Popular music usually has a chorus that needs to repeat, and people need to remember the song. That's sort of the major guideline when you're writing a song.
Music is a nice friend to have around, whether it is just for yourself or for other people. If you can enjoy it, being professional is almost secondary.
There's a huge difference between who I am when I make music and who I am the rest of the time.
When you don't know what the band looks like, it puts the emphasis on thinking and taking the music and message more seriously.
I'm touched by rock n' roll. I'm touched by the Beatles. I want some of the music I do to reflect that.
If I did all the stuff I've been accused of - or credited with - there's no way I could make all this music. I'd be drinking myself into the grave.
I didn't grasp the basic principle of being a promoter, which was: Put on music but also generate an income. I was on the dole most of the time.
In middle school, I really didn't have music, but in high school, I remember taking a lot of choir and drama.
Music is therapy for me. It's my outlet for every negative thing I've ever been through. It lets me turn something bad into something beautiful.
Everyone's just extracting meaning and feeling and emotion from almost every aspect of music, and I think that for me, it's a huge antidote to that to have a concept album.
My message to anyone who's afraid that they can't write music when they're happy is 'Just trust the passion.' The passion can write a lot of things.
I started playing piano when I was 6. And I knew that wanted to be involved in that form of expression, whether it was through music, or acting, or dancing, or painting, or writing.
Composers today get a TV script on Friday and have to record on Tuesday. It's just dreadful to impose on gifted talent and expect decent music under these conditions.
I have a very pop voice, but there's so much of me I associate mostly with urban music, so I try to blend the two.
MTV definitely has the effect of narrowing the range of music that hits the mainstream. On the other hand, isn't that the effect of television in general?
House music originated in America, and it has always been around, but I guess it just got a tighter hold on Europe and other parts of the world.
I feel like my kind of music is a big pot of different spices. It's a soup with all kinds of ingredients in it.
What annoys the hell out of me is the arrogance of some people. They don't even listen to our music, they decided in advance that they don't like it.
Music is just such... it's not therapy, but it's a release, it's a joy, it's a pleasure. And it's a job - which is weird, because I don't think of it as a job.
I've grown up on gospel and blues music, and now it's a huge part of who I am.
There's a higher place that I have no illusions about reaching. There's a sophistication and aesthetic about composers who only write only for the music's sake.
