Music Rejection Quotes

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.'

The Quakers don't believe in music or art; they think it's a vanity.

I hate music, especially when it's played.

It's hard for people to realize now, but my gosh, when I was in school, you could not name a group that was less cool than Kiss. Going in to school with a Kiss T-shirt, you were asking for ridicule. In '77, they were one of the biggest bands in the world, but by '80, there was a severe backlash.

I end up pleading my case to alternative programmers - you're telling me that my music is too dark for pop, too pop for alternative, and urban radio won't touch it - so we have a record that doesn't fit in. And what is more alternative than that?

I wanted to break into producing, so I would peddle my tracks and beats to labels. I always heard the same thing: They liked the music, but it didn't fit any of the artists on their roster.

My father didn't believe in my music. I don't blame him.

When you take your music around to your people in the city or your label, and don't nobody like it, but you really like it, and you like, 'Dang, these folks don't hear what I hear.'

It was hard to work and work and work and not get your music played on the radio.

I've always liked pop music. I love what it does to my brain, and I've shut it out for a long time.

Years ago, when I was making music, I was sending it off to radio stations and getting told it was 'too urban.' But what else am I supposed to make?

What do you think happens to a composer who is sincere and loves to write and has to wait thirty years to have someone play a piece of his music?

Back in the day, if someone at the record label didn't care or like your music, it never got to the public. It just got shelved.

There's not a day that goes by that I don't get an email from someone who is angry with me and tells me they're not going to let their kid listen to Imagine Dragons anymore.

I say no to songs more often than I say yes.