Musical Controversy Quotes

When I listen to my work, I think, what's so inflammatory about it? It's not really that dissonant. A lot of people who used to hate my stuff have come round to it.

Edgy' music has always formed the cornerstone to any teenage rebellion. Most indulge in it precisely because adults like me don't like them doing so.

I was roundly criticized for being in and around rock & roll music at its inception. It was the devil's music: it would make your teeth fall out and your hair turn blue, whatever the hell. You get through that.

'Human' was controversial within The Killers way before it was controversial to the rest of the world! It caused some problems within the band. Not to throw anybody under the bus, but it was pretty much me and Dave against Mark and Ronnie for a little while. We were standing up for the song.

I didn't mean for it to cause such a furor, but I was the first guy to ever do the national anthem with a guitar. Everyone else had the big brass band. Nowadays it's tracks that they sing to, but in my day, we had no tracks. And I was the only orchestra that I knew that was the best orchestra and that was me and my guitar.

I totally hate when somebody takes a classic and desecrates it. I like Jimmy Page and P. Diddy, but what they did to 'Kashmir' was a debacle.

When I hear music that parents hate, or older musicians hate, I know that's the new music. When I hear older people saying, 'I hate Rap or Techno' I rush to it.

I rallied all the youth around me, all the people who liked Compa, but felt like it was dying, going away, being replaced with Zouk. So it became a movement. So, through the years, I've played my music with dedication, discipline and originality, and controversy also.

Composers dialogue - and obsessively, bitterly argue - with other composers, often over the span of several centuries.

There is something suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is, by her nature, equivocal. I shall not be going too far in saying at once that she is politically suspect.

We're one of the only bands that get censored for theological commentary.

Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," a song that was written for Simone, she confronted the band's lead singer, Eric Burdon. "So you're the honky," she said, "who stole my song and got a hit out of it?

My music divides people!

I'm like, 'Would you be the person in the room that would boo when Dylan went electric? I know I wouldn't. Or are you the person that left The Beatles after 'She Loves You,' or 'Drive My Car?' You weren't on board for 'Revolution 9' or 'Day In The Life,' were you?'

Poor Dimitri Shostakovich: In the Soviet Union, he was condemned as being too radical; in the West, for being too conservative. He could please no one but the musical public. He revenged himself on both by writing a short piece called 'March of the Soviet Police.'

Though I'm not the first king of controversy, I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley. To do black music so selfishly, and use it to get myself wealthy.

I was criticized by some people for my first album because they said I was taking sacred music. They knew nothing about what I was doing. That was no sacred music; that's music I wrote.