Music Censorship Quotes

I guess the majority of people who want to ban certain musicians are the ones who are so proud of everything America stands for.

I resent the fact that a parental warning sticker has to be included on an album as cover art. To me that's censorship.

When we were doing shows in the mid-'90s, the audiences were 95% black. What's happened now is the gentrification of hip-hop. A lot of cities passed ordinances that made it hard for black audiences to gather in large groups. Clubs are more open to hip-hop now 'cause it's the same crowd that goes to rock shows.

I have seen more bad songs make it because of MTV than good ones that haven't.

I got my influences from '70s bands - Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, blah blah blah. When I was growing up, we had all these crazy bands on the Top 40. Today, if Pink Floyd released 'Money,' it wouldn't even get played.

It's become uncool to play other people's songs, and that's absurd. It has got to change. It's the reason why everything's so mediocre.

I don't mind talking about the Dixie Chicks, because I feel like it's still alive and kicking.

I don't even want my music on mainstream radio. They don't deserve it. They destroy careers.

People will always have the desire to make rock and roll records, and they'll always have the desire to sell rock and roll records. Most of the people making these records do it because it is a business, and if someone says, "You can't do this", they won't complain. They'll just keep making records, but they'll get blander and blander. There'll still be rock and roll, but compared to what it really could be or ought to be, I don't think it'll be all that terrific.

Don’t listen to music that is degrading.

Pop music doesn't challenge anything.

It is difficult to get played at my age on the radio.

Unfortunately, we are living in an era where plenty of songs with vulgar, objectionable lyrics are also becoming popular. It's a disturbing trend, and I feel really sad when I see small kids dancing to such numbers in television shows. In my career so far, I have refused any song whose lyrics I haven't been comfortable with.

In the beginning it was very frustrating, being told girls don't sing this kind of music, and, 'Maybe you can try with pop or songs that are more romantic.'

Because I don't believe music can be free unless it has something to be free from.

I think there are unseen powers who don't want pop music to be anything other than glorified Madonnas.

I think hip-hop is actually one of the most challenging things that's happened in music in a long time. The people who are in charge of what people see or hear are afraid. What you hear on top 40 or what you see on BET or MTV is not a fair representation of what is really going on...

I felt bad about the controversy because they stopped playing my songs on American radio stations. But there was nothing wrong with what I did. Now everybody sings the national anthem the way they want.

There was no music at all during my childhood. The first time we heard music was when my eldest brother bought a tape recorder. Even then, only he was allowed to touch it. But in our house, we listened to legends such as Muhammad Rafi, Mehdi Hasan, Noor Jehan, Attaullah Khan Esakhelvi.

I think 'pop' can be a bit of a dirty word. People are very cool in Australia. They don't like to admit that they like pop. There are people who listen to Triple J and cool stuff like that, but commercial radio is massive, and if you look at the sales of the pop songs every week, people love pop music.

Like all right-listening folk, I am an implacable enemy of all muzak.

Going to America increased the build up on me, especially as the war was going on there. In a way we'd turned out to be a Trojan horse. The 'Fab Four' moved right to the top and then sang about drugs and sex and then I got into more and more heavy stuff and that's when they started dropping us.

Music is an artform, and I always though art was beyond censorship. I thought this was a common view. Apparently, I was wrong.

If some of those people who wanted to ban Beethoven's music could hear the music that's being played today, wow, what would they do, man?

That's one reason why it's pretty worthless, I can't totally buy it, if you think about it, it's things like the Phil Spector records. On one level they were rebellion, on another level they were keeping the teenager in his place.