Kate Bush Quotes

The clean clear colours were in my head. But one day as I looked at the brown burned wood of the Shanty, I thought 'I can paint one of those dismal-coloured paintings like the men. I think just for fun I will try - all low-toned and dreary with the tree besides the door.' In my next show, 'The Shanty' went up. The men seemed to approve of it. They seemed to think that maybe I was beginning to paint. That was my only low-toned dismal-coloured painting.

I'm going to make music that reflects me and my life now. So I think people who like my music and who listen to me should appreciate change as well, because I've definitely evolved, and that's a great thing, to celebrate that is what music is all about.

I just think that when you've been singing for 30 years, which I have been, you just want to find different things you can do with your voice. It's a constant journey. It's not like any one album that you make is who you are. It just reflects that particular day.

You know, if Kelly Clarkson wants to do country albums because that's what inspires her, then let her do it. Look at Kanye West or Ludacris... they aren't rappin' and cussin' like they were on their first few albums, so what does that make them? It's all in the eye of the beholder and the listener. We all use our outlet to grow ourself.

As an artist, you want to do roles that challenge you and say something.

Joanne' is a progression for me. It was about going into the studio and forgetting that I was famous.

The music I make, I'm different.

I'm kind of still learning my voice and learning my style.

I don't want people to think like Roddy is John Legend now. I just felt like once I got to a certain point, that I wanted to expand musically.

'True Romance' was definitely, in part, still me finding my voice as a writer. I was nervous, and I was a lot more shy. The album sounds bruised.

You're always trying to make each record more autobiographical than the last one.

I feel like I've mastered Dave East. For a long time I was trying to figure out who I was and what sound I wanted to come with.

Some people think or expect that you should make the same kinds of art forever because it creates a convenient narrative... I want my work to embody my inherent contradictions.

I didn't know if it would be a successful one, or what the stages would be, but I always saw myself as a lifetime musician and songwriter...I was always concerned with writing to my age at a particular moment. That was the way I would keep faith with the audience that supported me as I went along...I'm a synthesist. I'm always making music. And I make a lot of different kinds of music all the time. Some of it gets finished and some of it doesn't...The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.

I think it was important for me to introduce myself as an artist for the first time because I'm very proud of my past, it's all a part of my story, but this is who I am now. This was a really important thing to have an hour special that lets them in and kind of meet me for the first time, truthfully.

A writer, or a beginning writer, is faced by the huge walls of self-consciousness. Most people think, "What if I say the wrong thing? What if I don't sound erudite and sophisticated? I'll be considered a fool." In time, with a lot of practice, you realize that's your foolishness is your gift.

All you can do as an artist is do what you think is an extension of you. You put down on paper ... who you are. That's what being an artist is all about. And when it gets done, you don't look back at it and say, Oh, I could have done that better.

I think I'll always make music that sounds different from what is current, but I doubt that it'll sound consistently the same as what I've been doing.

I think that sometimes people fear continuity because it can turn into repetition - and there's a lot of artists who are really good at creating something new all the time. But for me it's about the consistency in my story. Because after all, I'm the protagonist in everything. All the songs are about my life so naturally there will be some connection because I'm still the same person I've always been.

I think the musical evolution I've gone through has come from all the work with the material.

Everything I wanted before, I want twice as much now. And that doesn't mean material things; it means to explore more, to think more. Being an artist doesn't start because you're 21, and it doesn't end because you're 51. You are who you are until the day you die.

An entertainer is someone who pleases others, and an artist tries to please himself. An artist is on a journey: they don't know where they're going, what is going to happen, but they know they are not there yet, and there is some continuity and growth. I think of myself as an entertainer: I'm a performing entertainer, I'm a stand-up comic. But there's an artist at work here, too. One who interprets his world through his own filter.

I think writing is a much more personal thing.

The landscape becomes human, becomes a thinking, living being within me. I become one with my picture...we merge in an iridescent chaos.

[Songwriting is] something that I own - it's my property, it's my music, it's my voice.