Daniel Espinosa Quotes

Working with David Bowie was very interesting, but I couldn't surrender to it. I should have let him produce a record for me, but I'm very perverse in some ways. He's brilliant, but the entourage were rather daunting.

The best thing is when you hear somebody take your song and make something great of it.

I think if you're going to cover a song, you should definitely take it apart and put it back together as if you wrote it. I don't think you should sing it the same way that the artist sang it - that's kind of pointless.

Making music with people is a very intimate process.

I don't ascribe to the idea of the ivory tower composer who sits alone in a room composing his masterpieces and then comes down from Mount Sinai with the tablets. It doesn't work like that. The job of a composer is putting something down on a piece of paper that will inspire the person who's playing.

I like to do cover songs if I really love them, I have to love the song first.

Regardless of who originally made it popular, any hit song becomes a challenge to the ingenuity and imagination of other musicians and performers.

Composers shouldn't think too much - it interferes with their plagiarism.

I was rather disappointed, because the one thing I wanted to gain from that opportunity was to add something to his music, and have him add something to mine.

It's fun to see how other artists adapt my work.

John Mayer would be my ultimate collaboration because he's just the man. He has basically captured all I believe in with music.

When you're doing collaborative music, the relationship that forms is a very bonding kind of experience.

I feel like, paying homage to an artist, it's better to do something that's inspired by them - a new work that's inspired by them - versus another person saying they redid your song.

It's easy for a singer to sometimes pick up on another singer's sound, but that's just copying.

I've remixed lots of other people's songs, from Adele to Electric Light Orchestra to Beyonce, so when my record label said, 'Why don't you give 'Ibiza' to someone to remix?' I said, 'Sure,' because I like the idea of people reimagining art and making something new out of it.

The Beatles had a huge impact on me. I did 'Strawberry Fields Forever', and we worked it out in an open tuning. That's such a beautiful song, and I think I did it in a different way.

That's the great part about arts - someone taking your work and making it something else; it's becomes a true collaboration.

I try to take whatever I can from the songs I grew up listening to, these vibed-out pop numbers, and make them my own in some weird way.

My appeal to the composers, whoever touches an old classic, will only be this much: take it up only if you can express it your way, too; work hard with the writers; make them see your new vision for the song; change the lyrics, yet, keep the soul of the original song intact.

Over four or five years, I did six albums with three people: John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, and Patti Smith. I felt that if I could care as much about their music as they did, I could be useful to them. I really cared about their music and their lives.

I think doing a record with B.B. King allowed me the opportunity to blend two different generations across the board and make a song that I hope is extremely impactful.

You don't necessarily have to write a song to make it your own. After all, Elvis never wrote a song in his life.

The only time that I've adopted characterization again since that point, for my own albums, has been an album called "Outside" that I did with Brian Eno.

He's writing what I'm singing, and I'm writing what he's playing.

I came in with a completely new perspective. I would write songs and they would pick tunes they felt were in the Purple vein.