Tim Commerford Quotes

I'm like, 'What world am I living in?' Aren't movies made to have something to say? Why make a movie if you don't have something to say? What are you doing it for? Are you doing it because you want to make a lot of money?

We made records to document ourselves, not to sell a lot of records. I still feel that way. I put out a record because I think it's beautiful, not necessarily commercial.

I think that's always the goal of art, is to make people ask themselves questions.

Country's more than about what the music sounds like. It's what you're saying and who you are as a person.

As an artist, even if you are putting out something really dark and disturbing, that's good because it's opening a discussion. Always in the back of my mind is this thought that the world has to be a better place with you in it.

Art needs to stand for something.

My mission is to just keep creating music. If it helps people in some way, then I'm doing the right thing.

I want to make people feel something - that's really cool.

His belief in the power of music to convey ideas - not just entertain - has filtered down to musicians in every field, from alt-rock to hip-hop, from Bruce Springsteen and U2 to Arcade Fire and Kanye West. Popular music is different because of Johnny Cash.

We're not writing songs to solve a cultural problem. The goal for us is to express what we're going through, and it's great if people find commonality in that.

I just don't believe in making music about making music anymore.

It's a coincidence that most of the films I have done are to do with social causes.

Rap has always been about using your talents for doing more.

I can't say what people use the experience of listening to songs for, but I would never tell somebody what it is supposed to mean. That defeats the purpose of making it. Hopefully, whoever connects with it connects with it in their own way, and it can mean whatever it is supposed to mean to them.

I have a working-class approach to music.

I try to make work about things that matter.

It's an artist's choice to speak up about social issues, but I think it's really important, and my favorite artists have spoken out.

Politics and music should only mix to a point. Me, I think my job as a musician is to make people try to forget about all that.

As a filmmaker I have changed, yes. I seem to have crossed a line and that journey, trajectory change is more apparent. I'd say, what changed dramatically in me as a filmmaker is the fact that now, it is about why am I making the film, what is this supposed to mean to people. Earlier, it was more about entertaining or engaging them.

That's something that I think as a songwriter you have to ask yourself - why you're doing it. The world certainly doesn't need more songs. Are you doing it just for your ego?

A poet is no rattlebrain, saying what comes uppermost, and, because he says every thing, saying, at last, something good; but a heart in unison with his time and country. There is nothing whimsical or fantastic in his production, but sweet and sad earnest, freighted with the weightiest convictions, and pointed with the most determined aim which any man or class knows of in his times.

It is to be remembered that all art is magical in origin - music, sculpture, writing, painting - and by magical I mean intended to produce very definite results. Paintings were originally formulae to make what is painted happen. Art is not an end in itself, any more than Einstein's matter-into-energy formulae is an end in itself. Like all formulae, art was originally FUNCTIONAL, intended to make things happen, the way an atom bomb happens from Einstein's formulae.

If you come across an American artist right now who has no political opinions or is afraid of talking politics, be very concerned.

Sometimes journalists ask me, "What's the message?" There is no message. I think that fiction should not be trying to give messages. Just tell a story.

Entertainment is about telling everybody that everything is alright but music is on the side of the upsetters and that's where I'm at.