Jeff Lynne Quotes

We were just hoping 'Prayin' for Daylight' wasn't a complete flop. Selling a million records wasn't even in our wildest thoughts.

Now that I'm with RCA, they were able to get radio on board, and it's just really awesome to see their support and 'What Ifs' going to No. 1.

We used to call it recurrent airplay when someone had a hit.

Recently, I've been working on anew album of material, which should be out in the new Millennium. I'm not sure which song will be put out as a single, but I'm still hoping to get another record in the charts.

I don't think the label cares about an album... People just want their number-one record.

After we wrote The Wreckoning, our record label did listen.

A record for us that sells 50,000 is a good record, and 100,000 is a serious hit.

Man, I was scared. I didn't know what to think. All of a sudden, I got a record climbing the charts, and I'm out in the streets. You know, workin' on the docks. And the first week, it sold something like 40,000 in New Orleans.

With pop songs, they usually have a three-month roll out.

In Australia, our first album went four-times platinum. It was massive.

Raoul' sold a respectable 700,000 copies without a hit single. It didn't take off. If you don't sell 8 million albums or 4 million albums again, everybody deems it a big failure.

I never used to get calls from artists or labels, but once you have a top 20 hit, you start getting them.

We were number one most added at radio, when the single came out and that's much different. It took like eight months for any radio to happen on the first record, so a lot more support has happened right out of the box.

I can work my butt off and create an album that's wonderful, but if it's never played and never given the outlet, it won't succeed.

The music industry is saying, This is the format, and if you'll fit into this format, you can be on radio, and if radio will play you, MTV will expose you, and MTV will expose you, we'll sell records.

It's a songwriter's dream to have a song recorded and run up the charts.

A lot of people see a Nissan ad and they see a finished product in a record store or on iTunes and that's the face of the band.

People say, 'How's the record doing?' In the old days you'd say, 'We're at 600,000, it's doing great.' You don't say those things anymore. Those numbers are gone.

I don't ever have the pressure of making a hit, because I've never had a hit song, per se. The closest thing to a hit song was 'Shiraz,' and it's not your prototypical hit song, with a catchy hook and all this other stuff.

How does a band like System of a Down get big?

Unless I've got Katy Perry on the cover of my CD, it's going to be tough to sell a lot of records.

Chart numbers can be deceiving. An album doesn't have to sell that much these days to show up really high on the charts.

I mean in recent years, I think you've only got to sell thirty or forty thousand to get a #1.

I paid my dues. I have crawled to gigs. I have served people coffee. I worked hard selling all these records out the back of my car. Girl, I'm ready to sell one the real way now.

I just want to keep saturating the market and radio with as many hit records as I can.