Mitski Quotes

With modeling, you are the client and you give them what they want... with music, it is all about you, people are buying into you as a person.

I'm a musician. I'm not, like, a personality. I've never really pretended to perform that kind of function.

Traditionally with debut albums, labels insist on a face, so people know who you are.

I just want to get my music out and make sure that it's heard in the right way.

Shoot, there's a committee to tell you everything at a record label. You definitely have to know who you are if you want to look like you at the end of the process. We've all seen people get record contracts, and by the time they're spit out by the machine, we don't even recognize them.

That's my goal: to get the world to know who Romeo Santos is. His music. My music. Even if they don't like it, I want them to know who I am.

When I first started, I wasn't really aware of anything in the industry or aware of who I really was. I just put my music out there and tried to get as many people to hear it as possible. I hadn't really thought about the kind of music I wanted to make.

None of my heroes were big rock stars, and I thought, 'This isn't how it's meant to be.' It wasn't about making music so much as selling it.

When I put my first song out, I didn't put out any pictures. I just wanted people to hear my music.

Before, I was more concerned with getting on the radio, like many young artists.

Distributing the music is so easy it's moot. So now the delicate art of calling attention to your music means everything. Marketing is distribution.

When I first started in rock, I had a big guy's audience for my early records. I had a very straight image, particularly through the mid '80s.

With the 'Silly Boy' track, I mean, people knew about it, but it wasn't really like, 'oh that's Eva Simons.' But when 'Take Over Control' came out, that's when people started to get interested in me personally, which is great because it was something I really believed in.

I've never worried about how a new release will be received. I simply try to do the best I can and leave the rest to the gods. The music industry in those terms is something I loathe and detest. It conjures up images of a gigantic factory spewing out parts of the machine.

Well, I was making a record, and I had to choose a name, because they said, you know, you can't make a record under the name of Reg Dwight, because it's never going to - you know, it's not attractive enough.

I wouldn't use a song I didn't think was my brand or image.

I've had big record label presidents look me in the face and say, 'Your music sucks, you don't know who you are, your music is all over the place, and we don't know how to market this stuff. Pick a lane and come back to us.'

Once you're a Motown artist, that's your stigmatism, and I was there from the very first day.

It's like half the campaign of selling a record is trying to convince people that you're an artist. Well, I am an artist. This is what I do.

And I'm not a personality; otherwise I'd be coming out with an album, performing on MTV. All that stuff is possible and I can do that tomorrow. I just have no need.

Pink is what I do. Alecia is who I am. The world has taken Pink and turned it into this thing, a brand - a snarl.

I would sell 2 million records, a million went to teenagers and a million went to the adults. So, when The Beatles became so popular, I lost a million to the teenagers, but I was still selling a million to the adults.

I don't think there's any such thing as rock n' roll anymore - it's an amalgamation of business interests.

I don't quite know how the urban music category came about, but I suspect it had something to do with trying to maximise sales.

Labels are curators of taste, and the best ones know how to monetize what an artist is trying to do.