Musical Genre Quotes

When you're part of hip-hop culture but you're a Christian, people want you to be either-or. Or they'll create a category for you, like, 'Oh, gospel rap!'

I felt Michael Jackson was inspired a little bit more from the elegance of a Fred Astaire. Michael loved Sammy Davis, Jr. and James Brown and Judy Garland and Fred Astaire. But he wasn't any of those people. To be inspired is one thing, but he made it all his own.

I've always tried to defend the idea that the blues doesn't have to be sung by a person who comes from Mississippi, as I did.

I don't have a rock voice. I have to force it. I am like an opera singer.

I had classical training but I don't consider myself an opera singer though.

I've been making music since age five.

I don't feel like we have that Paul McCartney gene, and I think the cool thing about us is that we know it.

Gershwin inspired me very much. The concept of 'That Lucky Old Sun' was inspired by 'Rhapsody in Blue' - not influenced, but inspired.

I'm not committed to putting myself up for a blues guitarist, even though I love playing the blues.

My father was a cocky, long-haired musician, a songwriter.

What I believe to be jazz is constructed and improvised music which is in the air right now. But I don't think that's most people's definition of jazz, you know? We don't know what we're talking about, because we don't know the definition.

I'm a composer like every maestro on this earth.

I think people have been really receptive to understanding that I've grown up and the music's going to sound a little different.

I was never much of a singer. I was terrible. It's embarrassing: I was trying to sound like everybody else. I went through a big Cure phase, so I was trying to do that kind of dramatic voice.

We were always scientifical in our raps.

Hip hop is the new rock n' roll, you know what I mean? And anybody who doesn't think that is just sort of living in the past. It's all just American music, really, when you get right down to it.

In my creative life, David Bowie is definitely an enormous influence on me, being one of rock's greatest shapeshifters.

At first, I found the music I was making really hard to find a home for. I felt like my attitude was really British, but not the actual sounds I was making. Back in 2003, when I made 'Galang,' there were no clubs that had an 'anything and everything' attitude.

You must remember I grew up around music. Three of my family were musicians.

Our music did not sound like the Beatles in any way, shape or form. I could never find it in myself to use those Beatles tricks in Styx records because they were sacred to me. But what they did always influenced my thinking.

I think people forget even though we were labelled a synth band because of 'The Hurting,' but keyboards are not our native instruments. Roland's a guitar player and I'm a bass player.

Punk was more based on social change than on music, so it didn't bother me too much. It wasn't really a musical threat.

I figure I'm a mandolin player first and foremost, and everything else I've accomplished is just a scam.

I have always been a singer/songwriter, and I was pushed in places I didn't want to do, like pop or top forty. I don't belong there.

I don't really have a favorite bass player. I listen to a lot of bluegrass. But then again, I'm not a typical bluegrass bass player. I was really into the Grateful Dead, and I still am - I don't listen to them too much, but for me they are a big influence.