I've always been pretty ravenous about pop culture, highbrow and lowbrow.
I coined this term 'freedom thru limitation' back in the '90s because I was sick of art being treated like pop, because of this boring 'anything can be art' theory.
I still tune in to the radio and listen to pop music and enjoy it as much as I ever have.
Pop music follows the evolution of society in general: Everything moves faster.
In general, I don't know when inspiration will pop up.
There's a famous artist, Ron English, in New York, that just, or Andy Warhol for that matter, that did pop art that terrorized society. And that's, for the last like 10, 15 years, that's all I wanted to do, is terrorize society and make them look into a mirror and see what the hell we have wrought.
That's why 'Chandelier' was interesting to me... I wrote the song because there's so many party-girl anthems in pop. And I thought it'd be interesting to do a different take on that.
I was doing these performance art pop music pieces in the city. And they were a bit on the eccentric side I suppose. So people started to call me Gaga after the Queen song 'Radio Gaga.'
During workouts, I listen to Pandora, and I like the '90s pop stations. 'The Backstreet Boys' is fun!
And so popular culture raises issues that are very important, actually, in the country I think. You get issues of the First Amendment rights and issues of drug use, issues of AIDS, and things like that all arise naturally out of pop culture.
I was the kid at six who was like, 'I want to be in a jazz club.' I was never the pop kid, ever. I mean that's not true, I had a couple years where I wanted to be Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, but aside from that, no.
I like to make music because it's fun to do and it makes me feel good, but I have no desire to be a huge pop singer or anything like that. I just like to make it.
Part of me believes that the completed record is the final measure of a pop musician's accomplishment, just as the completed film is the final measure of a film artist's accomplishments.
I love pop music, but I love pop music that does something a little bit different.
Most of the people who write pop music were outsiders at some time in their life.
I had to learn chord shapes. I bought books with chord charts. I used to listen to all kinds of pop music.
It's a real gift to be able to have the works of brilliant, great people to learn from and build from. It gives you so much more to draw on, and then you don't have to be all about three-chord pop songs. I don't really like that kind of writing.
I like pop music, and I like really weird, strange stuff. It just didn't feel like there was anyone doing both.
We didn't gel with Poison and the Bon Jovi. Bon Jovi was the best of the pop metal bands, but we never fit in with the hair metal stuff. We were never as hip as the Chili Peppers. We were in the middle.
'Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,' if you go through the lyrics, is such a haunting melody, and the words are, for a pop song, pretty deep and dark.
For a long time I wasn't happy, but that had nothing to do with Beyonce. That had to do with me trying to get my life in order and make better decisions for myself. I'm seeing all these wonderful things happen for her, and I am happy for her. But I want a path. I want things to pop off for me, too.
The perfect pop song is a 20th-century creation; it's not a sonnet, it's not an opera, it's something short - three and a half minutes by nature - and has this ability to travel and to defy class and economic structures.
It's no good singing if you just want to be a pop star; you've got to work at it and do it for the love for it, not because you think it will make you famous.
As big as Metallica are, they're still not like a pop act. As big as they are, they're still not U2 or Lady Gaga. It's still underground.
The part of modern pop music I don't know much about is hip hop.
I don't mean this, but I'm going to say it anyway. I don't really think of pop art and serious art as being that far apart.
If I hung one of my paintings next to someone else's, I knew mine would kind of pop off the wall.
I'm listening to a lot of Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, and Rihanna. A lot of pop female artists. I have to say I'm pretty well-versed in the pop female category.
I see songs not as a commodity used up when the album goes off the charts, which is often the case with pop songs. I see them as a body of work. Life should be breathed into them.
I have always been a singer/songwriter, and I was pushed in places I didn't want to do, like pop or top forty. I don't belong there.
I am not a pop musician; I don't want to play bubble-gummy pop stuff.
Being a pop artist or making music like a jingle or something - I don't do that.
Our pop scene is among the best in the world because there are 300 languages spoken on the streets of London, compared with 200 in New York. Our diversity is our strength.
At some stage in the process, most mainstream pop records are being manipulated and possibly completely rebuilt on a computer, with a visual program.
I, of course, wanted to play real jazz. When we played pop tunes, and naturally we had to, I wanted those pops to kick! Not loud and fast, understand, but smoothly and with a definite punch.
The type of work I do, which is often called 'Pop Surrealism,' is very separate from Gagosian and Mary Boone type of gallery art.
