Emeli Sande Quotes

Music is music; you don't have to put a label on it.

I don't really believe in genres. I don't want people to have any preconceptions about me. I want the first impression to be the music.

I guess one thing that makes my music stand out is that it is quite hard to determine what genre it is.

I didn't get into music to become a blues musician, or a country musician. I'm a singer-songwriter. In my book that means I get to do whatever I want.

What I'm trying to do is break the genre from what is rap and what is music.

I don't like being put in a box. I just make music, you know?

To break R&B into subcategories does a disservice to the music. I like to live in a zone where I can do whatever I want, where I don't have to worry about genre.

My music is pretty versatile; I have a lot of genres and styles. I don't think I should be pigeonholed into one thing. So we'll see where my career goes.

I don't want to be held down by genres so much.

Maybe one day music will just be music, and there won't be these categories; it'll just be different shades of music.

My music is a direct reflection of the eclectic person I am. I don't like to be stuck in an R&B box.

A lot of people who have been perceiving my music have been trying to formulate a genre for it, and I think it's just a natural thing; it doesn't need to be categorized. It doesn't need to be sectioned, if you will.

I'm putting everything on the line in being able to express myself in a different way than rappers normally do. They might say, 'It's rap' or 'It's R&B,' but I'm stepping outside the box and making music for me and making music for the fans to understand me. I'm going the extra distance to be able to come across different.

A name doesn't make the music. It's just called that to differentiate it from other types of music.

I love a lot of music that's considered folk music, but I also love a lot of music that's considered punk or considered rap. I don't mind being called a folk singer. But it seems a bit limiting. I want to be able to write whatever kind of song I want.

I don't really like to put stuff in a box as far as genre-specific.

People grapple with labeling me as hip-hop, R&B, or pop, and it's interesting to me. I'm just making music.

From our music in general, we've always fought the idea that we had to fit into a box or fit into a certain category.

I urge younger artists to know that you don't have to be anything you don't want. You can do whatever's comfortable for you. From the music I make, to the things I do in my life, I'm true to my R&B core. I have the capability to make pop records and crossover, but that's not my aim.

My music has always been sort of in between categories. Sometimes record stores - back when there were record stores - they'd put my records in the country music section, but other record stores would put my records in the pop or even the rock section. As long as it's in the store somewhere, I'm OK with it.

I don't like the word 'urban' because I think it's a bit of a generalisation and they use it to class music, but I don't think it's a word that necessarily classes music.

You are still lucky - you have a certain type of people who keep buying your music - but then you can get typecast and have to keep making that same music, and you can change only slightly. It's risky to bounce around and change your type of music.

David Lee Roth had the idea that if you covered a successful song, you were half way home. C'mon - Van Halen doing 'Dancing in the Streets'? It was stupid. I started feeling like I would rather bomb playing my own songs than be successful playing someone else's music.

I never excluded any genre on my first record.

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