Rodney Crowell Quotes

I didn't start singing and writing songs properly until I was 19.

I was 19 when I wrote 'Dreams,' and that would have been when it started to happen. The band got signed, and I was probably beginning to see different things besides my small town of Ballybricken.

'The Voice' gave me a chance to show people the side of me that is an artist. People didn't know what that would look like or sound like. It allowed people to see that potential.

I knew I always wanted to sing.

When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a rock star, not an actor. It means I can do what I want on my own terms.

I've always gone back and forth between acting and music, but for music I'm not trying to be a pop star - I just like to do it.

The Beach Boys was a family hobby that we turned into a profession. We're very blessed.

I thought for a long time that I was going to be a pop artist. It was around 18-19 that I started to make that a reality. I just knew that this was my destiny.

I've only ever wanted to be a singer; I never wanted to be famous.

For a lot of pop performers, fame and celebrity is part of the job. But for singer-songwriters, no one really cares.

Very unique: I was a singer-songwriter-guitarist. Very unusual in the late Seventies to find a singer-songwriter, and on top of that, a guitarist.

I just sing and write songs and wear what I want. It's quite a good job really. If I wanted to I suppose I could become more of a fashion icon, but singing is my thing.

I always wanted to be known as a songwriter and not just a songbird.

If I was just a fan of music, I would think that I was the number one artist in the world.

I always knew I couldn't sing, but I also knew I had a voice that isn't heard by many, and that I could learn how to stretch it and make songs sound good.

I really think I've found me finally in the music. You know, I had put an album out before, 'Embrace Me,' and it's been seven years since that. So I was discovering who I was. And I still am discovering, but I think now I know a little bit more of who I am. So that's what's pushing me.

I take my hat off to people like the Stones, but it's not for me. I couldn't do that. Jagger is brilliant and long may he rock. I couldn't make my career out of old songs; it would do my head in.

I was a cover artist for years. I didn't start writing songs until I was in my mid-twenties. I wrote them with John Leventhal, and they were pretty bad. I was in my late twenties when I wrote the first song with him that made any sense to me about what I was rooted in and what spoke for me as an artist. That was 'Diamond in the Rough.'

I can take a three-year-old and make a hit record.

My task with 'Uh-Huh' was to make a more even record and get away from juvenile topics like 'Hurts So Good.' But I also knew if I wanted to continue, I had to have more hits.

You don't just wake up one morning and decide to become a singer-songwriter.

I'm trying to break away from doing covers or from being considered only as a YouTube star. I'm a singer, songwriter, sound engineer, and producer.

Everyone has their own journey, and for me, going from singing background to writing songs has truly opened doors for me and has also helped me find myself as an artist in terms of what I want to say and the style of music I want to have.

After the first three or four years of me taking rap seriously, it started to look more promising. I started booking shows and more people were playing my music, so I starting believing this could actually work for me.

There was a period in my life when I was trying to write standards: songs that everybody recorded. I did a pretty good run of it.