Mark Lanegan Quotes

I don't feel I'm making a conscious effort to go more commercial.

Pop music has always been about the mainstream and what appeals to the public.

Obviously Hall & Oates wasn't overlooked by the masses in terms of the record sales.

I'm going to make the music I make regardless and it's always going to be driven by rhythm and blues and hopefully it becomes popular. But I don't cater to, like, 'OK, I want to make music that's going to fit in this pop world or go on the charts, etcetera, etcetera.' Hopefully, enough people like it so it becomes popular.

I figured the songs wouldn't make much of a splash. I didn't think 'Take Me To Church' would play on the radio or get in the charts, and I didn't think about dealing with a global audience.

If any of our songs ever did make it on the top ten, I'd disband the group immediately.

I'm just not interested in selling out to get on the charts and make people happy.

The music that I've had out so far was obviously very pop, but when I signed with Hollywood Records, I was like, 'I know that's the music you're familiar with, but that's not what I want to sing. I want to do country.' They were on board with it!

You look at what One Direction has done and just say, 'That is just lucky;' it is not. It is happening because they are talented boys, good looking lads; and yes, their songs might not be the typical songs that lots of radios want to play, but they are great songs, pop records, that are massive across the world selling in huge numbers.

Even the bands I dig don't have a history of attaining mass consumption.

If I start trying to make a record for what I think could possibly get played on radio, I'm dead.

There's definitely been some songs in the past that we've put out, and it was purely us going, 'Okay, we think radio will play this. We think this will be a hit. This will be big for the show,' and all this stuff. But it's like, do you really believe in it?

We don't go around the world counting ticket and record sales, nor do we glue our ears to the radio to hear what's trendy at the moment - we're not that type of band.

I have to write pretty songs; that's what gets them on the charts.

I've always wanted to write pop music. I never wanted to be cool or make a hipster record.

I try to make the songs as good as I can - the way I like it, you know? And I guess my taste sometimes happens to be what other people, particularly radio programmers, like too.

I guess because we're essentially a two-man band, we're attracting Wham's crowd. But Wham! are more of a businessman's band.

At no time was I trying to write a crossover record.

When you are a commercial music artist, your music depends on your popularity.

Having a Top 10 record changed my life a lot, you know?

The success of the first album was almost an anomaly, and it could remain a fantastic anomaly. It was not crafted for commercial success. I remember meetings with my label saying it had no radio singles. For me, the second album was a gesture of independence.

I never set out to be a cult cool artist. I always made music that I thought was pop.

We Can't Stop' - everyone said that it wasn't going to work on pop radio, because it didn't have an EDM-type beat. But it went to No. 2 on Billboard and No. 1 on iTunes.

Anytime something makes money, no matter how outré, it's instantly mainstream. A good example is rock 'n' roll. When rock 'n' roll was first played to a wide audience it was considered the devil's music.

Commercial record has never interested me. It's amazing I was in a band like The Police that had such phenomenal commercial success. Part of what made The Police what it was was that we didn't all come in with obvious mainstream musical tastes. We were a rock band and somehow we had to make rock music, but it was informed by a lot of things outside of the mainstream for sure.