Steve Winwood Quotes

Everything's so commercialised it shuts down the underground.

Well, the stuff that has become more commercial doesn't have any edge.

That's just the way the world's going - everything has to be so instantly commercial that it kills anything that's a little bit underground instantly.

Country was about character. Country's changed because of monsters like Clear Channel who bought up all the stations and sliced them up into formats. Our demographic is now the soccer mom.

I get really frustrated with people who turn their noses up at talent shows like 'The Voice' and 'X-Factor.'

The pop world is cool, but I never really thought of myself as part of it or wanting to be a part of it because I'm on a label that's not really like that. They're not trying to dress me up, they're not trying to do things like that. I feel like I'm sort of separate from that, actually.

Most of the music you hear on the radio today is developed for making money. It doesn't feel true or honest. You can feel it in the music.

You wouldn't find a Joni Mitchell on 'X Factor;' that's not the place. 'X Factor' is a specific thing for people that want to go through that process - it's a factory, you know, and it's owned and stitched-up by puppet masters.

I don't have anything against Simon Cowell and 'The X Factor.'

Industry executives sacrificed art for what sells and mega-stars now saturate the market with the same tired lyrics.

Today, music is great for entertainment, but it is lacking soul; it's lacking substance, and it's difficult to find good stuff. There are too many corporate interests. It's not about the actual music because it's about the corporation, and music just becomes part of a package.

I'm proud to be involved with Simon Cowell and 'X Factor.'

I think too much of the music industry is for the lawyer and accountant mentality.

The fun of being in the pop world is you can really play with people's perceptions of what the word pop means.

Hollywood is tied hand and foot to the demands for artificiality of the masses all over the world.

The '60s are presented to kids today as a commodity.

I have cut four albums so far, and all of them have been trendsetters and commercially successful. I believe that once you start taking art in commercial terms, it ceases to be art.

I just could not believe that 30 years later we're still looking at people who are supposed to write little 2-minute pop that when they actually try to do something that's a little bit more they regard it as pretentious.

Kids are meant to believe that their stepping stone to massive money is 'The X Factor.'

The world is so caught up in the 'American Idol' idealistic sort of tendency in regards to just thinking that this whole thing is what everybody wants, but it doesn't help you make a better record.

I like 'X Factor' as much as the next person, but I do get overwhelmed with the amount of reality TV. It's such cheap programming and such a load of rubbish, most of it.

Since the 1960s, mainstream media has searched out and co-opted the most authentic things it could find in youth culture, whether that was psychedelic culture, anti-war culture, blue jeans culture. Eventually heavy metal culture, rap culture, electronica - they'll look for it and then market it back to kids at the mall.

Pop music has been all but relegated to the remainder bin at MTV and VH1, where high-maintenance concoctions such as Paris Hilton, Flavor Flav, and Hulk Hogan's biohazard clan of bleached specimens provide endless hours of death-hastening diversion.

The pop culture tends to go to the lowest denominator, so cinema is in a weird place, due to its mass nature. It's diluted down to very little: simple stories and simple politics.

All that pop that you see on the radio? It's just the worst crud I've ever heard in my life. It's designed to make money, and that's about it.