Agnes Obel Quotes

We all have different musical instincts, and I think they're precious and should be respected.

Your limitations create your sound.

The greatest thing about music is everyone has their own style, and I respect all styles of music.

What is nice about country music today is that most artists are not trying to do something everybody else is doing. They really are trying to develop their own uniqueness.

I study what's happening in music. I want to sound different than everybody else.

I just don't let music genres define me.

I'm suspicious of the idea of categories in music and this idea of things being in boxes. To me, that seems unnatural. I write the music that somebody with my biography would write, and the thing that's always driven me is an enthusiasm for the material. I sort of follow the notes to where they want to go.

When it comes to music, it's my clothes, it's my guitar, it's my voice, it's my song.

We love playing music but we're too weird to play music.

I still picture myself as a student of the music. I'm always trying to learn new things. Music is just what makes me tick.

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 found a certain kind of music congenial to me; it never occurred to me to write music that was academically acceptable.

I don't like rock. Honestly, I like to listen to it, but it's not for me. There's a lot of musical genres that I find interesting, but they don't suit me. It's one thing to listen to different genres, but to perform a genre that isn't yours is counterproductive.

I make the kind of music I like.

Let me explain something about guitar playing. Everyone's got their own character, and that's the thing that's amazed me about guitar playing since the day I first picked it up. Everyone's approach to what can come out of six strings is different from another person, but it's all valid.

What's great about music is it takes so many kinds of people, including me. Everybody is in a different place.

Labels don't mean anything to me. I'm trying to play as passionately as I'm able to. If they want to call that cool, that's fine. Just spell the name right, is the formula.

No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music.

I found the blues too limiting, and classical was too disciplined.

I hate labels; the problem is that if you say you're one thing, it's hard for people to imagine you as something else. Music is way more complicated than that.

I am consciously not trying to bring in World Music elements. The ways that I work and feel are completely different in how they sound than someone playing the Kora in Africa would play it.

Studying music, everyone sort of has their own style - it's not like everyone's going for the same part.

I believe every guitar player inherently has something unique about their playing. They just have to identify what makes them different and develop it.

I have a very difficult time describing my music. Because I run into people in the hardware store and they go, 'Oh, you're a musician. So what kind of music do you play?' And I go, 'Uh, I've been doin' this for many years - I don't know what to call it.'

When I did 'Frankenstein,' the record company said, 'Now you can do 'Dracula' and 'Wolf Man' and we'll call the whole thing Monster Rock!' and I said, 'No, that's not going to happen, I'm not going to do that.' I kind of enjoy defying categorization. I love music in and of itself. I love the beauty of harmony and rhythm.