Edgar Meyer Quotes

My father speaks for himself, through his music.

I grew up thinking art was pictures until I got into music and found I was an artist and didn't paint.

I'm not like other writers. I'm not hung up on using my own songs. In fact, my sister Bunny always tells me I sing other people's songs better than my own. She says I loosen up and give the songs a different feel.

So it's not so much that I set out to do something different, it's just that the songs themselves require their own individual voice and attention.

I don't think that there's much that sets me apart from other musicians, but I think there are definitely things that set me apart from other kinds of artists. I feel that musicians do it their own way, write their own songs and put on a great live shows.

There's so much you can do with laying words on a bed of music. You can completely change their meaning with the type of music or the way they're sung.

I don't know if I should say this, but I feel more like a singer than an artist.

I've been training myself and listening to other artists and seeing where their emotion comes from, singing a heartbreak song when they're in a happy relationship.

I've always felt a great affinity with music. I've felt myself to be more of a musician than anything else, though I'm not proficient in any one instrument. But I think I have a musical sense of things... and writing seems to me to be a musical experience - rhythmically and in many other ways.

Working with other artists and writers over the past couple years has really given me a clear idea of my strengths and weaknesses and what is unique about me as an artist. I figured it's my storytelling lyrics, falsetto range and tone of voice, so I write songs to utilize those.

I'm in love with the way that Ella Fitzgerald delivered a lyric. She would deliver a lyric with the kind of clarity that would make you wonder why it was written, and make you think about the writer. I think every writer hopes an Ella of any genre or anytime gets a hold of their work and works the song like that.

I've worked really, really hard on my lyricism.

In Utero is a testament to the artistic vision of Kurt Cobain. It's kind of a weird record, and it's strangely beautiful at the same time. And if you look at Kurt's paintings and his drawings - he even did a sculpture for me - it's a rising, tortured-spirit person. It's kind of weird. It's done well, but it's like what Dave was saying about having your own sound. Kurt was a great songwriter. He knew he had a good ear for a hook [and was] a great singer, great guitar player, and In Utero is a good representation of what he liked in art and how he expressed himself.

I have a high range. Sometimes I sound like Stevie Winwood. Some people say I sound like Peter Gabriel. Some of the songs I write are funky. Others are slow. Some are ponderous, and some are there to shock. I must say some are pretty damn good, too.

When you write really good lyrics - and sometimes I did! - they are just a joy to sing.

We never thought we were musicians. We just thought we were in a band.

I have never followed anyone's style of singing.

It's imperative that I have another channel to pour ideas into, that have been with me for quite a while, that it would be hard for people to kind of accept on first listen. Some of that would be more classically based stuff and some more jazz based.

First of all, I'm not a singer or rapper. I'm an artiste. Besides singing, I produce music, dance, write poetry, and sometimes I paint as well.

As a working musician, your first instinct is to try and do your job. It wasn't always my aspiration to sing; I just wanted to be a great working musician. But then Flying Lotus suggested I try, and nothing has ever been the same since.

I've been able to carve my way out with lyrics and melodies.

I can't force myself to make up a song. Music comes to me naturally.

I don't believe in making two songs similar. Every composition must have its own unique character.

I write all my own music, everything.

Novelists get to say plenty in their massive tomes; rock singers only get four-minute songs with two verses and a chorus' worth of lyrics, and so there's a real pleasure in accessing the intelligence behind the music, even if it doesn't qualify as 'great literature.'