Musical Categorization Quotes

People are always defining and re-defining music. My style of playing has been characterized as smooth jazz and acid jazz. I listen as I play; I'm not caught up in defining the type of music I play.

Since the beginning of my recording career in 1975, I have had a little difficulty because the pop stations think I'm a jazzer who doesn't have a feeling for pop, so it's hard to get my records played. Similarly, black urban radio doesn't understand that with my R&B roots, I am more than a jazz singer. So I get pigeonholed.

I don't think a song should be put in a category.

Music is music; you can't change rock and say well this is punk rock and this is acid rock or rockabilly.

I've talked about that with friends, about what genre makes sense to choose for each record and the strategy around that... Sometimes it's more about the moment of time, and other times it's more about the sound of the song. Sometimes it's about what's going on in larger life, in politics.

If a piece of music is under three minutes long, it's rock. Over three minutes, it's classical.

'Take Her Up to Monto' is a very satirical song. I don't really like people calling it a folk song because it kind of isn't. It's a bit cheeky calling it 'Take Her Up to Monto,' but the whole idea was to be very irreverent.

I wouldn't really call myself a Jazz singer I think it's offending to real Jazz singers to call me a Jazz singer.

I hate labels because it should be just music. I don't see anything wrong with disco. Call it anything. It's music.

I hate that if you do one style of music or become really well known for that one song, that everything that comes after has to fit that mold.

There are two kinds of music; German music and bad music.

Ironically, my tastes aren't that experimental, and I wouldn't describe my music on the surface as being overtly experimental, either.

I think pure country music includes rock and roll .. I've never been able to get into the further label of country-rock .. how can you define something like that ? - I just say this: It's music. Either it's good or it's bad; either you like it or you don't

Rock n' roll was one thing, and then they chopped off the 'roll' and called it 'rock,' which became a sort of umbrella term for anything with a guitar in it. Like hair bands. How could we possibly believe that? It's just gotten downright silly, to the point where now it's sort of become like professional wrestling.

Bop is no love-child of jazz.

This genre of music seems to want to push people into a certain time slot, which is unfortunate.

I've always tried to stay clear of being labeled, putting a label on what type of music that I make.

It's a blue album, but it's not a blues album. I'm not pretending all of a sudden now I'm blues.

It kills me when I see some metal band trying to pass themselves off as an 'alternative band.'

Whichever chord progressions move me, whether it's rock, jazz, doo-wop or soul, I'm going to put it together and not be worried about whether people can put it in a lane or not.

I've never recognized 'emo' as a genre of music. I always thought it was the most retarded term ever. I know there is this generic commonplace that every band that gets labeled with that term hates it. They feel scandalized by it. But honestly, I just thought that all the bands I played in were punk rock bands. The reason I think it's so stupid is that - what, like the Bad Brains weren't emotional? What - they were robots or something? It just doesn't make any sense to me.

For some reason, as a kid, I felt outwardly embarrassed to say that I liked rock music. I don't know where that came from. For me, it just wasn't cool - orchestral music was cool.

I think most people's record collections are more interesting than radio generally gives them credit for. You're likely to be as interested in the Grateful Dead as Palestrina. It pisses me off how compartmentalised music is. I used to be in a punk band, you know?

We like to categorize things into showy things and deep things, you know, and things that are high music - important music - and shallow music. And I think that's dangerous, because there's often a mix of both.

Avant-garde, jazz, pop, classical, country and western, rock, free, straight-ahead, etc. are ultimately meaningless terms in the face of the music being discussed at best - at worst, those terms often serve as code words for what is in fact a cultural / political discussion more than a musical one.