack, I didn't have the visuals. But I think it made me really pay attention to the soundtracks.
I'll tell you what bothers me. This music business is so crazy. They think everything is a game, or everything is a fad or trend to win. I see people saying, 'My next album is going to be my honest album, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, my deepest secrets, the soundtrack to my life.'
I'd asked for things like the 'Footloose' soundtrack and Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' for my birthdays, but I remember walking what felt like miles to this cassette shop called The Warehouse to buy Paul Simon's 'Graceland,' U2's 'Joshua Tree' and a Roberta Flack album. I had pretty good taste.
The queen of aggregation is, of course, Arianna Huffington, who has discovered that if you take celebrity gossip, adorable kitten videos, posts from unpaid bloggers and news reports from other publications, array them on your Web site and add a left-wing soundtrack, millions of people will come.
I can't say to Elton, 'Hey, let's walk around the corner and have a coffee.' Someone as well-known as that can't go anywhere in the world without being recognised. Elton has written the soundtrack to a lot of people's lives, so they feel a kinship with him, so they come up, and that does colour things.
I got the idea for 'Throne of Glass' when I was sixteen. Music always inspires my books, and when I was listening to the 'Cinderella' soundtrack, I thought, 'What if Cinderella was actually an assassin who liked getting dressed up all pretty and going to the ball, but then she wouldn't mind kicking butt?'
I remember when the great composer Madan Mohan had suddenly passed away, the producer-director H.S. Rawail had approached me to complete three of the pending songs in the Rishi Kapoor-Ranjeeta starrer 'Laila Majnu.' I refused saying I am not worthy of sharing a soundtrack with a genius like Madan Mohan saab.
I think a comedian has a more specific job. Whereas a musician can fall into different categories, you know, of making background music or doing a soundtrack or wanting to be in a band or writing the song, or writing your own songs. And then comedy is a very black and white thing. You want to make people happy.
Just recently, I thought about how maybe I should have kept using the synthesisers more after 'Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence'; then, I would have been a more unique soundtrack composer than I am now. It could have been my signature. But then, probably, Bertolucci would not have offered me to compose for his films.
Anytime someone uses one of my songs for anything - a ceremony or a sacred moment - that, to me, is a high honor. I'm proud of the song at that point because I'm trying to write something for humans - whichever humans want to get on board and put this in their soundtrack to their soul's development or spiritual lives.
Prince turned experimental music into pop music. 'When Doves Cry,' the whole 'Purple Rain' soundtrack - he was inspired by the Cocteau Twins and new wave pop and brought it into R&B when he first started, and then it became this cool, next-level, kind of hard-to-digest music. Which is what I felt 'House of Balloons' was.
When I invite people over to my apartment, they usually don't like it because the music I play confuses the crap out of them - I'm making people listen to the 'Final Fantasy' soundtrack, and they're like, 'Why is this happening? Let's just leave and find somebody who wants us to have fun and not teach us about something.'
When I was touring in Texas, that was before iPods and Spotify. Driving around through towns, I had to, out of necessity, scroll the radio. Whatever region of the country you are in, that's a great way to find out what they listen to. You find music wherever you are, and that becomes the soundtrack for whatever your road trip is.
After months of playing air guitar to 'Free Bird', what really got me into guitar was watching a documentary about Jimi Hendrix and picking up the Woodstock soundtrack. Listening to his version of 'Star Spangled Banner' and 'Purple Haze.' My brother played acoustic guitar and, idolising him, I thought, 'I'm going to get a guitar.'
I guarantee you that Leonardo Prince is doing nothing but listening to the 'Tron: Legacy' soundtrack on loop. And he's probably seen 'Tron: Legacy' twice, or three times. And the other two times, he's taken people who he thinks are important to him, and judged by their reaction to see if he should still be friends with them or not.
My embarrassing confession is that my father is a 'Camelot: The Musical' obsessive. So as a child, when we were going to visit relatives on the weekend, whenever we were driving back on these three-hour drives, he would be playing the musical soundtrack on repeat, on the cassette in our car, to the extent that we begged him never to play it again.