I signed with Kanye back in 2003, and at that time, 'The College Dropout' hadn't even come out, so he was still relatively unknown compared to where he is now. He wasn't a household name; people were still calling him 'Kane.'
I've done shows that aired on American TV, but none of them proved to be successful, so yes, no one here knows who I am.
I came to Hollywood and nobody knew me. I was on a coupla TV shows.
In the late 30s the name Pollock was totally unknown and unheard of.
My career was really odd, because I literally had a greatest hits album out and nobody knew who I was. They knew the songs, but they didn't know me.
But it's hard to support yourself from music when nobody knows you.
I mean, I'm an artist by nature; no one considers what I do and no one knows who the heck I am, but that anybody does - it is astonishing.
Charles Ives was writing radically innovative music, but nobody performed it, and nobody knew about it.
Isn't Timbaland a make of shoe? It's a producer? I don't know who that is. Oh well.
In L.A., you can play forever, and no one around the world will hear you.
If I had come out with an album called 'Brendon Urie Does...' everyone would have been like, 'Who?' Even five albums in, I'm still faceless wherever I go, which is great.
I had an album out at exactly the same time as 'Love to Love You' called 'Einzelganger,' and it's great, all electronic. I'm using a vocoder, doing all this cut-up stuff on there, but no one knows about it.
I realized that were I to paint flowers small, no one would look at them because I was unknown. So I thought I'll make them big, like the huge buildings going up. People will be startled; they'll have to look at them - and they did.
I didn't know much about him, and I wasn't a big country music fan. I listened to the Beatles and David Bowie, so I didn't know a lot about him.
I think I am the type of artist that, time and time again, either people love or don't know about.
For a while I was a completely unknown artist with no fan base and no draw in the clubs. The only people that would give me a shot were the gay clubs. Gay clubs were so open to me coming in and trying things out.
I had done 25 motion pictures prior to The Partridge Family and nobody knew my name.
I love going into a dive where they have no idea who I am or haven't heard my music and try to win them over.
It doesn't bother me when someone is totally unaware of anything I've ever been in or done and says, 'Hey, man, I really like your music. I've never heard of you.' That doesn't bother me at all.
I don't know who Little Richard is.
I definitely wouldn't be the performer I am today if the gay audience had not been so supportive of me as a complete unknown.
I'm grateful that I had that uphill battle for 10 years of going onstage and having nobody know who I was, because you have to win them over.
I always wanted to be the underdog. For me, as a portrait photographer, it's the kiss of death to become well known. I did my best work when no one knew who I was. People weren't threatened by me because they didn't think I was a big deal.
