Ben Lovett Quotes

I don't think the Bonzo Dog could have evolved in America, nor could the old Nice: because of their musical discipline. This is one thing that British groups do have, a sort of discipline. Sometimes it can get a bit soulless, but on the whole I think it's preferable to the American alternative.

I have been long associated with British music. I have favoured it as my alternate music next to American.

Aaron Copland was a man that had a very specific point of view about what music should be which was that, he felt that new music should have the composer should show a personality in his music.

He's a world-famous name to people who care about his music, but there are many people who have never heard of George Gershwin and those numbers increase.

The funny thing is, the music that I'm writing now is probably some of the most cutting edge we've ever done. The music that I'm thinking about putting on our next album.

I joke to people in the press that I realize I'm not black, I'm actually white. But I've got these roots in black American music. I love it.

Purcell is a composer who had a formative influence on British music - even The Who now cite him as an influence. There's an intense, dirty harmony, but there's a Louis XIV kind of elan and style, too. He had the melancholy DNA of our national folk heritage.

All I want to do is write songs about funny characters I made up.

Well, we play Country music; we're just not sure what country it is.

What I do and where I come from, the kind of music that I'm making, it's definitely U.K. If I turned around and did a tune with Timbaland, it would be amazing, but it would be me kind of leaving where I'm coming from.

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.

I didn't like any British music before The Beatles. For me, it was all about black American music. But then I became a successful pop singer, even though the kind of music I liked was more elitist, which is what I'm trying to get back to.

The funny thing is musicians often love to go to see visual art because you've got all these pictures to turn into metaphors.

I don't think having a My Chemical Romance action figure will make a kid start his own band, I like to think it will make him save children from a burning building.

I never wanted to sing. I just wanted to play rhythm guitar - hide in the back and just play.

I always love a song about London or about places. I think Britain could do with more of them; America is so good at that.

I wrote my first song when I was about eight. It was about putting a diaper on a chicken!

I was quite a shy kid, but I was quite funny at school, and I was really into art. In our class, there were two of us who were good at drawing, and my teacher was like, 'He's going to make a wonderful artist one day, and Noel can make everyone laugh.'

We try to write the best songs ever and they kinda come out funny.

But I was a sensitive kid. A funny kid, and a perceptive one. There was a lot of time spent alone.

Have you heard his new song? 'Cause he thinks he's a black man now.

Soft rock music isn’t rock, and it ain’t music. It’s just soft.

I see the Beatles have arrived from England. They were 40 pounds overweight - and that was just their hair.

This man was so absent-mindedly clever that he could paint pictures that didn’t just follow you around the room but went home with you and did the washing-up.

We know the goats are imported because they don't speak English.