B. B. King Quotes

I just make videos and stuff. There's not much more to it than that. I'm a musician trying to express myself.

It's not my style to be thinking about what a record is while I'm making it: I just write songs.

When I'm making a song that's very Grimes, it just feels very insular and it feels weird to have someone else do something on it.

You have 'listeners' ears' when you're just starting out, and your 'listeners' ears' tell you what will work. You lose those ears later, when you break songs down into production elements too much.

There's two things that are tough when you're trying to be a songwriter: Number one is, how do I write a great song? The second thing is, how do I write a great song that's right for me?

That is the most important thing to me, what happens behind the closed doors in the studio and makes me an artist.

When you find a song that you love, you just have to do it - why would I try to match it? When I wrote more of the songs in the '90s - 'Nick of Time' and other songs I was surprised I came up with - it was because nobody else was saying what I wanted to say.

I write my music.

My identity has everything to do with me and my instrument. It doesn't have to do with what production style I use, or how many people played on it, whether it's sparse or grandiose or whatever. And I'm social, frankly.

I think you always have to go as an artist with instinct, I really do.

When you're an artist, you can only do your own stuff. Even if you only write for other people, you're really more focused on yourself. So while everybody's out touring, I'm working on records.

It's hard to know exactly what it sounds like to me. I'm in the studio and I write it. and that's it.

I just like to write and then perform.

I think it's important to really press on with the song writing and just go with it. There's no code, there's no craft... it's just let yourself shine through your music. If it's meant to be loved and heard, it'll happen.

I've known the glory of the stage and the glory of the spotlight. I still crave it. I want to be on 'American Bandstand' and 'Soul Train' as a solo artist. As a producer, songwriter and arranger, I help other artists say what they want to say. But on my records, I say what I want to say.

I jump into the process, and the record begins to gel at some point. Then I begin to get a picture of where I'm going. But it's not always something I know on the front-end.

I feel like when I'm on stage, when I'm writing songs, singing songs, I'm in the studio, I'm shooting videos, I kind of get to become this character, and I can make that whatever I want to make that.

I don't think about the styles. I write whatever comes out and I use whatever kind of instrumentation works for those songs.

I don't really think about what the subject of my next album will be. I just know that I'm going to make another album.

There's something different that happens when you're writing a song for your own record that you know you're going to sing.

I think much has been made of this alter ego business. I mean, I actually stopped creating characters in 1975 - for albums, anyway.

At the end of the day, if you don't have a record contract, a studio or a guitar, you can still write songs. You're still an artist. That's something no one can take away.

I never really focus on writing for other people, to be honest. Every song I've ever written was for me to sing. Maybe if I'm writing for a rapper, but I'd still write it as though it was for myself and then sometimes I'm actually asked to do the part.

When you make a solo record, it's you. It's your name. It has to be the right songs for how you feel.

I don't like the idea of a singer-songwriter record. I don't picture myself that way, and it's not my favorite sort of look, I guess. It's really just an aesthetic thing.