Music Criteria Quotes

I like my stuff 'cause I only ever end up with tracks that I really, really like. It always appeals to me.

Sometimes I don't go into the studio for quite a while because I haven't found enough good songs. They have to have a certain caliber and connect with me because I'm going to be playing them for the rest of my life. I start off with a circle of friends whose songs I love anyway.

If you're going to use standards as criteria for signing musicians, you can sign thousands. If you're going to use some sort of conceptual interpretation that's based on the tradition of those standards, but is trying to move away from it, you're down to about 10 people or so.

What is the best music is impossible to define. Just because it's played by a virtuoso player, doesn't mean it's great music. It might not reflect the soul of a people, which is really my criteria for great music.

We always talk about our kids being a great way to judge whether it's a hit song because there's something very basic about the way they perceive the music that I think needs to be there if it's gonna be a hit.

I'm doing super quality control. I'll have five tunes that I think are all good - before I would've put out all five tunes but now I'm just putting out that one out of the five that I think is the banger.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is not a public democratic organization; it's a private club basically. It's like a private golf club and they decide who they're going to let in the club.

Now, I don't know how they judge all that, but if anybody in the world deserves to be in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, Ritchie Valens does.

We're very historically tried and true when it comes to our albums. We pick the best songs; we get rid of the songs we feel don't fit on the album, and we don't work on remixing or remastering albums.

When I made '1983,' there were a bunch of tracks that were in the early drafts that didn't make it because they just sounded like tracks for rappers, and that's not really the sound I look for when I produce my own albums.