Adrian Younge Quotes

I can't just turn over and sing disco or rock.

Music is music. It doesn't matter if I am trying to aim at country or trying to aim at pop.

There are a lot of great recording artists, like Jack White and Jack Johnson, who stay confined inside a very small box, but I'm more like Bon Iver, who recorded an album with programmed drums, and the next record was totally organic. I get that.

I really like jazz and soul, but I also love so many other types of music, and I didn't want to be afraid to blend and experiment.

I'm aware of the subgenres and why they exist. But I don't feel like I have to limit myself. I don't feel like I just have to play deep house, just play tribal house, just play progressive house. I wouldn't feel right if I had to limit myself.

For anybody to say well this is not Hip Hop and that's not Hip Hop, that is not the way the formula was laid down. It was for the people who were going to continue take anything musically and string it along.

I never excluded any genre on my first record.

You know, if Kelly Clarkson wants to do country albums because that's what inspires her, then let her do it. Look at Kanye West or Ludacris... they aren't rappin' and cussin' like they were on their first few albums, so what does that make them? It's all in the eye of the beholder and the listener. We all use our outlet to grow ourself.

Music is music; you don't have to put a label on it.

I've done the country, done the pop-rock, done the super-hard electro.

We play melodic music, we play songs, we play all kinds of things and when you improvise you don't just shut out different languages, you use all the languages that you have.

I can play punk rock, and I love playing punk rock, but I was into every other style of music before I played punk rock.

My music is a direct reflection of the eclectic person I am. I don't like to be stuck in an R&B box.

One of the mistakes I made was believing that the rock n' roll genre as a genre was much more free than the whole pop or R&B scene.

I wouldn't go so far as to make 'You Don't Own Me' a tango or 'It's My Party' a hip-hop thing. Believe me, those things have been suggested to me. But I thought if I could stay true to the song, the arrangements would work. I'm really enjoying singing them.

Creating any type of art is all about mood. I've been making extreme music in one fashion or another for decades. And truthfully, Down has a big enough fan base to where I could remain content to do only that, but music is a vast territory and I am an explorer. And I'm a lover of all things considered extreme in music.

For me, genres are a way for people to easily categorize music. But it doesn't have to define you. It doesn't have to limit you.

We can be whatever we want to be. We can be a country band if we need to be. We can be a rock band if we need to be.

Musically, my palette is eclectic.

I want to explore all genres.

Swavey is a musical genre that I came up with to describe artists who are too talented to stay in a box with their music.

Musically, I try not to box things in. I try to just play around this spectrum of influences: soul, jazz, and hip-hop.

People come in because they like 'Old Town Road.' They'll find out that I'm just not going to stick to that.

I think I have a different view of what pop is and what can be acceptable in that realm. I feel good about that. I want fans to see that not everything's so black and white with genres.

If tomorrow I want to release a rock album or I want to release a bachata album, nobody can tell me anything - why can't I?