Randy Travis Quotes

For me, honest critique is not all about your feelings and your ear. Honest critique is sitting down with an album that you may not put on in your spare time, and really digging into that album, so you can talk about the beat selection.

Sometimes people talk about music, whether blogs or magazines, in a strange way where it doesn't seem like they're actually listening to it.

I only listen to my music. I'm just analyzing it. Critical. Seeing what I like what I don't like. Say what I should have said. What I could say next time, what I should have said, things like that.

I think the world likes to pick apart different songs and play doctor with songs sometimes and make them into this big controversial thing.

If you take a little time, let's say three weeks off, after recording a song, and you listen to it every other day, you're just going to know eventually.

Some of the songs on the radio are really outrageous. I listen to the lyric. If the lyric doesn't make sense, I don't like the song.

I'm the worst critic about music myself. I hardly ever, ever like something the first time I listen to it.

I feel like 'Pitchfork' has a style, and you always know what they're gonna say and what they're gonna pick apart.

Every song with lyrics is lyrical.

I think a lot of that album ["Tonight" ] is still very good . . . the songs, but I think I was indifferent to the arrangements.

So if somebody writes a song that appears to have some meaning then everybody thinks that it's a really heavy song.

I'm especially interested in what I call practitioner criticism, which is when people who practice an art form start writing about it on blogs. I think that's an immensely important development. I want to see much, much more of that. People who make music who are verbally articulate. And not all musicians are verbally articulate. But those who are should be encouraged to write about what they do and their perception of what other people do. It makes the discourse smarter.

If you play "I Don't Want To Know" by Fleetwood Mac loud enough -- you can hear Lindsey Buckingham's fingers sliding down the strings of his acoustic guitar. ...And we were convinced that this was the definitive illustration of what we both loved about music; we loved hearing the INSIDE of a song.

I knew I had to have a hit. I would get no more chances. Analyzing what they had in common I discovered they had many similar elements: harmonic rhythm, placement of the chord changes, choice of harmonic progressions, similar instrumentation, vocal phrases, drum fills, content, even the timbre of the lead solo voice. I decided to write a song that incorporated all these elements in one record.

"Love Walks In," it was the same thing. That song is about aliens, by the way.

Other people singing my songs is something that I've never been casual about. I've always been very touched by it and I always go into immediate critical suspension.

I remember that the bass was turned up slightly more on the mix from last week, and I thought that was good - or whatever. Like, there were some little things in there that he said that he came to, like, really enjoy my opinion or at least, like, my little comments on the songs. So I was kind of destined to probably be a studio rat.

Song: Heloise and Abelard by Elizabeth Devlin. Beyond the a propros subject matter, this lady can really play the Autoharp. This song sounds like something you'd find on a gramophone record.

One must learn to read, just as one must learn to see and learn to live.

You should listen to songs and listen to what works. Listen to why a song is a hit. Check it out-not to imitate it, but there are certain things that work-hooks and melodies. Hear what works through the ages.

The criminal misuse of time was pointing out the mistakes. Catching them―noticing them―that was essential. If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement. The part of the man's statement that was true, however, was about the uselessness of speaking up. If I know that the teacher is wrong, and say nothing, then I remain the only one who knows, and that gives me an advantage over those who believe the teacher.

I guess it really didn't even dawn on me that you could be a rock critic as a job until I was maybe almost out of college. I knew criticism existed. I read Rolling Stone and Spin. Siskel and Ebert were on television. But I had absolutely no idea how to get that kind of life. And moreover, it didn't interest me that much. I just sort of read normal books growing up. I wasn't that media-conscious. I felt like the one thing I was able to do was to listen to a record and decide whether I liked it.

If I should go out of church whenever I hear a false sentiment, I could never stay there five minutes.

The moment someone says, 'Hey, everyone, listen to the words in this song,' your party is over.

Got to start by finding it, have we? Can't start by looking for it, I suppose?