Lewis Gordon Pugh Quotes

The whole of life itself expresses the blues. That's why I always say the blues are the true facts of life expressed in words and song, inspiration, feeling and understanding. The blues can be about anything pertaining to the facts of life. The blues call on God as much as a spiritual song do.

You cannot have black music without something soulful in it, whether it's lyrically, how it's performed, or how it's expressed.

Blues is easy to play, but hard to feel.

It excites me when a person puts their whole self in a song or rhyme, or instrument. It fills me.

The blues is life itself.

In the course of my life, I've made some happy songs but it's the more sort of like pathos-laden, emotional, melancholic music that either I make or that other people make that really resonates with me.

Blues is a natural fact, is something that a fellow lives. If you don't live it you don't have it. Young people have forgotten to cry the blues. Now they talk and get lawyers and things.

I like rap. I like anything with soul. I like anything you can feel, anything that makes you think that the artist had to make that song, or they were going to go crazy.

The blues tells a story. Every line of the blues has a meaning.

Sounds like the blues are composed of feeling, finesse, and fear.

I've always loved the blues, ever since I was a kid. It has a depth to it that a lot of contemporary music doesn't have. It has pain and suffering in it, but funny stories, too. And it is built on storytelling, which is something I really love.

The blues is nothing but a story... The verses which are sung in the blues is a true story, what people are doing... what they all went through. It's not just a song, see?

To me, blues is more of a feel and a vibe, rather than sitting there and saying, 'Well, I'm gonna play bluesy now.'

I'm an old soul. The blues, especially older blues, is the human element that kind of gives the music soul, and I think that maybe not enough people connect to the blues. It's a very powerful place to be; and if you can express that to an audience, I think that you can express a lot through that.

The one thing I loved about blues and soul was the way they taught the world how to express such deep feelings.

I listen to a lot of songs, and they aren't talking about anything. I don't connect with them. I'll listen to something like Musiq Soulchild's 'Just Friends,' and I'm like, 'Wow, I really feel what he's talking about.' That's how I want people to feel about my music.

One thing I'm super aware of in my music when I'm writing is: 'Am I overcomplicating this?' I'll write a song about some deep existential quandary and explore all these dumb thought waves, and then think 'Is it effective to say that? Or is it effective to say one simple thing that communicates the feeling better?'

That's the good thing about music: you can sing about people's lives in its stages and feelings. Some songs can put something in context that you couldn't. They can free your mind or can make you think or can be redeeming.

Russian work songs can make you suffer.

I think that soul, to me, is the theme of music that I connect with.

I just like a good, sad song. The sadder, the better. It moves me.

And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.

I think blues music is music of the soul. Of course, there are other forms. You could call some classical music blues music in that way.

The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstances, whether created by others or by one's own human failing.

The blues? Why, the blues are a part of me. They're like a chant. The blues are like spirituals, almost sacred. When we sing blues, we're singing out our hearts, we're singing out our feelings. Maybe we're hurt and just can't answer back, then we sing or maybe even hum the blues. When I sing, 'I walk the floor, wring my hands and cry -- Yes, I walk the floor, wring my hands and cry,'... what I'm doing is letting my soul out.