Eddie Van Halen Quotes

The joy of songwriting only gets messed up if you are trying to follow up a big success, or you are trying to create a hit single, or if you have conscious thoughts of a particular outcome for the music.

The artists in country music who stopped having hits are the ones who were led into something that wasn't them.

If it's a good song and it fits me, that's what I'm going to do, I'm not out there trying to change the world. I'm just out there trying to sing country music the best way I can.

Make your own music. It can be done.

I started putting down my own pen and spending some time searching for the best songs out there possible. It doesn't matter if I wrote them or not.

I just try to make the best music that I can. People are going to label it whatever they're going to label it.

We don't want to become like country artists where there's a formula.

It's become uncool to play other people's songs, and that's absurd. It has got to change. It's the reason why everything's so mediocre.

Singing your own songs is all about individual expression.

If one uses music that one does not really love, then one will not succeed in making it one's own.

I like to make the music that I really love. You're supposed to make your favorite music that no one else played, and I'd like to just keep it at that and not really change it at all.

Don't worry about what others say about your music. Pursue whatever you are hearing... but if everybody really hates your music maybe you could try some different approaches.

I was never trying to write a hit. I was just trying to write good songs and get a message out, and it was my great good fortune to be popular.

In my songs, I'm not saying something that's never been said before. The have lyrics aren't going to blow people away. It's the emotion and the melody that drive it home.

If you don't write good music, people aren't going to listen to anything you say.

When Van Halen started out, there was no path to fame. We just played what we liked. Even today it always comes down to the simplicity of rock and roll.

With my voice and my band, I can do anything.

To make a rock'n'roll record, technology is the least important thing.

I don't need a sensationalized headline to sell music or to bring attention to my music. It's the music and it's always been about the music.

I once wrote on my MySpace profile that music is never authentic. It was a reaction to constantly reading the word 'authentic' in connection with bands. But what does that mean? A baby crying after being pushed out of its mother's womb, now that's what I'd call authentic.

I write my songs and just play them, so there are not a whole lot of fireworks. As long as the music comes first, it's OK to have some fireworks. But not the other way around.

Musicians play music because you love... I loved to play drums since I was five. It's all I ever wanted to do. Rock stars, or as we call them, posers, guys who want to just look great, dress great. They're not musicians; they're looking for the fame.

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 love hip hop, and I have a bunch of urban songs I write for fun that I can't put on my albums because people would laugh and point.

Music should not be a contest, it should be an individual thing that each band is putting out from within themselves.