A label's typical plan would be to put something out that's safer and get fans, and then push buttons, but my idea is to push buttons first, scare off the people who are gonna be scared off, and then the right people will like you for who you really ...
Unlike the messier MySpace, Facebook has a cleaner and easier-to-customize interface and is much more, as Zuckerberg once described it to me, 'utilitarian.' I would call it useful and more relevant than other competitors, and a white-label version wo...
I started touring a little bit in 1973 in support of a record I made for an independent label. In 1975, when I signed with Warner Bros., where I remained happily ensconced for the next 24 years, my touring activity increased considerably.
I was involved with the Nation of Islam. I wasn't doing no marching. I've been involved with the Nation for 50 years. Back in those days, they tried to label us as black Muslims. There are Muslims all over the world. It doesn't have to be black; it d...
Artists have so much more control of their futures - they don't need to rely so much on major labels or big companies to help them. You have artists like Skrillex that can dominate so much that he gets 5 Grammy nominees, and he's clearly an undergrou...
It's not like I'm taking 20 grand from the shows. I mean there's no record label, so this is a genuine thing. And I think most people can see that. I think that anyone who knows me, knows I do things with integrity.
Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself a...
I think in a lot of romantic comedies it ends with a kiss, and I feel like in modern day relationships, and maybe just my own experience, it starts with a kiss and then all sort of falls apart and then comes together. You're texting. You're wondering...
When the label came to me to say, 'would you like to do another record,' I said, 'Well I got these sixteen songs sitting here, so let's do it.' And that was pretty much it... I never stopped writing, it's just the way that the business is now; you ju...
I think fashion is a lot of fun. I love clothes. More than fashion or brand labels, I love design. I love the thought that people put into clothes. I love when clothes make cultural statements and I think personal style is really cool. I also freely ...
My plan was always to leave school and live in a flat with some friends, have a 9 to 5 job, and try to get as many gigs as I could. I wanted to keep writing and then eventually, in my twenties, head to a record label and hope they'd sit down and list...
A word is an arbitrary label - that's the foundation of linguistics. But many people think otherwise. They believe in word magic: that uttering a spell, incantation, curse, or prayer can change the world. Don't snicker: Would you ever say, 'Nothing h...
There is no war on women. Women are doing well. But women are thoughtful. And what we in the Republican Party and across the country, Republican, Independents and Democrat women say is we're more thoughtful than a label. We care about jobs and the ec...
Columbia was a wonderful label for me. Wonderful. The records I made there garnered me an audience. I won a number of polls during the years that I was at Columbia. The Downbeat Jazz Poll. Leonard Feather, who was a huge critic back in the day, diffe...
Generally speaking, I don't think people know a great deal about the Viking culture, apart from the label that is usually attached to them, either pillagers or deviants who came and brought back loot to Norway. It was an incredibly sophisticated, com...
I started doing some demos and got online and bought a refurbished laptop, bought a microphone off of eBay. A lot of folks said you can't really do it that way at a pro level, but I did some vocals that way, turned it into the label and they said, 'W...
I am failing as a woman. I am failing as a feminist. To freely accept the feminist label would not be fair to good feminists. If I am, indeed, a feminist, I am a rather bad one. I am a mess of contradictions.
The word 'religion' is only a label. What lies behind that, the most important thing of all, is the word 'faith'. You either have faith, or you don't have faith, or you have degrees of faith - and if you have degrees of faith, then you become agnosti...
Being a musician, especially at the major label where you work for so long, it becomes a cycle. Write a record, make a record, tour. It's just this cycle, and I don't think there's any life built into it with time to assimilate what's going on in fro...
A product is most easily sold when it has an identity. So they wrap you all up and put a label on you. And then that's what you have to be. But what I'm looking for is the opportunity to explore what I can do, probing the limits, learning.
I believe that, artistically and culturally, the free radio air should be able to support local artists of whatever genre. Play 40 percent of your local artists; don't suck up to major labels to the point where you neglect your own locale.
