Nathaniel Rateliff Quotes

After I made 'Oh Carolina' in the 1990s, the record company wanted me to copy that sound, and I refused.

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

I don't really set out to please anybody, and I don't think I ever have. I have occasionally been encouraged to try to write something specifically for the purpose of releasing it as a single to get radio play. Those are not my best songs, as a rule.

I deliberately try not to cater for the commercial market, so I can't see myself in competition, you know, with second or third generation rock stars.

At the same time, I definitely want to expand my fan base but not at the expense of prostituting my music or heart.

I don't have a problem being on 'MTV,' and I don't have a problem being on the radio. I actually like it. So there. And anyone that calls me a sell out is just jealous.

We've never tried to write radio hits. If I hear our song on the radio, it's cool, and I'm proud, but it's never a goal.

For the first four or five years I was in Korea, I took a lot of direction from my management and label in terms of what people want. I found myself trying to fit into that thing I never felt comfortable with because the critique I got was that I was too American, and too sophisticated and polished in terms of my musicality and it won't sell.

If we'd had a Svengali manager and done what we would have been told, maybe we would have had a bigger, more hugely successful career.

I could make a PartyNextDoor album that's clean, all hits. That's not what I care about doing.

I've had offers to sign a record deal, but the people I've talked to have wanted to package me and have me meet with songwriters who've written stuff for Whitney Houston, that sort of thing. That's not at all my style.

I would rather fall flat on my face than try to just make a quick dollar by making music that fits into the radio format right now. It does nothing for me.

Any band that is out there chasing it is doing more destruction to music then someone who is out there playing what they truly feel.

The joy of songwriting only gets messed up if you are trying to follow up a big success, or you are trying to create a hit single, or if you have conscious thoughts of a particular outcome for the music.

If any of our songs ever did make it on the top ten, I'd disband the group immediately.

I am in a business that's built on record sales and reputation and how your single is doing and where your song is on iTunes. But the kind of music that I do comes from my beliefs.

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

I never thought of having platinum albums and winning awards. I just wanted to write songs and sing when I started out in the music business.

From doing Power Station, it was like, it's the same guys, but it doesn't sound like them. When we were in Duran, the labels and management wanted more Duran stuff so they could sell it.

We try and stay out of the corporate side of it. The band has never compromised. At some point in our career we could have made a certain type of record and sold millions of units, as they are called.

When you are in your 20's and 30's, you just want a hit record and you don't really care how it happens.

My second record I used a producer, which was frustrating in a way, because I think a lot of the punky spirit and provocative nature of the lyrics didn't come across - the music was pretty.

It was a lot easier to write songs before I had a record deal, because the record labels and the industry doesn't mean to put pressure on you, but they do. They don't realize that they are, but you end up having a pressure there that you feel. At times I feel myself wanting to say, 'Just let me do what I do.'

If you say, 'I'm going to cut this song because I know the teenagers are going to love it,' well, then you're going to alienate everybody else. When I cut my record, I'm just going to cut the things that I like, and whoever likes it, likes it. That's too much work to try to figure out the demographic. That's too much like a business.

I'd rather sell 10,000 records that represent me than 2 million that don't represent me at all.