Robyn Quotes

I've never understood people who play up the artifice of music.

There are times when what's happening in rock is the best music in the world, and there are times when there is nothing worthwhile at all.

The thing that will never go away is that connection you make with a band or a song where you're moved by the fact that it's real people making music. You make that human connection with a song like 'Let It Be' or 'Long and Winding Road' or a song like 'Bohemian Rhapsody' or 'Roxanne,' any of those songs. They sound like people making music.

I'm competitive with anyone who writes a good song - I don't care if it's a band or solo artist or whoever.

What happens when an art form becomes ambiguous, I think, is that the standards are lowered. You can say anything is jazz. So I think it's important to reflect on what made jazz so special.

I love jazz and funk, because it's hard. If it's not hard, it's not worth doing.

I don't wanna get into that space where a lot of guys now, their solo album is like eight or 10 songs with other people, you don't get an idea of who this guy is. I just wasn't interested in that.

From the beginning, I've always had a knack for catchy melodies. But I went through a period when I was trying to be rock n' roll and have a rock n' roll attitude. I was fighting my nature by trying to play really hard and sing really hard. But at a certain point, I realized that I loved syrupy pop music with tons of harmony.

What is nice about country music today is that most artists are not trying to do something everybody else is doing. They really are trying to develop their own uniqueness.

I'm not a culture snob. So while, of course, I think the Mozart 'Requiem' or, say, Beethoven's 'Ninth' are some of the greatest works of art in the history of humankind, that's not to say the Beatles or Queen or Simon and Garfunkel aren't brilliant, beautiful, important works of art that should be sung without a sense of irony.

There's no field of music which doesn't have good ideas.

The world of classical music is so fascinating. It's a world that encompasses people from everywhere and erases the basic restraints of nationality; everyone is united by this common language of music.

Music is only good sometimes.

I feel that when I listen to music - not that it's bad - it's not emotional. It has a gimmick to it. It's selling something: the artist, the producer, something. The emotional capacity is very small, for the listener as well.

I just love ballads. I am obsessed with them, so I've written a lot of those. They just kind of touch on all the different types of emotions. Though, I think poppy, feel - good songs are underrated and not seen as artistic enough.

Somebody told me once it takes an Americana song five minutes to say what a country song says in three - so I try to write country songs. But really, all good music is just soul music.

I started off making music that made fun of pop; now I'm nominated for helping produce pop songs that aim to be as honest as possible.

Some people say that if you do anything other than a straight-ahead groove, that it's not jazz. But that kind of labeling is wrong. Music is what it is; if it sounds good, it sounds good.

I don't just sing R&B: I'm able to sing pop and play with other sounds, but it's all real soulful.

When all my friends were into punk, I'd be singing versions of soul ballads. I thought, 'Oh my God, I don't want them to know I'm doing this.' But I really enjoyed singing those songs.

I'm suspicious of the idea of categories in music and this idea of things being in boxes. To me, that seems unnatural. I write the music that somebody with my biography would write, and the thing that's always driven me is an enthusiasm for the material. I sort of follow the notes to where they want to go.

There's always going to be a percentage of the kids out there who want to hear people who can actually play and sing.

Music was everything. Now it is just not as important as it used to be. When I was growing up, where everyone was trying to outdo each other by being more outrageous and sounding more different, now there is a homogeneous sameness to it all.

I like music that not only has a pop melody to it but is also deeply about something.

I listen to all kinds of music and sometimes I try to do something that's referential to an era or a genre, but it still sounds like me.