Playing music is the best thing in the world. It makes show business almost bearable.
I had gone to Oxford to read music. I had done music all my life, but when I got to college I didn't want to do it anymore.
When I'm in the studio, I like to be in there by myself because if I'm in the mike room, and I look out and see people talking, or they're not nodding their head or rocking to the music, it makes me feel like it don't sound good, or I'll be scared to really open up vocally because I might mess up, and they might be in there laughing.
Rock will never be dead for me. Do I like a lot of what I hear on rock music radio? No, not for the most part. I'm not a fan of the regurgitated Pearl Jam and Nickelback crap that's the biggest thing in the Midwest. There isn't that big of a market for rock anymore. Every once in a while something happens and you like it.
I feel like music is sort of therapy for myself.
I started out doing music videos and photography, and I always loved writing.
Maybe in music you're making an auditory environment and maybe you change your environment around you to suit your own way.
I was always interested in mixing experimentation with pop music, and Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream - we were all doing it at the same time, just very isolated from each other, all in our different cellars, in different worlds, without the Internet - underground in every sense.
Pun was just a natural-born genius with music, and he basically taught me so many tricks on how to make better music, even though I was the one that discovered him. He was so far advanced than me; he taught me a lot.
It's a joy, the process itself, even instrumentally, playing and constructing music. It's just so beautiful to me.
It wasn't my dream to make music. It was just something I ended up doing, and no one said stop.
To me, there's two kinds of music these days. There's ephemeral music, and there's music that has lasting power and depth.
You shouldn't listen to my music for political messages.
If I were to explore music, I'd want to just focus on that and make that my priority.
I always used to say I'm definitely not a straight-ahead jazz singer, because then there's people who would hear what I do and say, 'Is it jazz? I don't know...' Whatever it is, it really comes down to creating music that makes people feel something.
In terms of the music, it feels almost like trouble's a good thing - you never know when a song is going to surprise you. We look for these subversive moments in songs.
If I think about music in the future, I imagine it often as not involving electricity, in some dystopian, post-apocalyptic future. And that's what I get from Penderecki: people making music by taking these instruments out of boxes and playing them. That's a very bizarre and modern thing.
My grandparents don't really listen to pop music, and they only speak Spanish and only listen to Spanish music.
Someone like Katy Perry - I like her writing because I listen to music as a songwriter. I like a lot of her songs - like, 'Firework' is a song that I think I could write.
My earliest memories of defying my parents were through music. I remember rap being banned in my house, and then getting a Cam'ron album.
I wanna go play my music in a club.
There's nothing but spirit in music. That's all it is. Yeah, there's a lot of intellectual elements to it, but no matter how you approach it, it's all spirit.
I think it all comes from the same source, really, the writing of music, the writing of words, the playing of music. It's what drives anyone to be interested in the arts. I think it's a poetic gene; it's a wanting to go beyond.
We live with incessant music, all the time. It's like some weird musical purgatory, there is absolutely no rest for the ears, no space to absorb and reflect.
I like to focus on making the music sound simple and true, and very lush and full. I think music should take you to somewhere else where you have the space to contemplate or exercise your imagination. All the while you should be feeling real good, like when you have a delicious and decadent meal, macaroni and cheese or foie gras.
In the music business, we all do different things, but we sit there and admire other people who can write a song differently or sing differently. It's not so competitive.
I think most Irish people are creative. Whether it's music, or dance, or... certainly storytelling is in the blood.
I mean, what is music anyway? It's a form of communication - at least for me it is. And that's why I play the kind of music that I think - that I hope - can communicate with people.
I think probably with any performer, but maybe with rock music especially, the audience wants to see the singer being real, and exploring, and not doing a rehearsed routine, so I'm just constantly looking for new things to try. I'm really curious out there, and my curiosity has led me into all kinds of bizarre situations.
I started traveling, performing, doing photo shoots and working on new music. At the same time, I was juggling homework and trying not to miss out on too many experiences during my junior and senior years - like prom and graduation.
Webern was a kind of 'Kamchatka of music,' an unknown country of music. That's true; for me and people of my generation, he was a radical - you couldn't be more radical than he was.
I grew up listening to Nick Drake. Without him, I would not write music - and 'Pink Moon' is my favourite LP.
There is a sound that comes from gospel music that doesn't come from anything else. It is a sound of peace. It is a sound of, 'I'm going to make it through all of this.'
If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music and of aviation.
I think there's a void for some authentic soul music with an edge. I think there's some people who grew up with Motown and Stevie Wonder that still can appreciate Future, Drake, and all these different things, too, but there shouldn't be a void for those people, as well.
You can still make music that people love, but there won't be more innovation. I started listening to electronic music a long time ago. But mostly I listen to rap. I think rap is the most interesting.
