Adam Yauch Quotes

If you think about it enough to have a really articulate answer, you're not doing it right. That's how I feel about art. If your thought process could take you to knowing exactly what you're doing and why, there would be no point in making the art. It would become like propaganda. It's more nebulous than that.

With my records, it's just a matter of trying to create something fresh for myself in a very finite context, which is the pop song. I don't know anything about the people who buy my records, and what, if anything, they get out of them.

You don't base records on success; you base it on creativity.

You write a hit the same way you write a flop.

I'm always gonna be all over my CD the most, of course. My talent is my talent. I ain't really tripping off no ego; I just like to make good music with good people.

If I wanted to make a quick buck, there's far easier ways of doing it. What I want is to provoke people. If you want a hit song, all you need to do is rewrite an old song. It might have been proven to work, but you won't be remembered the same way.

I think it's important to really press on with the song writing and just go with it. There's no code, there's no craft... it's just let yourself shine through your music. If it's meant to be loved and heard, it'll happen.

Who decides what is and what isn't punk? I want to write songs that people hear and feel, and I want to be successful and reach a big audience. I'm not trying to be the coolest guy in the world; I'm trying to write songs that mean something to people. As you get successful, sometimes you lose one set of fans and gain another.

One must act in painting as in life, directly.

I don't know if a song is going to be a hit or it's going to flop. I never know. I just do the music and if people like it, they like it.

You know, I've released some great records and I've released some dogs. But frankly, the fun is in creating the thing.

We lived on a farm in the English countryside, where we wrote a lot of our music. You really were treated like an artist during those days-not like product, which is now the mode.

There were aspects of stardom I didn't like, which were of no consequence, really, but the positive things far outweighed the negative. By the time I came to write 'Setting Sons,' I felt my writing was more like prose, set to music.

Getting to No. 1 makes everyone feel better; of course it does. But it's swings and roundabouts with these things. Sometimes you make a great record, and it clicks with people. And other times it passes them by; there's nothing you can do. It's still the same record.

I don't think the label makes the artist or the artist makes the label. It's the music that makes everything work or not.

When you're making a record - and I've never said this to anybody, but it's true - when you're making a record, and you go, 'Man, this might win a Grammy!' you feel that level of confidence when you're making a record.

The best pop songs are the ones that show that person's personality. It's harder to do those singles because the stars, moon and sun have to align and the audience have to be ready, but it's worth waiting for it.

Even in the early stages, you can tell who thinks you're an idiot singing songs someone else has written for you. We never wanted to be two producers and a girl who wears some shoes.

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.

I don't sit down to write a number one hit. I'm not that good at my job - I don't know how to do that.

There's a lot of creativity in the industry, but I don't necessarily think that the most creative DJs or producers are always the biggest ones.

We're not pop stars. Living with success is a job; it's the music that's dear to us.

Being a songwriter, my job is just to write songs for people. I'm not attached to them.

I mistrust these people in music industry who can be everybody. This is where technology dictates to them. I mistrust that, that in somehow the chips capture the soul of a player, that's patent nonsense.

Everybody has their own level of doing their music. ... Mine just happened to resonate over the years, in one way and another, with a significant enough number of people so that I could do it professionally.