I love music so much. I've got something going all the time. I've gotta be singing. I've gotta be creating music, or I'm not happy.
When I first started out in this music industry, I was most concerned with freedom. Freedom to produce, freedom to play all the instruments on my records, freedom to say anything I wanted to.
Music is wonderful. Especially if there's some kind of content to it.
I write music, really, to make myself feel better.
I think there is a big difference between the music business and music. And my relationship is to music, not music business. I think the business will keep changing, but music won't. Music will be there.
I hate to be general, but I rely on Andrew Keenan-Bolger for all things music. Every season, he releases a mixtape on his blog of the most incredible and current music. I download it instantly, and it gets me through the season and keeps me educated musically.
I need drama in my life to keep making music.
Music was my joy, my home, the one place I felt happy and secure.
Hip-hop kind of absorbed rock in terms of the attitude and the whole point of why rock was important music. Young people felt like rock music was theirs, from Elvis to the Beatles to the Ramones to Nirvana. This was theirs; it wasn't their parents'. I think hip-hop became the musical style that embraces that mentality.
With the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, and iMac, Apple is the most powerful tech company in the world. It's also the No. 1 music retailer in the U.S. and among the top sellers of online movies, too.
My dad loved black singers. So listening to New Orleans music, eventually I wanted to play an instrument.
Music happens to be an art form that transcends language.
You have to open the music, so to speak, and see what's behind the notes because the notes are the same whether it is the music of Bach or someone else.
As a developing musician, skiffle became a platform for me to start playing music.
Since I'm born here, my music will always have some New Orleans elements.
But in those days - in the mid-'50s, early '60s - there was less than 300 radio stations that were playing country music and a lot of that wasn't full time.
As I got more involved in music, one of the things that made me excited, from the time I was a child, was that clear link between our ancestors and the sounds we hear today.
This is just strictly me wanting to make a record that is the real deal. It is all the stuff that I have learned and know that I remember. It's what I perceive as country music is about.
I've got my whole life. There's a lifetime of experience, a lifetime of experiencing the road and the music and different players. It makes me a richer human being. I have a greater source of information to tap into, a wealth of life.
I think if we keep on doing good music and people like us and they buy the magazine because we are in the magazine then they cant basically hate us hopefully.
If one person feels the way I felt when I first fell in love with country music, then I'm doing my job.
In the history of comics and movies and music too, it's always when things are at their bottomed-out, either creatively or financially, there's more chance-taking going on.
I've heard people say to me, 'How can you claim to be a feminist when you dress like that?' I wear a lot of slip dresses and nightwear and stuff. People always question my credibility because of that: 'Oh, are you selling sex? Are you doing this or that to be recognized more or to sell your music?' No, it's just a fashion thing for me.
But music raises a lot of issues. Music is something that matters to people a lot, and they put a lot of passion into it. And I think when you have an area like that, you're gonna find a lot of issues coming up.
Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature.
My first performance was in second grade with my friend Rodney Fisher, and we worked up versions of 'Long Tall Texan' and 'I Want to Hold Your Hand.' It gave me a little early confidence that I could actually do this music thing.
I got private lessons in keyboard at Julliard, before New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.
I've always loved to prove people wrong. I want to be able to cross color lines, because in music, there really is no barrier.
First of all I listen to music. I like music.
When you grow up in life and you're poor, and because you're an athlete or you got rich overnight in music, unless you have access to financial advice or for the transition or matriculation of that process, then of course, you're going to go broke.
I think everything Joni Mitchell did for music was big.
The acting thing is the side benefit of becoming a little bit well known with my music.
The funny thing is, the music that I'm writing now is probably some of the most cutting edge we've ever done. The music that I'm thinking about putting on our next album.
I am a lover of all sorts of different music. I love blues and every piece of music that I have listened to has become an influence.
Don't worry about what others say about your music. Pursue whatever you are hearing... but if everybody really hates your music maybe you could try some different approaches.
I consider music like a mirage in the desert. You're obsessed with the ideal piece of music, and the more you think you're getting closer, it's not there.
