Greil Marcus Quotes

Each time I play a song it seems more real.

When you listen to a song, it should make you sit up and wonder, 'Hey, what is this!' or give you an inexplicable feeling of joy or relate beautifully to the music in you.

When a song blows your mind the first time you hear it, you don't know where it's going. It's blowing your mind as it's unfolding. Then there's that sensation that you're actually going to remember the song.

When I listen to a song, I don't say, 'Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.' I'm thinking, 'That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.'

Music kind of kidnapped me for a while.

Hearing the blues changed my life.

I want to reach the people. This music is the people's music. It's music for your brain, for your heart, for your soul. That is what we always go to achieve. Soul united.

How we absorb music is unique. I know what I do. When I'm listening to music, I tend to find myself in a song. That's what really makes you connect is if you feel what that song is saying.

People listen to music with cavemen ears: Is it a bird song or the call of a lion? The audience at a musical is dancing in their hearts.

I think you really have to remember what you loved about making music in the first place. Ultimately, people can be like, 'We've seen this dude in many movies,' but if they hear a song and they're feeling it, they can look past all the personal things and not hold it against you that you're also an actor.

I really, really love music. I'm affected by it and uplifted by it, and made to laugh and cry, and almost fall in love with the person who has made me feel so brilliant and communicated so profoundly to me.

The end of all good music is to affect the soul.

I like any music I can feel.

I like music when it makes you feel.

When your hair is rising, that's when you know it's a good song - that's happened to me with some artists and some songs, John Lennon songs or when Nina Simone sings. It's great to make those moments yourself.

'Tryin' to Get the Feeling' has been a revelation. I'd forgotten how powerful that was. I'd forgotten how deep I can crawl into that one, and maybe because I'm older it means even more.

The main objective in any song, the songs that I write, has always been that it reflect the way I feel, that it touch me when I'm finished with it, that it moves me, that it can take me along with it and involve me in what its saying.

I believe in working with songs that have personal value for me.

Whether lyrically or musically, it reaches in there and grabs your soul. That's the stuff I gravitate toward.

Great works of music speak to us from another realm even though they speak to us in ordinary physical sounds.

I think it's exciting that fans can immediately pick up on what my music is about and what I'm leaning towards: that they get to actually feel it.

All I do is hope that someone feels something from listening to my music.

Live music is incredible because you get to be with people, and you get to have this tactile, real-world experience, but at the end of the day, if your eyes are closed and you're getting swept away, it's like... I don't know.

The most rewarding experience as a musician is to know that I moved people personally.

You don't need to be a performer in order to dive into the sensory experience of music. Simply get as close as you can to the source of the music.