Julian Casablancas Quotes

I'm just not interested in selling out to get on the charts and make people happy.

The biggest difference between me and other artists out there is that they'll put anything out to sell a record or sell a ticket.

Some musicians don't have strong opinions, or they deliberately don't have strong opinions because they want to try and sell as many records as possible.

I don't think you're selling out by allowing the masses to love your art. The only curse is that, when you get so big, sometimes people forget to look at the music.

Being shoved into the top-40 scene was an unusual experience. It was great I'd become accessible to a huge audience but not terribly fulfilling.

We had a huge audience, we sold truckloads of albums. If we do something that's cool, people will listen to it. If we don't, we would be selling people short.

I have cut four albums so far, and all of them have been trendsetters and commercially successful. I believe that once you start taking art in commercial terms, it ceases to be art.

Most of the time, you're writing for radio, you're writing for a label, you're writing to stick a hit, and you end up coming out with something that isn't necessarily genuine.

It's really weird how the rock world is quickly becoming like the jazz world. How if you do OK, or get a tiny bit of success, that's considered a sellout, whether you did anything different or not.

I know how to make a record that commercial radio or Triple J will smash now... It's kind of hard to stay true and write what you would write if you didn't have that in your head. Because I know I can get way more airplay and get this much bigger... and that's what I'm trying to avoid doing. Trying to avoid the poisons of success.

Obviously, I would like to play to bigger audiences and have a bit more success, but not if I have to commercialize.

There are still recording artists out there doing things for the right reason, but a lot of people seem to be just driven by fame.

When no one's buying your records, it's easy to justify selling a song. But once you start selling records, you can't really justify having two songs in Cadillac commercials. It looks greedy. And it is greedy. This whole music thing should be about music.

If you're really on top, you probably didn't do that great, 'cause you have to water it down a bit for it to get that mass appeal.

I regard it as a waste of time to think only of selling: one forgets one's art and exaggerates one's value.

Most of the music you hear on the radio today is developed for making money. It doesn't feel true or honest. You can feel it in the music.

The artists in country music who stopped having hits are the ones who were led into something that wasn't them.

I was never trying to write a hit. I was just trying to write good songs and get a message out, and it was my great good fortune to be popular.

I don't really set out to please anybody, and I don't think I ever have. I have occasionally been encouraged to try to write something specifically for the purpose of releasing it as a single to get radio play. Those are not my best songs, as a rule.

I don't want to be an art-house movie guy, where people who go to film school can discuss your work, but people who haven't studied cinema can't appreciate it. By the same token, I don't want to be the guy who's making this commercial pap that people lap up but that disappears the minute you leave the theater.

No matter how hard I tried to popularize, I never cheapened a great work of art.

It's a strange thing, this idea that for some reason, if a lot of people like what you're doing, it's therefore not very good. We use the phrase that a band have 'sold out.' Just so you know, if you're doing a gig and you sell all your tickets, that is a brilliant thing to do.

Hip-hop don't have no fresh energy, none at all. It's money driven, everybody tryin' to make that cheque, nobody putting art in their albums any more.

If you go to Hollywood, you've already sold out.

I listen to all the top 20 songs, and top 20 albums, even the rap albums. But I don't like negative messages. If somebody is putting a lot of ego out there, I don't like it. When I make my records I want it to be sincere.