Sir Kenneth MacMillan's version of 'Romeo and Juliet' is my favorite full-length ballet, Sergei Prokofiev's breathtaking score a favorite composition of music. As a student of martial arts, I loved drawing my sword in defense of my Capulet kin.
The best music happens when you have a personal connection to it. That same philosophy can extend to the instrument you hold in your hands: if a guitar means something special, you're bound to do great things with it.
Rat Records in Camberwell is where most of my record collection has come from. It's like someone with my exact taste in music has handed them all their old vinyl.
I think people were looking for something new in the EDM scene and found it in my music.
I found music because I felt different.
I really do want people to listen to the music more than watch what I wear. There's time for that later. I've got the rest of my life to dress up and look nice.
I would have loved to record with Paul McCartney on some of his early solo recordings, wonderful music. Playing some lovely organ, perhaps. I would have loved to record with John Lennon. He was a dear friend. I had lunch with him just two days before he died.
To enjoy my music, you need depth and emotionality.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind.
I like - I actually love classical music very much.
I was never particularly gregarious. I was quite shy, closed in. It's a classic isn't it, your psychiatrist will tell you, that's how I release it, through music.
I'm very inspired by past music.
It's always easy, I think, to raise the importance of a scene through the addition of music. But it's very awkward to end it unless there's a door slam or a gunshot or something that just takes you right out of it.
Heartbreak was the impetus to me writing poems and music in the first place.
Old music used to mean something. There is none of that today.
I don't like to listen to music while I'm working.
There are two types of conductors. One is the good conductor who can do passionate music but also listen to the singers and do the orchestra. And then there are great conductors, who have their own opinion on the music, who are ruling everything - and not listening much to the singers, but the orchestra play amazingly.
Apart from photography and music videos, I also do graphic design.
I always take care to have interesting chord progressions, because you can have the best sound design in the club, and you'll kill it in the club, but in five years, kids will have better sound design. But if your music is good, you'll always be able to listen to it, even in 20 or 50 years.
When the music business failed to embrace the Internet, I thought it was game, set and match for the industry, and I quit.
I just like the lineage and the heritage and the fact that British dance music is still progressing. I'm from London; I love London, and I wouldn't know how else to show that love in musical terms. There's something about British stuff that's a bit faster, a bit harder-hitting. Just tough.
When I think of folk music, I think of topical songs. And I don't write topical songs.
The songs that I like are the ones that you can't visualize, that are just cries from the heart - those very straight, direct songs that make rock & roll music so wonderful.
I like classical music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and I adore Bach above all.
Prince turned experimental music into pop music. 'When Doves Cry,' the whole 'Purple Rain' soundtrack - he was inspired by the Cocteau Twins and new wave pop and brought it into R&B when he first started, and then it became this cool, next-level, kind of hard-to-digest music. Which is what I felt 'House of Balloons' was.
Music is art to me, and you don't censor art. You don't go into a museum and censor things.
I studied computer science and graphic design, yeah, so music was self-taught and a backburner thing, an obsessive hobby.
The thing with Berry and Duane and the rest of us in the original Allman Brothers seemed to be a once-in-a-lifetime thing. When Duane was killed, we knew we lost a great part of that, but we still managed to play some great music.
My goal is really to continue to make music. I really don't make music to have platinum records and all that kind of stuff. I've been there. I do it because I love music, and I love uplifting people through my music. That's my real goal.
My songwriting is so influenced by orchestrated music, dramatic, super glam rock-y stuff. Two of my biggest influences in songwriting were Elton John and Freddie Mercury.
I always felt that the music sells by itself. The music has always been the successful aspect on my career, and that means that, to me, I can always still stay very focused on music.
When you're playing music through the streets of London at 2 o'clock in the morning, there's something so cool and magical about that. It takes you to a special place very quickly.
Tons of people inspire my music, and now when I do an interview, I'm scared to say who they are.
I'm a pretty easygoing person, and it bleeds into the music. Even if I'm writing the most personal song, it's not going to come out totally serious; there's always a little tongue in the cheek.
I went to college for, like, a year and a half with the intention of doing some kind of art therapy or some kind of teaching of art, because I feel like art is a more free area in school than music is. I feel like music is too mathematic for me. Music school's so hard. It's math.
The '60s were a time of great change in American music.
