Aaron Neville Quotes

I think I just have a natural operatic aesthetic. I can't help it.

Any saxophone player will have those influences come through in their music in a very different way. I can listen to the same 10 sax players as someone else for my entire life, and we'll both play completely differently. That's the beauty of being a musician.

Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do, and then just go for it.

With film, it's all about the actor being able to feel the things that the character's feeling. It must do some strange things to your mind. Music I find much easier because you're being honest about where you are as a person.

I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That's all I know.

The way that I've always gone about making music, the rule of thumb, has just been to make what I love.

I go for as much feeling as I can rather than show what I can do up and down the neck. I don't play to show people ability.

Music has this emotional thing to it, and it touches people in crazy ways. The power of having that power is something that, once you have it, you don't want it to ever end.

I'm glad there are a lot of guitar players pursuing technique as diligently as they possibly can, because it leaves this whole other area open to people like me.

I wanted to give people a taste of my own music through the sound and style of my covers.

In French, there is an old expression, la patte, meaning the artist's touch, his personal style, his 'paw'. I wanted to get away from la patte and from all that retinal painting.

My style is not trendy by any means; my inner artists loves to shine through in my wardrobe.

When you're trying to paint a portrait of a very specific world, you're trying to show what makes the world different. So, sometimes it means exaggerating certain kind of aspects, but I don't think it's that important or it's that much of an issue as long as you get an emotional truth across.

If you've got a good vibrato, you can get away with a lot.

I mean whatever I do it's important that I put my stamp on it and keep it in my world, whether I'm doing a dance track or something like the Russian album for example.

I learnt from Armstrong on the early recordings that you never sang a song the same way twice.

The human voice is the most beautiful instrument of all, but it is the most difficult to play.

I believe in sketching because there is something very sensitive in sketching, you know, in sketches that you don't have out of a computer that looks the same like everybody even if, later on, the dresses are OK, but I like to sketch, and I like to see trails made after my sketches that look the same. It is you know, what I like.

It's interesting the kind of freedom the musical form gives you. The rules are out the window. You can get impressionistic without seeming pretentious. Because it's perceived as an inherently accessible form, it gives filmmakers some leeway.

I'm not that interested in recreating reality. I'm interested in recreating an emotional truth.

Films should involve a director's idiosyncrasies as much as possible I think.

Completing your performance with your own voice is so important. It's not only my face and expressions... the voice added to it always feels good.

I never wanted to sound clean and pretty. In jazz, I felt I could sing these deep, husky lows if I want and then these really tiny laser highs if I want as well.

Music should not be a contest, it should be an individual thing that each band is putting out from within themselves.

I really am in love with the idea of an artistic signature.