Sharon Jones Quotes

Music doesn't have to be fancy. I work hard and enjoy the fact that people want to come to my shows. That's simple, but I'm pretty blue-collar about it.

The biggest thing Motown did was change our social fabric: the way we interacted with each other as human beings.

Compared to what they were, rock concerts now are like business meetings.

The music industry has been hijacked by corporate interests, but the way music affects people and resonates with them hasn't changed.

Concert-going has become much less the thing to do, while people are still going to opera. This might be a harsh judgment, but it could easily happen that orchestras could slowly atrophy.

It's fair to say that white America wouldn't have elected an African-American president without the integrating effect of black music - from Louis Armstrong to hip-hop - and black drama and fiction, commercial as much as 'serious.'

I'm 90% performer, 10% musician. I've always said that Gossip are a band I would go see, not a band I would listen to.

Well, I had an after hours club in Vancouver and when any of the Motown acts would call.

When I had my first gig, I was 18 in January in 2007. My first gig that I got paid, I was playing for 10 people in a 250 people capacity venue. The promoter wanted to book me because he liked my music. I played a couple of songs that made people dance. To me, that rush has always stayed the same.

Being famous is having the power to really implement positive change in the world, and it gives you the power to do what you want. I'm really grateful for it because I can play music and people will listen.

More than half of all the hip hop record sales are white people, and I think that might be a result of my record helping people to accept hip hop.

It was all about music, about getting your friends to come and see you play. I don't see that same intimacy happening very much today.

Musicians by and large make a living with a relationship with an audience that is economically harnessed through performance and ticket sales.

Entertainment, really, is a dying industry.

Some of the wise boys who say my music is loud, blatant and that's all should see the faces of the kids who have driven a hundred miles through the snow to see the band... to stand in front of the bandstand in an ecstasy all their own.

The Blues scene now is international. In the '50s it was purely something that you would hear in black clubs, played by black musicians, especially in America. But from the '60s onwards it changed.

I still have all the faith and love for my music and yet I'm still playing places for kids.

A whole generation of young whites have involved themselves with traditional Negro music.

The first time I ever saw a black audience at our concert, we were in Zimbabwe.

When cultural movements happen, it's so beyond your control.

There's a tendency to make more money at concerts. That's from a financial standpoint. Night clubs have a better feel, better contact between the artist and the audience.

It's just really cool to go to countries and play festivals for people who don't really know your band or don't ever get to see it. It's really nice.

When you play a show or festival, people know what they're getting; they want it. Then you're thrown onto a show where people are watching TV in their houses, and whether they ask for it or not, we're being played in front of them. There's a lot of negative feedback.

It's an incredible experience to interact with fans in first person, get immediate responses to your music and see the madness that your music creates.

It's very, very exciting for me to hear my songs on the radio and to play shows and have people know the words.