Thom Yorke Quotes

It's fair to say that white America wouldn't have elected an African-American president without the integrating effect of black music - from Louis Armstrong to hip-hop - and black drama and fiction, commercial as much as 'serious.'

Singers like Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar are very conscious of what's going on around them, and they're waking up lot of young people with that knowledge. They bring their enlightenment to the world; the world that is buying their records.

Not all artists have a responsibility to be socially or politically aware, but they do have a responsibility to make great art. They have to find some truth and put that in their music.

Pop music has greater power to change people and to affect people because it's a universal language. You don't have to understand music to understand the power of a pop song.

I think we have responsibilities to be active in the things we believe in, regardless of what our job is. At least in my lifetime, there has been a tremendous combining of activism and music, that came up in the era of Pete Seeger and the Weavers and Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and Peter Paul & Mary.

It's often the case that great artists - people like Bruce Springsteen - tend to pick up the subterranean rumblings of profound social change long before the economic statisticians notice them. Changes start long before they become statistics.

Music is always a commentary on society.

Hip-hop started as this niche moment, and the values of it, the cultures that it carried on its back; language, clothes, the way you wear your clothes, the items that you consume, all came with the music as an art form. And those things helped transform how people buy, shop, speak, engage.

Film, therefore, is part of society, not distant from it, easy to experience for people regardless of class.

Hip-hop is supposed to uplift and create, to educate people on a larger level and to make a change.

Today, music is great for entertainment, but it is lacking soul; it's lacking substance, and it's difficult to find good stuff. There are too many corporate interests. It's not about the actual music because it's about the corporation, and music just becomes part of a package.

I think that every time you bring a subject into the mainstream landscape of television, it can have a huge impact. Television is such an influential medium.

Hollywood likes to boast that it can elevate the national conscience.

I view music as entertainment. When I'm on stage, I don't look at that as a platform for sharing ideology. Otherwise I'd be a zealot myself. That's why, when people ask me, 'Do you think you can change the world through your music?' I say, 'I doubt it.'

Music moves society more than most people realize. In my opinion, it's a soft manipulator of influence and change.

I felt I had an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of great soul musicians of the past, who made a lot of social and political commentary through their music.

Public policies in our democracy are eventually a reflection of public opinion," so public opinion must be reshaped if we are to avoid disaster.

In the United States, we have a large, broad middle that are decent, fair-minded people who are too busy to really think about issues other than their next paycheck. Those are the people that we want to get to in order to change the social climate. And Howard Stern has that audience. So I said, 'Let's boldly go where I've never been before.'

You can spread awareness through entertainment.

Outwardly seeing how your music effects culture and everyday life, is amazing.

It's not in the mainstream media, but across towns, it is amazing how there are small groups of people getting together and forming artistic collectives - they may not be being overtly political, but I'd say by channelling their energy into community projects, that's a valid political statement.

People have to know that when momentum for a national movement has to be built, basic things have to be talked about first.

I think a culture can really be elevated through the arts, and it's always a dream come true when I come across roles that enable me to fuse my love of storytelling with my passion for activism and raising social awareness.

A song's lyrics can't be held culprit for the overall change in society.

Music has always pushed ahead social movements and can do much more than just dumb down a populace.