Music Crossover Quotes

When I say I don't have to write pop songs anymore, there's no way I'm going to get on the radio at 60 years of age unless I'm doing a duet with Gaga or I was on 'All of the Lights,' which was a Kanye West record that managed to get on the radio.

Rap is always evolving. It's easy for the old school to hate the new school, but it's a music that got a little stifled I think, by the Internet a little bit.

Taylor's first four albums have been certified platinum a combined 21 times, but despite her unprecedented success in country music, '1989' is strictly pop.

A lot of people forget that R&B put hip-hop on, R&B put rock on.

When Nicki was putting out mixtapes, she was the only female rapper that had any kind of buzz. And not to mention that she was on the track with the guys, you know? So you had the girls playing it, and you had the hood guys playing it, too, so you couldn't run away from Nicki.

There's a place for R&B in the U.K. industry - a huge market. I hope that 'Boo'd Up' can be a testament to the fact. Sometimes, it takes you moving outside the box to prove that it can be done.

Everybody's all up on the EDM bandwagon now, because it's, like, another viable conduit for traditional pop music to ride for a bit so they can get out of their little stagnant pool and make a dance hit.

There were incredibly few rock songs making it out to the airwaves until the '80s came along.

When I lived in Nashville, Tanya Tucker and people like that were coming up, and I'm sure that Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette were going, 'What's that noise? That's not country.' It's always been this battle where whoever comes up behind the reigning stars isn't country enough. There really is a lot more crossover now.

Who were the biggest acts in the world in 1987? Guns N' Roses and Metallica. I shamelessly pandered to surfers and skateboarders, and in pictures from then, you'll see Slash and those guys wearing N.W.A stuff. If they thought it was cool, people in Kansas and Wyoming would buy it. That's how we broached the subject.

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.

Looking back on the production of 'Nevermind,' I'm embarrassed by it now. It's closer to a Motley Crue record than it is a punk rock record.

I love 50 Cent. I know it sounds weird 'cause a lot of kids might not say that right now, but I definitely want to work with 50 Cent, Jay-Z, Coldplay: I want to work with different artists that are going to push my music to a new level. Not just in urban music.

She was a performance artist calling herself Lady Gaga, who had a European dance-club sound and pop-star aspirations - elements that historically haven't mixed.

Rick Rubin is super intriguing to me because he has become this god producer in completely drastically different genres, which very few people have done.

Nirvana was pop. You can have distorted guitars and people say it's alternative, but you can't break out of pop music's constructs and still get extensive radio play and media coverage.

I had always dreamed of starting off in pop radio and crossing into country. I used to sing country; that was my genre when I was a kid.

Hip-hop and electronic music are so similar, in the fact that they're both very visceral, have so much bass; a lot of times, it's the same tempos. The culture and some of the sound design is different but a lot of times, it's the same stuff.

Just look at 'K-pop' - who would've expected American fans to embrace it? It's really cool to be one of those artists who can break through the American market. I'm not trying to conquer America; I just want to make music and see if people like it.

I started rocking and rolling when Guns N' Roses came out. It wasn't until Garth Brooks came around that I really got back to country. He made it fun again. To me, in country music, the rigor mortis was setting in and it just wasn't fun anymore. Garth brought everyone back over to country and made it cool again.

But these days, I get a lot more attention and airplay from the Adult Contemporary and country radio stations, and I feel comfortable saying I'm a part of that.

I can take the steel guitars and fiddles off, we can make it a little more pop, cover ideas that are a little less cowboy. But you got to look at yourself in the mirror and ask, whose flag you are under? For Garth Brooks, I'm steel, fiddles, red, white and blue.

When I was a kid, and Elvis Presley broke through to a middle class, white audience, it was a sociological phenomenon that lasted through the Beatles and even a bit through Fleetwood Mac.

My aim is to bridge Broadway and the R&B world; and to bring all my Broadway experience to the R&B world; and one day, when I go back to Broadway, to bring some R&B to that.

Guys like Future and me, we help create and shape the sound of music - not just Atlanta music, but music all over. If you really pay attention to the music being made, a lot of that is very heavily influenced by the stuff that we created. I listen to so many songs that's like, 'Damn, this sounds like my music!'