Thurston Moore Quotes

Whenever I hear somebody cover a song, I don't like to hear it stray too far from the original. I like to hear some of the new energy that a band will put into it, but you kind of want to hear some of the basic parts of the song. I mean, that's what makes it the song that you like.

I wouldn't go so far as to make 'You Don't Own Me' a tango or 'It's My Party' a hip-hop thing. Believe me, those things have been suggested to me. But I thought if I could stay true to the song, the arrangements would work. I'm really enjoying singing them.

I write these songs and I like the idea of letting the band interpret it as they will. This band is like any band; it's not just me. This isn't just a way for me to play my songs. There are four distinct artistic voices, and they deserve to be expressed.

I don't really think there's a genre that we couldn't do, but it wouldn't sound like that genre, if that makes sense. I think we could take any song, but it would sound like us. If you're doing a country song, it could maybe sound a little bit country, but it's going to sound like Pentatonix.

We've always said Psychic TV's music is the sum total of who's in it at the time.

I am fine with 'Puppy Love.' I hated it for a while. But I still sing it. I have a country version, a sexy version and a cheesy nightclub version. I am trying to infuse it with maturity. I will never escape that song. I will always be Mr. 'Puppy Love.'

When you write a song you have an idea of how it should be sung but it doesn't work out that way if someone else records it.

That's the kind of musical freedom I like: jazz, rock, blues, anything. You adopt different attitudes when you play different music.

I try to steal something from the great singers. Of course, I don't want to imitate their sound, but I try to do a sort of compromise.

Usually when a song comes to me, I don't ask a lot of questions; I hear something, and I just let it out in song. It's like making a salad. Everything I hear, and everything I am, I mix together in a different way in each song.

It wasn't until Duotones that I felt my true voice come out.

For a long time I didn't want to do a solo thing, but there comes a point where everyone else is going outside of The Strokes and The Strokes filtering process.

I'm not like other writers. I'm not hung up on using my own songs. In fact, my sister Bunny always tells me I sing other people's songs better than my own. She says I loosen up and give the songs a different feel.

So it's not so much that I set out to do something different, it's just that the songs themselves require their own individual voice and attention.

My favorite band of all time is The Clash. The thing I love about The Clash is they started out as guys who could barely play three chords. They dabbled in reggae, punk, rap, jazz. They came to a sound that could only be defined as The Clash. It was impossible to say what it was. I admire them for that.

I like to take music from everywhere and put it in my style and let it be accepted.

I only choose musicians who I think will emerge, can emerge, with their own character, while still going along with the tune in question.

I can think of only two or three songs out of hundreds I've recorded that I performed as originally written. I like to become intimate with the material and change it to suit me.

I always feel that if you're going to cover a song, you should make it your own and flip it on its head.

I think it's being innovative and very creative to stay away from flat-out sampling somebody else's record. To me, that doesn't show too much of your creative side unless you take a little piece and add it, almost like spice on a chicken.

I always like to write the songs, and they get turned loose into the world, and who knows what happens to them. That's the joy of being a songwriter. You get to hear what other people do, interpretation-wise.

I can show my characteristics and musical colors both as a member of Bigbang and as a solo artist.

I think if you're going to cover a song, you should definitely take it apart and put it back together as if you wrote it. I don't think you should sing it the same way that the artist sang it - that's kind of pointless.

I can produce any instrument, any sound that I can imagine; it may be percussive to the audience, but in my mind it may be a piano, a melody, or a tuba, or a harp, or a harmonica. My mission is to allow people to hear the dance in its purity and up against any other type of sound or music.

In a lot of ways, I feel like I'm just taking the music that comes to me and trying to make it as beautiful as I can. You can't really predict or control how people will receive that music.