Music Identification 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.

Usually, the song will tell me who it belongs to. It seems clear to me who would do a good job with it, who it suits.

With Del Shannon - and I've got to tell you this - there's nobody probably on the face of the earth that I identified more with musically. We used to sit and sing George Jones and Hank Williams tunes.

I had Fleetwood Mac on, and Saido Berahino asked me if it was from a movie soundtrack.

Today, you have platforms that teach you everything from opening your own YouTube channel to using Shazam.

There's just something so amazing about being anywhere, and some music starts playing, and you just hold up your phone and can find out what it is. You never again have to say, 'That's a great song! Who is it by?'

If I can sing along to it, it's pop music.

Genre labels are useful only insofar as they help you find an audience.

'Classic rock' is never a label that we've given ourselves - it's one of the many labels that's been imposed on us.

I think Shazam is one of the coolest inventions on the planet, and whether I was in a thrift store or in my car, every other week I was Shazaming another Best Coast song.

I liked back in the sixties where you'd turn on the radio and go 'Oh that's Hendrix, that's Creedence Clearwater, that's The Doors, there's The Grass Roots, The Monkees, there's Big Brother.' You could just instantly hear it and tell. But in the eighties and nineties there's no way you could do that.

If you think of a solo artist, you normally know them by their name; you don't normally describe their kind of music. You just say, 'It's so and so, or it's so and so.' But with bands, everyone feels an obligation to categorize them.

Genres are just names.

I use Shazam all the time.

I can tell you that I can always recognize a Boston song, even if it's in a noisy place. I can hear that it's Boston even before I know what song it is. If a Boston song comes on in a club or somewhere, I notice that it's Boston, and the second thing I notice is what song it is.

There's nothing more frustrating than when you hear a track and you can never find out what it is.

It's like soul music, isn't it all soul music? Otherwise what is it, non-soul music? I-have-no-soul music? Soulless music? People need to put a name on something to identify it, and I understand it.