Syd Quotes

The main focus for me is not trying to find duet partners. It's about just making great songs. I want most of my album to be in my voice because it's my point of view.

I'm a songwriter and producer, so I'm always wanting to make my own stuff, and not use anybody else's.

I've never recorded anyone else's songs. I'm not interested. If you gave me a song by Bono and Edge and promised me a number one hit with it I'd still say no. That, for me, is not the kind of success I want.

The very first music I recorded by myself, when I was 17, I said it was by King Tuff.

I sometimes listen to music I made and find it to be something I wouldn't want to buy from a store, if there was a store. When it's like that, you have to make what you want to hear.

I started recording because I was always complaining about the records that I was getting of my songs. At least if I did them and messed them up, I wouldn't have anyone else to blame.

I kind of just stumbled into producing. It was more that I was a writer, and the only way you were going to get your songs done was to do them yourself.

I write most of my own lyrics for my album and I am helping to produce some of the songs as well.

Singing your own songs is all about individual expression.

It was just like a dream. I could have ended up with an album that's not all that different from anything else coming out of Nashville. Mutt made the difference. He took these songs, my attitude, my creativity, and colored them in a way that is unique.

I went out of my way to make 'Immortal' sound perfect. 'Immortal,' 'Just What I Am,' and 'King Wizard,' those are perfect beats. Not a lot of people can perform on them. I say that meaning they're tailor-made for me.

I'm very hands on with my music - I do all the artwork and everything myself - and the songs I write aren't necessarily the most commercial.

I am at my core a singer/songwriter a la James Taylor or a la Billy Joel. It's not that I don't want to work with people, but I do just love doing my own thing.

I thought I'd do everything on four-track, and then I'll record every instrument myself in a studio, and then I'll have a solo album released by spring.

I write by myself and then deliver the song. Everybody knows, 'Leave Ester alone when she's in her zone.' Give me a studio and the tracks, and I'll call you when the doctor is done.

I don't know if most people know it or not, but I produce, like, 95% of my own stuff.

I'm not a slave to the recording industry. I have the freedom to make an album that I want to make and do it the way I want.

A singer for me is more like someone who is standing alone with a microphone like Scott Walker, rather than someone who is bashing a plank and is spitting all over a microphone.

I don't concentrate on technical things like where a microphone is placed and things like that. As a producer, I try to keep the initial feeling from when I first heard a song and make sure we do what were initially aiming for.

The people who are making money are the ones who are writing and singing their own songs.

In general, I don't feel artists should need producers.

When I go with different producers, and they've thought about what they want to do, I think they feel a little bit more free, because they know almost any sound will work on my record if we pull it together properly - so they don't feel so limited.

There's a lot of little 'Bonnie-isms' in 'Teenage Dream' that I was hoping to keep for myself.

I think most people don't know that I really write everything myself. No help. There's nobody in the studio except for me and the engineer. A lot of people don't think I'm a singer. They think I'm a rapper.

I got the type of voice where I can hit a tone if I want, but I ain't trying to be Fetty Wap or Future.