I don't get to listen to music for fun very often; a lot of what I'm hearing is for work and isn't released yet.
We weren't allowed to have secular music in the house growing up. I was home-schooled, and gospel was the only choice we had.
My first album, 'Get Lifted,' was a hip-hop soul album that had some of its roots in the church, as far as the sonic choices, in the way that I sing and write songs. I have always had that as part of my background and part of my influence when I am m...
I listen to all those kinds of music, from classic soul to hip-hop to Brazilian music to, you know, jazz to indie to alternative. So whatever. I listen to all if it. Classic rock and classic pop, all of that.
Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Look at the darkest hit musicals - Cabaret, West Side Story, Carousel - they are exuberant experiences. They send you out of the theater filled with music.
If someone who knows what's going on comes up and says they liked the music, I appreciate that.
I play music, I paint - these things come from your depths.
But, you know, I'd be happy just making music.
What I believe to be jazz is constructed and improvised music which is in the air right now. But I don't think that's most people's definition of jazz, you know? We don't know what we're talking about, because we don't know the definition.
Records were vitally important to the development of music and of all music cultures. With that being pushed by the wayside, I can't see an iPod uniting us. In fact it separates us, the streets are full of people bumping into lamp posts, listening to...
I mean, the genuine roots of culture is folk music.
'Lollipop Opera' is the backdrop to Finsbury Park. A place that is very thriving, interracial and lot of music stores, Greek, Turkish, all sorts of immigrant music. It's utter Englishness. It blends the Jamaicans, the Irish. It's like what Jim Reeves...
Any new ideas go into PiL. My inspiration is everything that the human being gets up to. I don't listen to any music when I'm in PiL-zone, because influences can poison your well. Otherwise, I listen to anything.
I've always said, I thought the Sex Pistols was more Music Hall than anything else - because I think that really, more truths are said in humour than any other form.
Music can describe emotions far more accurately than words ever can. As soon as I realised that, I knew music was where I wanted to be.
Here's how I understand music. If you can play the same bunch of noise twice, it's music. To go beyond that is supercilious and pontificating.
Music is a simulation of something, but language is the greatest thing we possess.
I've been in very many situations where I've not liked the other members of the band or they have not liked me. I grew up presuming that's the way music was made. It doesn't need to be that way. It's taken me years years to find that out.
If I'm left to my own devices, I will be tempted to make the most unlistenable music possible.
Since her landmark 'Tapestry,' Carole King has both oversimplified and over elaborated that masterful album's style until her music has become something more overtly but less effectively personal.
