Music as Storytelling Quotes

People ask who I am as an artist, who I am as a person. I don't ever want to tell them who I am; you can find that out in the music.

In Latin America, people want you to write beautiful melodies and words. But there are also songs that do well because they show the reality of life.

Everything changes all the time, and unfortunately, everyone who knows what you do by buying records only hears a small amount of what's going on in your life.

If you look at someone like Joe Strummer or John Lennon, when you heard their music you knew that they wrote it and they cared about it.

My fans don't feel like I hold anything back from them. They know whatever I'm going through now, they'll hear about it on a record someday. They'll hear the real story. There's a little bit of lag time. It's not as instant as going on a gossip blog. But it's much more accurate.

The reason I connected with music was because of the stories that people were telling and making me feel when I listened to a song.

I always thought songs are movies for the ears and films are like songs for the eyes.

One thing that really appeals to me is this idea of music being a living thing that has an evolution that, in a way, enables the artist to sell a process rather than a piece of product.

When I was writing my autobiography, these songs came up from time to time which were important to me, and I realized that what they really represented was, they'd come from this age of shared music.

The songs become the show, which is how it should be.

When something happens in Africa, an artist will sing about it and stuff. We have all the records; we have everything. Free Mandela records and all that.

I'm just basically trying to make music that feels good. Right now in the music industry there's a real lack of intimacy. You don't really connect with the artist as much anymore, and you don't really understand where they are. I'm basically doing music that illustrates who I am and where I am in my life.

On the second half of 'Under Pressure,' I talk about my family, and there are voicemails on my phone from when I was on the road that actually make up the second half of the nine-minute song. I transcribe them and rap them as if I were my sister, my brother, or my father.

Right around the end of the fifties, college students and young people in general, began to realize that this music was almost like a history of our country - this music contained the real history of the people of this country.

When the song is part of the action and working as dialogue, even two minutes is way too long.

I think possibly the first film that has music as its leading character.

I'm not just writing songs that are narrating my life, but everyone else around my age because they're super-relatable.