Listener Perception Quotes

With rap, it's a funny thing. You can say things, and people can take 'em the way they wanna take 'em.

An effective speaker knows that the success or failure of his talk is not for him to decide - it will be decided in the minds and hearts of his hearers.

Listeners ne'er hear good of themselves.

I'm starting to find out that a lot of people that you wouldn't think listen to me really do.

I'll let the record [Who You Selling For] speak for itself. I don't want to get too in-depth with my personal opinions of it and where the songs came from because I think it messes with the listener to know the inside mindset of the writer. For example, I watched a Pink Floyd documentary the other day, and I learned that "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" was about [frontman] Syd Barrett. I didn't want to know that!

People who listen to them properly don't underestimate them. Unfortunately, there's so much about my career and me that distracts people from the actual content of most of my songs.

I learnt early on that your audience take the songs in the way they want to rather than the way you might want them too.

When you say 'R&B,' people's minds automatically go in a place. How about I just say, 'Here's a tape; you can check it out on iTunes. You tell me.'

I just feel like bands with the same people, no matter how different the band themselves thinks it is, the listeners go, 'Oh, yeah, it's another Nirvana record.'

In the first 20 seconds of talking, your light is green: your listener is liking you as long as your statement is relevant to the conversation and, hopefully, in service of the other person. But unless you are an extremely gifted raconteur, people who talk for more than roughly half a minute at a time are boring and often perceived as too chatty.

Radio listeners often have a very fertile imagination when it comes to body shape.

I feel that the BBC World Service is not as versatile as it used to be - or perhaps I'm not listening at the right times.

My voice in combination with the harp - which, by the way, I use because I've played it my entire life, not to make some statement about the harp - somehow has ... coloured people's interpretations of the music and projected an idea of childlike or fairytale quality or innocence. Which sometimes prevents people from listening to the songs the way I would like them to be listened to.

A lot of people hear it in a dark way, but, I think, without saying the word too many times, it's empowering, and so we wanted to display that in a way that the listener wouldn't see normally.

A riff can take on the aspect of a chorus in a listener's psyche.

I think that most people really know if it's a really great album.

After Chuck Berry died, it seemed web sites popped up like mushrooms to show where he'd taken the guitar introduction to 'Johnny B. Goode' from to prove that his music was nothing new, that it was only ignorance, or vanity, that led his listeners to think that not only was the music different - they might be, too.

I love 'hearing a person's face' in their music. I've been told by fans that they can tell when I'm smiling or feeling mischievous in my voice - that's a huge compliment.

My work should be judged as it enters the ears and heads of listeners, not as it is described to the eyes of readers.