David Sanborn Quotes

I try to make my music interesting to me first, then hopefully other people will find it interesting, too.

I don't ever try to anticipate my audience. I just write the songs I want to write, and hope people like 'em.

I always try to make the music that I like and think my fans will like.

Any band that is out there chasing it is doing more destruction to music then someone who is out there playing what they truly feel.

The most important thing is that you honor that musical integrity, whether you make music that sounds like ABBA or you make music that sounds like Void.

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.

I'm not trying to become a pop artist, and I'm not trying to make sure I stay a country artist. I'm just trying to make sure I make the best music I can, according to my way.

I expect the audience to come up to my level. I am not interested in compromising my music to make it palatable to an assumed sub-standard mass.

I realized that, all along, my theory was right: Make music that you want to hear, and instead of having fans that one day might criticize or abandon you, your fans aren't even fans. They're people with tastes similar to yours. They're friends you haven't met yet.

That's what I've tried to do: I've tried to make music that I really love.

It's not like if I play in big places I won't be happy. But I don't want to start adapting to what's in style to make my music. I want to stay true to my roots, to keep making the music I love, that comes from my soul. And if there are people who want to listen to it, I'm happy.

Rather than trying to create an audience, just try and create music that feels good to you.

I'm only worried about what I'm doing or how I present music. I just try to do things I want to listen to, and I think that's what everybody else is try doing, too.

I just wanted to make melodies. I started trying to do my own thing and let the melodies make the genre themselves.

I don't think that independent or off-beat films are not commercial, nor do I want to categorise them. At the end of the day, what matters is how much you compromise to please the masses. But, I am not someone who loves compromising. If there's a lot to give up on things that matter to me, I start losing interest.

I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel. I'm just writing songs that I like, and that's where I've always come from.

I'm not interested in trying to have people who might like other kinds of music follow me. I don't want to please them.

You don't try to get influenced by everything that's going on with all the other music around you. You don't listen to the radio - I mean, I don't. When I get ready to do an album, I don't listen to anybody else; I don't wanna be influenced.

I've never believed in cheapening music by going according to what some people think is public taste.

I want to make music that I like; not something that I have to make because I think it's going to sell.

When I'm writing music, I'm not playing a character. I'm not Alice Cooper or Gene Simmons or someone like that, who has acknowledged that they are writing music for a character.

I've always enjoyed feeling a connection to the avant-garde, such as Dada and surrealism and pop art. The only thing the artist can do is be honest with themselves and make the art they want to make. That's what I've always done.

I'm very conscious that I want the dance audience to respond and respect what I'm doing, so I'm always very true to the music and I honour the music in the way I see it - I don't mess around with the music.

You look at Michael McDonald and people like that; I think they just tried to write music that was true to themselves. That's our bottom line. Whatever people view us as, I think as long as we try to create good music that will win out in the end.

The fun thing about song writing is that it's just creative. It can be whatever you want it to be. For me, I'm really protective of that. I'm not going to write something because I feel like it fits here or it fits there - I just want to write music that feels good to me, you know?