Steve Stoute Quotes

Music is always a commentary on society.

Anytime you can be a part of something that hopefully tries to make a cultural contribution, I love the idea of that.

I felt I had an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of great soul musicians of the past, who made a lot of social and political commentary through their music.

I went through a pretty big David Bowie period when I was younger, and that has affected me profoundly in my life and my work.

The power and reach of music should never be underestimated.

Today, somewhere in America, there's a kid who's got a laptop and a guitar and a couple of his friends he's putting together to play drums and bass, who's gonna change the way we say things, the way that we dress, the way we view things, the music we hear, everything.

Music changes kids, and kids change the world.

Music has the power to inspire the world.

A song's lyrics can't be held culprit for the overall change in society.

Indeed the influence of music on the development of religion is a subject which would repay a sympathetic study.

Songs are funny things. They can slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons. Penetrate hard shells. I always believed that the right song at the right moment could change history.

I don't think '90s music was as significant as '60s music in terms of changing the world, but it was significant, and I think it was similarly disillusioning when you realize the mainstream just views it as like a curiosity.

I think it's maybe because Sergeant Pepper's came out when I was about 13 or 14 and that was a pretty impressionable age, and it was such a kind of radical period. But that period of the Beatles really had a big influence on me and I think are directly related to hyperinstruments.

Elvis is the greatest cultural force in the twentieth century. He introduced the beat to everything, music, language, clothes, it's a whole new social revolution - the 60's comes from it.

Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dylan I heard when I was 13. It was one of those things where it was like, "Hey, the world is much bigger than you imagined as a little kid."

The French Revolution gave birth to no artists but only to a great journalist, Desmoulins, and to an under-the-counter writer, Sade. The only poet of the times was the guillotine.

Nevertheless, what was made in the hope of transforming the world need not be rejected because it failed to do so – otherwise, one would also have to throw out a good deal of the greatest painting and poetry of the nineteenth century. An objective political failure can still work as a model of intellectual affirmation or dissent.

What most of us must be involved in--whether we teach or write, make films, write films, direct films, play music, act, whatever we do--has to not only make people feel good and inspired and at one with other people around them, but also has to educate a new generation to do this very modest thing: change the world.

Michael Jackson fundamentally altered the terms of the debate about African American music.

I learned music listening to Elvis' records. His measurable effect on culture and music was even greater in England than in the States.

The Beatles changed the world. They certainly changed my world, and many, many other individuals as well.

Artists are not going to put somebody new in the president's chair. It's all worth the effort; it all needs to be done. But I don't look at songwriting as having the ability to necessarily do that today.

It's not necessarily a large number of people that affect the culture. You don't count the number of influential voices, you weigh them. A hundred people can affect the culture.

Musicians have the power to influence people and along with movie makers, they can reach and influence more people than any group of people, more than scientists and certainly more than politicians.