Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

I do not think that music keeps evolving. It evolved through Bach; since then, in my humble opinion, all the innovations added nothing.

Well, American composers are the best composers. At this time in the world, we are where the energy is. We are the most diverse, the most iconoclastic, the most maverick, and the most skillful.

Any good music must be an innovation.

I think the people who are saying jazz has to sound a particular way, or, 'What you're doing isn't jazz,' are just scared because they can't do it. A lot of them just aren't talented enough to do anything new, honestly.

In Atlanta, there's no limitation to where you can take your music. You can be as creative as you want to be.

Just the type of music that was around at the same time as I was writing. Some of it was wicked, definitely. But there was just one direction which I thought could be pushed that no one was pushing.

Music is forever changing.

People come in because they like 'Old Town Road.' They'll find out that I'm just not going to stick to that.

I wish I'd gone to music school or just started playing in bands sooner.

I am optimistic about the future of music.

It's like, how do you continue to make records that are representative of who you are that your fans will recognize as your band, while still trying to push things forward and present new sounds for people.

Music became my focus. At 13, I was jamming with my mates. At 15, I was playing clubs.

If our history can challenge the next wave of musicians to keep moving and changing, to keep spiritually hungry and horny, that's what it's all about.

I played the cello from when I was ten, and then I bought a guitar from the father of some friends of mine and played that for a while. And then when I was fourteen or so, I bought a guitar - a real nice one - in Durham, North Carolina, that I worked with up until I was about twenty-five.

I'm not really allowed to talk about the Dead though. I think when we are at our best, we definitely do things that the Dead or no other band could do. We explore things and take things to the extreme.

They have all different names for music. I think the music I'm going to change the style with is going to be really, really big-years and years after I'm gone.

That's why so much of the music today sounds so much alike, because there's no in-between. So it's kind of nice to still turn some buttons every now and then.

You have got to make new music, that is the way that I look at it anyway.

Music in general is looking for something new overall.

There is a terrible conservatism, like a cancer, right in the heartlands of music-making, a tremendous resistance to change, an absolute horror of the idea that more people might connect with music. That infuriates me more than I can say.

What is nice about country music today is that most artists are not trying to do something everybody else is doing. They really are trying to develop their own uniqueness.

Michael was a type of person the whole family went behind who crossed all borders with his music.

What happened with reggaeton is that many artists kept recycling the same sound. But there are a lot of reggaeton artists that are still in their prime - like Daddy Yankee - because they've chosen to continue growing, to offer people more than just reggaeton. That's where I learned to always be able to try something new and not be afraid.

Pushing the envelope, musically speaking, is what needs to be done to rise to the top.

It's neat to hear a new generation of musicians come up.