Keith Flint Quotes

That's just the way the world's going - everything has to be so instantly commercial that it kills anything that's a little bit underground instantly.

My biggest obstacle is trying to keep the music pure to what I want to release. I don't want any corporate suit telling me what story to tell.

Obviously, the Sixties was a time when everyone wanted to experiment, and then everything became very formulated and corporate, so artists tended to get pushed into a kind of pattern. Now, I think that has continued with the emergence of televised talent shows like 'X Factor.'

I don't want to be owned by a corporation and obliged to make a certain type of album. I want to be free.

The counterculture has nothing to do with Dolce & Gabbana having a 'Hippy Summer' or something. Street kids, and kids who want to live in any sort of counter-cultural experience other than what's being presented by the mainstream media or political climate, or 'normal' cultural climate, are never going to look like that.

Today, music is great for entertainment, but it is lacking soul; it's lacking substance, and it's difficult to find good stuff. There are too many corporate interests. It's not about the actual music because it's about the corporation, and music just becomes part of a package.

Imagine if someone like John Lennon or Bob Marley, Sid Vicious, Picasso, whomever, were doing their work, and some corporation, some CEO, some branding entity was saying to you, 'Well, you can do that, but you've got to remove this aspect of your work.' There would no longer be that purity anymore.

I will never be a fan of any kind of political correctness: I think it's instant death to creativity.

When the business starts shaping the art, or the delivery of the art, then it's not right.

The mainstream is generally garbage. Look at the heavily subsidized theaters.

I find pop art really offensive because it's taking a piece of popular culture and putting it somewhere where people can't see it.

Coming from The Disney Channel, anything I do is going to offend somehow, somewhere, somehow.

Since the 1960s, mainstream media has searched out and co-opted the most authentic things it could find in youth culture, whether that was psychedelic culture, anti-war culture, blue jeans culture. Eventually heavy metal culture, rap culture, electronica - they'll look for it and then market it back to kids at the mall.

The '90s was a decade of mundane market-consumer nothingness where there was nothing coming up from the streets; you just had someone in an office deciding what was cool.

I'd love more production houses to encourage artists to create what they want and not just churn things out.

I represent a kind of underground, punk side of drag.

Rock and roll has become entertainment that just says what the consumer wants to hear. There's no more edge or rebellion that sets it apart from the norm.

I think '60s are appealing to creative people, because it seemed to be a time of endless possibilities, when the boundaries of what could be considered popular culture were being expanded almost by the week. It doesn't feel like that anymore. At times, I wish it were so. Radio is a perfect example; good God, I mean, back then the most interesting songs were also hits, and that's just not true anymore. It hasn't been true in a long time.

I like the word 'underground'... 'independent' carries a stigma of whininess. 'Underground' means a good time.

The push and pull of representing your world responsibly and your artistic license is a tricky balance.

Don't try so hard to be hip. When the Church finds out what is cool, it is not cool anymore.

My dream is to do whatever I want without any interference from the record company.

The fact is that everyone at the labels wants to do what everyone else is doing. You have to look like her; you have to be like her; you have to sing like her, and no one can express themselves. I look at Rihanna and I am so proud of her. She speaks loudly! You have to stand up and clap. She expresses herself through fashion. She actually can sing. And her songs mean something, even to me, you know?

I just go in the studio and do what I love to do. People will be people, they'll come and go, they'll like you then not like you, I just try to stay true to myself first and that's what most important because that way when you are successful you can stand up and say look, I did it my way and I did it the way that I wanted to do it.

We as artists cannot be politicians. We as artists can only be truth-tellers.