India Arie Quotes

The music I turn out these days is the kind of music I want to hear myself.

If there's room to make a record every year, and it sounds nothing like the old one, I might do that. It's easy to get in and have fun. To me, if it feels right, that's all that needs to be done.

Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do, and then just go for it.

Making records is fun. It's not some big statement. You're allowed to make mistakes.

It was the Control album that was really about what I wanted to do.

I think that was the whole idea behind doing the solo record was to be able to do musically whatever I wanted to do.

When I'm performing music, it's like I'm doing a big improv.

The music always takes us to different places. We'll just continue to play and see what doors open from there.

The way I did the first album... the way I wrote 'Church'... was just to trust my instincts with the music and let it kind of do what it does.

No one is mediating aesthetic choices on an OPN album other than myself.

I usually know the general emotion of a song, or the general feeling of it, and then I think I just get so excited by the act of recording. I love that process so much that I feel like if I knew exactly what I wanted I'd arrive at something too soon.

I'm like a movie director, so wherever I feel that I need to go over this type of beat, that's what I'm going to do, that's where I'm going to go.

I don't go into any album with pressing issues. I just try to write songs.

Nobody sets out to make a bad record.

I've recorded 25 or 30 albums. I know that sometimes when you work with producers who are kinda dictators, it doesn't help you make a better record.

There hasn't been one moment in my career where I felt I didn't have any control over the creative aspects of my records.

I feel like have a lot of music left to cut in my life.

What I always try to do is to respond to the song; I've always rebelled against theory.

I don't tend to set out on huge world domination goals or have anything in mind. I just like to play. I like to gig a lot; I like to write music.

The potential success that could come with signing with a major label didn't quite outweigh how important it was for me to make my music the way I knew it needed to be made.

I'm never too ambitious when I go into the studio. I always know that I'm just going into the studio to work on or try to develop an idea that I have for a song.

A lot of times I go back to record and to make a tour, but I'm very happy to do it, because it gives me an opportunity to dig and hear what's going on.

I just wanted to go out and make a record that I've always wanted to make since I was a kid.

I've done a lot of albums and I kinda know when I'm onto something that was inspirational for me to record and create, and this was one of those projects where I really enjoyed making the album.

The idea of just improvising and riffing can sometimes be at the expense of story.