Josh Dun Quotes

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

With Lady Antebellum, there's always pressure. It's hard for commerce not to rear its ugly head when you're making decisions.

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.

I learned how difficult it is to be an artist. There are always compromises. The record company wants you to do this, your fans want you to do this, your family - you can't concentrate on your work.

I'm not trying to chase a radio hit, but at a certain time, you can't make the same album over and over.

I'm not saying I wasn't flawed or amateurish. But you can never say I did anything to appease the music business.

It's such a hard thing to write a song for your fans without sounding naff and thanking them for spending money on you.

If you can't handle the responsibility of a hit single, don't write one.

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

To say that an artist sells out means that an artist is making a conscious choice to compromise his music, to to weaken his music for the sake of commercial gain.

I don't like working with hitmakers. I don't want hits! You're not even allowed to say that word around me.

I like Modest Mouse. I'm our biggest fan. And enemy. I won't waste people's time by putting out a Modest Mouse record just because. That's fair, right?

Being an indie queen, people think I have all these choices. Like I've just been sitting around waiting for the best indie film that I deem acceptable.

Making music is like being the president: You can't tell people you're going to make health care free to get them behind you, but when you get that role, you don't do it.

I love hip hop, and I have a bunch of urban songs I write for fun that I can't put on my albums because people would laugh and point.

In my opinion, some of the hip-hop records that come out, people are willing to compromise. I'm not.

In the very early days of Wham! the attention felt great, but I do wonder how much freedom I gave away by trying to become something I wasn't.

Sometimes people stop me on the street and they say 'when are you going to make the next 'Zanaka' and it's what I really didn't want to do.

I wrote 'Don't Stop' just like I wrote 'Pumped Up Kicks' - I didn't try to make either a hit. I just wanted to write a song I liked.

It's hard when people are expecting things from you, and all you're trying to do is write songs that you like for yourself.

I know, if I would have won 'X-Factor' and if I would have continued in that lane, I would have spiraled out of control. Performing on there was good, but it wasn't me. It was me compromising for the judges, just different people around.

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

I was in school for four years writing music to please my teachers. That was not music I liked. And when I make music that isn't for something I want to make, and it's to please other people, it's - the outcome is really bad.

I can show these folks I can do more than just the 'trap.' But what I realized is the trap is what they really recognize me for - that's what they want to hear.