Music Categorization Quotes

I can't tell you what genre Maroon 5 is in. I don't know if they're rock or pop or alternative. I don't know what they are. I have a hard time separating that stuff. I just know what I like when I hear it.

For me there are two types of country: There's the shoot-yourself-in-the-head country, and then there's really good country music.

I don't see myself as a pop artist. Like, when you hear 'pop,' you're like, 'Oh, bubblegum, jumpy little girly stuff,' and I feel like, 'Uh-uh. That's not me.'

I was frustrated in the past, like, 'Wow, why do they have to throw me in the R&B urban adult contemporary lane?' 'Woman' was a no. 1 hit at Urban AC, so there's no disrespect to that lane. But did it get a fair shot at urban radio? No, I don't think so.

I never worry 'cause people always try to categorize me. "Oh, that's reggaeton." "Oh, he's a Latin rapper." "Oh, he's crunk." "Oh, he's a Southern rapper," or, "He's a club rapper." As long as they're listening to the music and they're talkin' about it, one way or the other, that means I'm doing something right.

Am I R&B because I'm black? Am I pop because I have a song called 'Milkshake'? Or can I just be who the hell I am? Good Lord, people make it seem like we're doing heart transplants here, but we're just making music!

I don't think I am a soul singer and definitely don't think that I am a country artist by any stretch.

I used to think of 'alternative rock' as a radio format, kind of the way 'indie rock' used to have more meaning. But it means different things depending on where you are or what country you're in.

First I was a European-style player, then I was a downtown 'noise guy,' and now some people call me an Americana guy.

I've had big record label presidents look me in the face and say, 'Your music sucks, you don't know who you are, your music is all over the place, and we don't know how to market this stuff. Pick a lane and come back to us.'

There was such hostility to the idea of a banjo being a black instrument. It was co-opted by this white supremacist notion that old-time music was the inheritance of white America.

I don't think a song should be put in a category.

Music is music; you can't change rock and say well this is punk rock and this is acid rock or rockabilly.

It's American Alternative radio stations that bug me. We're considered Alternative, but don't expect us to be played next to Blink 182 and Offspring. We're hardly of that generation.

I would love for the time to come where somebody can talk about me and not have to talk about Britney and Christina in the same sentence.

The mainstream media tend to lump everything together. To them, there's no difference between Madonna, the Rolling Stones, or whatever.

The way I see it, rock n' roll is folk music.

In the mid-'60s, AM radio, pop radio, was just this incredible thing that played all kinds of music... You could hear Frank Sinatra right into the Yardbirds. The Beatles into Dean Martin. It was this amazing thing, and I miss it, in a way, because music has become so compartmentalized now, but in those days, it was all right in one spot.

I don't know anybody who doesn't hate being called alt.country. It just sounds like a website. I don't mind being called Americana, I don't mind being called country noir, or independent country is fine, but the words alt.country make me insane.

I am not a jazz singer. I wouldn't place myself on that footing. I wouldn't even enter that arena.

I was considered as a jazz man rather than as a blues player. There were no blues players-you played one sort of jazz of another sort of jazz.

It's funny: when I was a kid, my mom would reorganize the record collection all the time. She'd have classical, she'd have Celtic, she'd have rock and roll, and then she'd have female singers. And I don't like it that female singers are their own genre.

I think this whole division between the genres has more to do with marketing than anything else. It's terrible for the culture of music.

I'm in R&B/Soul, and I feel like all my music is R&B driven. Even some of the songs that are more rap have an R&B feel, so I'm with that.

I'm not as aware of categories in music as some people are. To me it's just music. I'm interested in all kinds of music.