Ian Gillan Quotes

I was interested in maintaining the dignity and the hearts of the songs, letting them breathe and become what they are.

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 can make a record with six-part string arrangements and the best musicians in the world and have it be not genuine. I'd rather make a genuine record that I truly stand behind and have it fall where it may.

The whole process of music for me is something absolutely honest and really naked and bare, so I never forced myself to write in French.

I just wanted to keep consistent and keep true to America and not seem contrived. I didn't want to seem contrived at all with any song choice that might be a detriment to my journey on 'The Voice.'

Learn your instrument. Be honest. Don't do anything phony. There is so much crap floating around. There is plenty of room for a bit of honest writing.

Maybe someday you can accuse somebody of being a poseur by selling out and playing blues music, but that's just not going to happen in my lifetime.

I would have quit before I went rock-n-roll. I know one way, and that's natural, and when I can't make it, I'll come home and stay. I believe in my music.

I just want to make great music. There's not a genre that I would categorize it as, but I want it to be true and authentic.

Not to name names, but a lot of pop female artists you see, they don't write their own songs. Lot of top male artists and boy band artists, they don't write their own songs. They're just a product. They sell, they sell, they sell. They don't care about musical integrity, any of that kind of stuff.

There are a lot of great artists with great voices who aren't singing what they should be singing.

Making an album should be an honest experience. It shouldn't be about trying to gauge where popular music is today; it should be about artistic expression and putting down what you want to put down.

You can try to be catchy without being slick, poppy without being pop, and you can be uplifting without being pompous. Because we're sometimes playing quieter stuff, it's hard to sound like we're trying to change things, but we wanted to be a reaction against soulless rubbish.

In my opinion, some of the hip-hop records that come out, people are willing to compromise. I'm not.

What was exciting to me in talking to Kogonada was I was just very convinced that he was a very real and pure artist. He was so uninterested in the commercial game.

You have to focus hard on recording songs that you believe in.

When I started off as an actor, the last thing I wanted to do in the world was make money. I was under the impression, when I started off as an actor, that the more money I made, the more it would diminish from my creativity and my capacity to be an artist.

I just don't believe in the old definition that a fan of music is: I find a band, I listen to all of it and I pretend to like stuff that I don't like. Now if I don't like it, I just go, 'I don't like this.' It's way fairer.

The whole 'I Told You,' there's nothing written. That was all out of the feeling. That's why the album is so incredible to me - it's all out of the heart; I didn't take time to pre-calculate it.

I think that's always the hope - I mean, I can't speak for others, but I think other artists, no matter what type of medium they are using - whether it be from painting to acting to dancing, songwriting, or anything like that - I believe the desire is to get to the truth, and I think it's really hard to tell the truth.

I always like to vent and tell the truth in my music.

If I can't be honest with music, forget it.

I find it hard to not like music if it has passion behind it and good integrity. Only if it's made for the wrong reasons and shows a lack of respect for its audience will I find something to dislike.

I felt like it was the space that I could be the most authentic of anywhere because of how I grew up. Even though some of the songs and some of the texture wasn't what I like, I felt like country music was more authentic, in general, than anywhere else.

I don't want to sign four films at a time, as acting is an art, and art cannot be done without honesty.