Trevor Dunn Quotes

The pop world has really opened its doors.

Commercial music, for the most part, is popular music and you always have to keep that in mind.

Nirvana was pop. You can have distorted guitars and people say it's alternative, but you can't break out of pop music's constructs and still get extensive radio play and media coverage.

MTV definitely has the effect of narrowing the range of music that hits the mainstream. On the other hand, isn't that the effect of television in general?

It's kind of like, who cares about MTV anymore?

You still have Top 40 radio now, but it's 40 different stations. There aren't many hits that everybody knows, and there aren't many real superstars.

I think the hip hop world and the rock world still have a lot in common, but it certainly seems like things happen and break at a much faster pace in the hip hop world.

Pop comes from the word 'popular,' which means that it could be anything that appeals to any group of people. When you talk about general masses, I think there's elements in every kind of music that can reach a broad audience.

Until MTV, television had not been a huge influence on music. To compete with MTV, the country music moguls felt they had to appeal to the same young audience and do it the way MTV did.

Our songs did not transcend being R&B hits. They were R&B hits that white kids were attracted to. And if people bought it, it became rock & roll. That's marketing. Why couldn't it still be R&B? The bass pattern didn't change. The song didn't change. It was still 'Yakety Yak' and 'Searchin'.'

A lot of my fans are people who have grown up and don't have as much time to listen to the radio, but still want to keep up with what's popular. A lot of shows don't talk to them anymore, but I do.

Rock became an incredible commercial success, people just became bored with serious music, and it was forgotten.

In the late '90s, R&B was dominant in the radio, and the white kids were taking it mainstream.

I would sell 2 million records, a million went to teenagers and a million went to the adults. So, when The Beatles became so popular, I lost a million to the teenagers, but I was still selling a million to the adults.

I don't think there's any such thing as rock n' roll anymore - it's an amalgamation of business interests.

I grew up in the day when the Beatles sold 1 million singles in a week. And all you've got to do now is sell about 10,000 singles and you're in the charts.

Dance music has pushed its way into the mainstream. Which is good for me.

When I used to put an album out, I knew everyone on the charts. There weren't that many bands. Now, I couldn't even name half the new groups.

I remember Mitch Miller saying every week, This rock and roll stuff will never last. But one doesn't like to bring that up to Mitch.

To me, the 90's signaled the end of glam rock, the beginning of gangsta rap, and hopefully the beginning and end of boy bands.

There's almost no popular music I listen to now. I'll hear it because it's everywhere... Music is ubiquitous now.

I don't quite know how the urban music category came about, but I suspect it had something to do with trying to maximise sales.

There's a tremendous audience out there for popular music. It's a bigger audience than for movies.

MTV ruined music for us.

It's hard for a country performer to make a living in a Beatles society.