Recording Contract Quotes

When you get your first record deal, you will do anything, because you just want to sing.

I remember telling the head of Warner Brothers that if they'd just make a video for 'Ol' Red'... and if it didn't work, they could drop me from the label.

I'd never been paid for the first Roses LP - it was 2002 before we received any royalties.

I'm signed to Atlantic through 300 Entertainment [Lyor Cohen's label]. That is my only contractual relationship.

I was honored I was signed to Sony. But later I felt like they weren't the right team.

What made me want to become a recording artist; I was the first artist that was repeatedly asked by a label to record with them. That label was Def Jam Records.

My record company certainly wants me to play live, badly, but I have no such plans. My only motivation to do such a thing would be money, and I don't think that's a good reason to play live.

I moved from New Zealand to Melbourne when I was 17. I'd planned to go to university to study French, but I was offered a contract to write and record an album that was too good to pass up. Looking back now I think that was pretty young but, at the time, I was ready to have an adventure.

I was signed to MGM. I was in Vegas for sixteen weeks at the Sands Hotel.

We won a contest at the teen fair in Vancouver and the first prize was a recording contract and we recorded at a radio station on the stairway, and we did a record and it got put out.

We'd been out touring for a couple of years before we signed with Sony and everything.

I was signed to RCA to be a country singer.

When I got involved with The Five Crowns who later became The Drifters, and we got this hit record, I still was looking at this as kind of a fun thing.

I've been able to experience so many things since I've had my record deal.

I think, actually, I was the first person to ever sign a simultaneous video and recording deal with a record company.

I think we were probably playing live for about 12 months before we got a recording deal.

Once I got a record contract, and I took my songs which weren't quite finished, or maybe they were a good idea, maybe they weren't. I took them into the studio and developed them. They came to life and they evolved... and they're great.

I was initially signed to a German label a few years ago.

I had ballooned out to close to 400 pounds at one point. And in the '80s, we were just beginning to get on video and disco. So therefore, I did not fit in, and my record company let me go because they said, 'Look, you're just not marketable enough with the weight problem.'

I've been with Def Jam Records for five years and they gave me my first recording contract so for that I'm forever grateful.

A lot of new artists sign their deal and then go into a development stage for a year or two or sometimes never get out of it. For me, because I had been a working songwriter in town, I had a collection of songs that I was ready to make into an album. At the time, I didn't realize it was becoming an album, but it was.

Once you're signed to a label you compromise.

Every time I release an album my old record company releases another one.

When I was 13, I was saying that I wanted to be signed to a label. I was begging my dad to get me signed with somebody.

I worked a long time to get good at what I'm doing, and nobody handed me a recording contract because of who my father is.