Daryl Hall Quotes

Society wants to categorize everything, but to me it's all African-American music.

Music is music; you don't have to put a label on it.

Too much emphasis is put on American roots music when people try and place me. You know, I grew up listening to punk.

I really love music that's on the periphery of not fitting into a clear genre. I felt like I was constantly being described as something I didn't really feel like I identified with.

Hip-hop is the only music in the world where you can take any instrument and make it hip hop. It's anybody's music. It's what you make of it. That's for anything you do in life.

We don't want to box ourselves within any type of genre, you know? Whatever feels good, if it moves us and we like it, we get on it and make it our own. That's what we do.

I think the music defends myself. I don't think anyone should put a race on any genre. It's just a way of expressing yourself through instruments and sounds, right? People can just listen to the music.

That's what hip-hop is - it's about meeting the music where you are, and then you add on top of that. It's about coming at it with your full self.

I didn't get into music to become a blues musician, or a country musician. I'm a singer-songwriter. In my book that means I get to do whatever I want.

As an artist, you have to express yourself. I make no excuses for my versatility. I grew up singing classical arias, but I love rock n' roll and jazz standards.

Me as an artist, I've ventured off into doing all types of music. I'll do a jazz album, you know what I mean.

To break R&B into subcategories does a disservice to the music. I like to live in a zone where I can do whatever I want, where I don't have to worry about genre.

The reflection of the world is blues, that's where that part of the music is at. Then you got this other kind of music that's tryin' to come around.

People say my music is English. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's not me writing English music, but that English music is becoming more like me.

I don't really believe in the type of pressure that people are wanting to put on the type of music that I make.

The biggest misconception about us is that we're just a rock band. We think our music is a cross-section of many genres; a hybrid of what the six of us have grown up on.

I am consciously not trying to bring in World Music elements. The ways that I work and feel are completely different in how they sound than someone playing the Kora in Africa would play it.

I wouldn't go so far as to make 'You Don't Own Me' a tango or 'It's My Party' a hip-hop thing. Believe me, those things have been suggested to me. But I thought if I could stay true to the song, the arrangements would work. I'm really enjoying singing them.

People are always defining and re-defining music. My style of playing has been characterized as smooth jazz and acid jazz. I listen as I play; I'm not caught up in defining the type of music I play.

At first, I found the music I was making really hard to find a home for. I felt like my attitude was really British, but not the actual sounds I was making. Back in 2003, when I made 'Galang,' there were no clubs that had an 'anything and everything' attitude.

Music is music. It doesn't matter if I am trying to aim at country or trying to aim at pop.

I wouldn't categorize myself as R&B or hip-hop. I don't really know how to categorize myself. I'm still working out where I fit with that stuff. I kind of think of myself as pop.

People grapple with labeling me as hip-hop, R&B, or pop, and it's interesting to me. I'm just making music.

I've been criticized for doing so - crossover music. But I never claimed to be a pure dancehall artist.

Ultimately it's just music - whether I'm catering to the Bollywood audience or the indie audience. I just approach every type of music the way I am, and how my personality is.