Alicia Keys Quotes

You need the past as a guideline. The history of music is a good basis, but to escape that stuff, that tortuous rulebook, you have to learn it first. It's kind of like religion - once you've written the Bible, that's it, move on.

There's only one band that could ever even pretend to assume the mantle of what the Beatles did, who have been so pre-eminent and world-dominating that they could effect a paradigm shift in the culture, who have been willing to leverage their success into musical change, and that is U2 - regardless of what the result of that is.

I'm making music that I love and I want to hear. At the same time, things like making money, making crazy money - you gotta find ways to reach to everybody but uplift everybody.

I'm gonna try and change the course of hip hop again.

Music is changing. I'm just doing what I'm doing, and hopefully in the next 20, 30 years, some kids can take what I'm doing and change it again. If the music doesn't move, then it's dead.

The '60s were a time of great change in American music.

People of Berlin - people of the world - this is our moment. This is our time.

Some people just don't want to see change, but thankfully there are a lot of people more optimistic for something new in music, even with the bigger picture like with Obama getting elected.

I just change with the times. I really don't have a say in what's going on. Music was here before me.

All history is defined by shifting modes of reality and time and how things change. That's what I love about cinema. It changes in the moment.

Since time is a continuum, the moment is always different, so the music is always different.

As far as the creative side of making great, great albums and really trying to go down in history? I don't see that happening lately, you know what I mean? You have a lot of guys is talented, but at the same time, timeless music is more important to me.

Late 20th century music was a really important thing. It changed the world, and I'm part of that, and now I'm part of the museum that celebrates that.

They have all different names for music. I think the music I'm going to change the style with is going to be really, really big-years and years after I'm gone.

In America, for a brief time, people who followed Coltrane were studied and considered important, but it didn't last long. The result is that the kind of music I played in the '60's is completely dismissed in this country as a wrong turn, a suicidal effort.

A year is an eternity in politics - though less than a moment in history.

We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.

Hip-hop's always reached out to kids. If you look at the last 10 big albums it might seem ironic. But when I look at the history of this music it's always had a lot of positivity.

It takes 300 years, it seems, for the great bands to get their due.

Music history has flowed under the bridges for many years.

Most of the best music in American history was made by people with no options.

Music is always changing and the changes are unpredictable.

Ragtime was a fanfare for the 20th century.

All roads for me lead back to Mozart. In his tragically short life, he breathed new life, fire and meaning into every form of music that existed in his time.

Mexican Shuffle was a turning point of the Brass.