Harrison Birtwistle Quotes

Historically, black music has influenced other cultures and other genres and created other genres.

I enjoy listening to contemporary rock on the college stations while I'm taking long walks, love gospel and soul music, am fascinated by hip-hop and rap as the new kind of urban 'beat' poetry and, come to think of it, find something interesting about just any kind of music.

When I was growing up, music was music and there were no genres. We didn't look at it as country music. Popular music in Tuskegee was country music. So I didn't know it in categories. It was the radio.

There are so many wonderful, wonderful musicians in the world, I cannot possibly make a distinction between the fact that they might play classical music, or bluegrass, or Irish traditional, or Indian music.

I listen to all kinds of songs. There's something to be learned from every type of music and from the one making it, whether it's pop or jazz or hip-hop.

I think music will thrive where it wants to.

I am a lover of all sorts of different music. I love blues and every piece of music that I have listened to has become an influence.

I love many kinds of music: world music, jazz, classical, pop.

People keep putting limitations on themselves and creating this reality that soul music is dead. That's only in their reality. It's not true. To me, Adele is R&B. Bruno Mars is R&B. It's just good songwriting and songs. That is going to last.

All that stuff about heavy metal and hard rock, I don't subscribe to any of that. It's all just music. I mean, the heavy metal from the '70s sounds nothing like the stuff from the '80s, and that sounds nothing like the stuff from the '90s. Who's to say what is and isn't a certain type of music?

Hip-hop educated me about other forms of music, because it sampled from all different styles.

Music is too important to be left to professionals.

One thing we have to remember as songwriters is that we have to consider that country music is the country's music. That doesn't mean that everybody's rural.

I think that there's always great music being made. Always has been, always will be.

Country music as a genre, as an art form, is just as valid out there in the pantheon of the arts as classical, jazz, ballet, whatever.

My training in music has been very eclectic - as first a flute player from classical chamber music to jazz, Greek, Brazilian and African music to contemporary concert music.

I never thought we were a country band in the first place. I think we've gotten ourselves into a place where we don't underestimate our listeners and what potential there is for the music they've heard all their lives.

I want to just change how people look at music and artists.

I think that essentially, since music was invented, it's basically reached out and touched every single kind of conceivable generation.

I try to listen to over a hundred different songs a day. I listen to every single thing. If you're just listening to pop music, you're just gonna make pop music. I listen to Adele, Yo Yo Ma, Gucci Mane.

I didn't have a philosophical understanding of music until I came to New York. I didn't understand how it applied to my kind and my generation. I thought it was just old people talking.

I was sort of in denial about doing country for awhile but I sort of grew up and realized who I was, what I wanted to say. I think country music is the best music in the world and I'm glad to be doing a country album. I hope people will love it as much as I loved making it.

I don't feel that electronic music has to stand on the back of urban artists or anyone else to be recognized. It's great music.

Me as an artist, I've ventured off into doing all types of music. I'll do a jazz album, you know what I mean.

I like all kinds of music - classical, pop, rock, electronic.