I know that doesn't sound very radical and webby of me to say that but I think the New York Times is important. I also think there's an occasional piece that will pop out.
I'm not a pop star.
I think that pop, and to some extent rock, are like sport and fashion industry in that they're about the exuberance of youth. That's the sort of subliminal ideology.
My pop culture ended somewhere north of Elvis but not too far.
As a producer, I'm trying to challenge myself to just make something that is of a professional quality - not necessarily pop music, but maybe in the sense that Nine Inch Nails is professional quality.
It's in the vein, somewhere in a cross between The Beatles, Cheap Trick, The Stones, Badfinger, you know, but it's not retro at all. But it is very pop.
I love Soul, R+B, Electronic, and good pop. Really, the only thing I don't listen to is country and heavy metal. I love Marvin Gaye, John Legend, Al Green, Fat Freddys Drop, Sade, Grace Jones, Bazoo Bijou, Prince, John Lennon, London Grammar, Daft Punk, Dr John, Dusty Springfield, Peggy Lee, Gotye, and on it goes.
From a very early age, I was in tune with pop radio, and most of this listening was done driving. We had an old '67 or '65 Buick LeSabre, and whenever we would drive around, I would actually stick my head right against the speakers in the back and sing along to the music.
I grew up listening to Beethoven and old jazz singers like Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and Anita O'Day. But those were, like, the only women I listened to - I hated women pop singers.
In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.
I come from a law enforcement family. My grandfather, William J. Comey, was a police officer. Pop Comey is one of my heroes. I have a picture of him on my wall in my office at the FBI, reminding me of the legacy I've inherited and that I must honor.
Before there was Bjork, there was Prince. That's a very simple encapsulation of my personal pop life.
I have a passion for music, and I enjoy the process of expressing myself within the parameters of a pop song, and I don't do it to seek anybody's approval, necessarily. Obviously, you go on stage, and you enjoy it when people respond to a particular song, but the overall concept of playing music I do for myself.
I don't really dissect too much when ideas come - they just kind of pop into my head; I just take them and run.
How many actors have a shot at being a part of something that became a part of pop culture? It's been very rewarding. I'm not getting the 20 million bucks for the new movies, but at least I'm getting warmth and recognition from people wherever I go.
In idling, the motor's running, but you're letting your mind take in anything. Things pop into it. Those are the gifts of subterranean conscious.
If you go back to the '80s, you had a whole plethora of artists, everyone from Madonna and Cyndi Lauper to Prince. God bless Lady Gaga for doing her thing, but she's kind of a lone peacock now. If anything, we have a much more conservative kind of pop world. It's not necessarily about individuality.
I've been lucky enough to work in pop culture, especially with people right before they popped.
One Direction. Proper pop band. There has to be a band that people want to scream at. I don't think I've ever behaved like a pop star.
Right now I'm singing along to books on tape. I typically pop in something like Stephen King's 'The Stand,' and I love singing along to that kind of stuff.
When I started trying to produce records for other people, one of the first tracks I wrote and produced was sort of a 'Kelly Clarkson circa 2008,' kind of big-brassy, guitar-pop, rock song. I was like, 'I can do this. I can make pop songs.' It was bad.
If you think about it, I was at college, and then three months later, I was a massive pop star. It's stress-making, especially when you're a bit of an oddball as I was, the black sheep left to your own devices, and then suddenly everyone's interested in you.
The difficult thing about a pop record is that you're given guidelines: it has to have 3 choruses, and then it must be between 3 minutes fifteen seconds and three minutes forty-five seconds.
The one thing about The Weeknd is that he's gone between the world of trap music and pop music and blended them together, so it makes it interesting in that way. That's what I like about him.
More students have a better knowledge of pop culture than of the Constitution.
I love Top 40 pop, don't get me wrong; I just don't think that there's anyone in Top 40 pop that's 'real.'
I used to love Kurt Cobain, when he was telling people we're a pop band. People would laugh, they thought of it as good old ironic Kurt. But he wasn't being ironic.
To write a love song that might be able to make it on the radio, that is something that is terrifying to me. But I can definitely write a song about that chair over there. That I can do, but to sit and write a pop song out of the clear blue sky, that is very difficult and I admire the people that can do it.
The hardest thing about being in this business is just being able to be yourself. People act like there's this one set of rules to follow to be a pop star and I think, 'Well, you say I'm a pop star, so maybe that's not true.'
The English don't like concepts, really, not from a pop star. It's alright if they come from an 'intellectual,', but from a pop star you're getting ahead of yourself. Part of the class game is that you shouldn't rise above your station, and to start talking about concepts if you're in the pop world is getting a bit uppity, isn't it?
I think the pop industry is still a young man's game.
It's a miracle that David Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop are actually still alive today, given how hard they lived.
Political people don't solve stuff - not really. Political people are like guys in pop music.
A lot of journalists like to suck up to celebrities, and then as soon as they're a safe distance away at their computers, they take shots. But that's the way society has become, especially in pop culture.
I remember Tim telling me that he had an idea for a musical and he said to me that he was hoping that ABBA would be writing the music, which I thought was a pretty wild idea because they were obviously known very much as pop writers.
In their heyday, the Pet Shop Boys were the Interpol of the Eighties, dressing up to sing really weird pop songs about lust and loneliness in the big city. They're low-pro now, not retro-worshipped in the manner of Depeche Mode, New Order, or The Cure, but you can hear the reason why - these guys are too sad.
