I can't stay mad very long. I get grumpy when I read a bad review. I say, 'How could he say that about my music?' Then I forget about it. If I got mad every time somebody wrote something negative about me, I'd be exploding all the time. I'd be burned out just from reading reviews.
At Spotify, we really want you to democratically win as a musician. We want you to win because your music is the best music.
I like how fashion is becoming more like music. It's more adaptive to young kids. It's more adaptive to a more on-the-go lifestyle. More street vibe. But I've always been into it.
I don't really like the idea of putting myself in any category now... I think that people are looking for music that's real and honest and that they can relate to emotionally.
When I perform, I like to immerse myself in the music, and I just try to get off on the diversity of music.
I grew up with the Highwaymen, which was Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson. Mom and Dad rode rodeo, so country music was always in the house and the car. They threw in some Dolly Parton, too.
The main reason people want to pay for Spotify is really portability. People are saying, 'I want to have my music with me.'
With film music, endings are often more difficult than beginnings, because a beginning is an underline, a way of exciting a moment, and then you have to find a way to dissipate that.
There are plenty of millionaires who would pay millions to hang a Van Gogh painting on the wall, but hardly one that would have ever had the crazy nut over for dinner. I feel like the big companies are like that with musicians. They'll say, 'We love music! It's all about the music!' - but if a musician shows up at the door, they call security.
I guess the bottom line is I don't make music that is consumed en masse.
Playing music has always felt very natural. You know, you do try to do other things, and you do learn lessons that way, but, eventually - well... if your dad is a plumber, you become a plumber. It's the family business, and I felt like I was taking over the family business.
American music has infiltrated the entire world enough as it is. Mexican music must be defended with vigilance.
It wasn't until I was about 17 or 18 years old that I got into music.
I did some acting in college. But then everything stopped when I was a junior, in the fall of 2001, when I started becoming religious. Once I became a full-on Hasidic, I stopped everything. I stopped music. I stopped acting.
I wasn't playing the music, the music was playing me... and once that went away, and I had the feeling I was playing music, I had to stop. The need to go onstage and get my brain flattened every night left me, and what I didn't wanna do is go onstage and perpetrate a fraud... You cannot fool an audience.
One of my favourite things about country music is that, at least until recently, you could always count on a solid story, a punchline and a pun. I think it has that in common with hip hop, where they're not afraid of wordplay and I really appreciate that.
Obviously, any living musician born after 1960 has been touched by rock and roll. It's the music of our time, and it's 'in the air,' as Steve Reich would say. My experience of it is just really direct because I'm actually playing in a collaborative band.
When I listen to Amy Winehouse, I believe that her heart and soul is in the music, or if I listen to other British artists like Duffy or Estelle. The aesthetic of it is different, and it's my point of view. It's not anything formulaic.
I just want to keep making music, recording and trying different things. I don't want to do the same thing all the time.
My favourite dish is pollo ajillo; my favourite drink is a good Rioja with it. And as for my favourite music, oh God - there's so many things I like. Well, I'd say it's 'Walk of Life' by Dire Straits.
In the music industry, intelligence in women is undervalued.
I'm alive. I have my music; I have my children. I am the luckiest man.
I travel often, which can make maintaining a workout schedule a little difficult, but I try to make time for it whenever I can. Sometimes I wake up extra early so I can fit in a run or a bike ride, and other days I'll just blast music and jump around or watch a 30-minute exercise video.
There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more.
It's a great honor when somebody takes your song and does something different with it. That's what music is all about: to constantly change what somebody else has done.
Music has always kind of been an escape for me.
The bottom line is, I tend to be going back to older and older music.
I would enjoy venturing into music, as I do write songs and compose music! And, of course, dance, rhythm and performance are in my blood, so eventually I see myself doing something in that area, surely!
I feed on other people's creativity, photographers, artists of every kind. Sometimes a feeling that you get listening to a song can be so powerful. I've wanted to write whole scripts around what I felt just listening to a piece of music. I think music is important, and surrounding your visual field with stimulating things.
Young fans want to know about the past and older fans also want to find new music.
The more I compose, the more I know that I don't know it all. I think it's a good way to start. If you think you know it all, the work becomes a repetition of what you've already done. I try to make sure that I don't repeat my music.
I get bored of music really easily, so I always try and make music that makes sense, but then it's just a little bit wrong.
I'm constantly on my toes and re-examining my own music.
I don't want to spend a month and a half in a studio with music I don't like, and fortunately I don't have to.
I have been singing gospel music since I was four years old.
My photography changed from being more documentary-like to arranging things more, and that came into being partly because I started doing music videos, and I incorporated some things from the music videos into my photography again, by arranging things more.
