If you put music on top of noise, it's like putting icing on top of mud; it might look like a cake, but it doesn't taste like one.
I started casting. I cast music videos, but I kept getting fired from jobs because I was iconoclastic in my ways of casting.
I think that for a lot of us gay people, we do feel that pop is our music. We identify with it and its iconography, and that's been a tradition.
It took a long time for hip-hop to become commercial. Now there's all these big black icons that came from nowhere to somewhere. Look at Jay-Z! People stopped being threatened by the music and just started to appreciate that it's good.
If you believe in what you do and you really want to be in music, just stick at it. It's always a learning process. Enjoy it because I think making music is a privilege, really. In an ideal world, it should also always be fun. As much as possible, make it fun.
Why be in music, why write songs, if you can't use them to explore life or an idealized vision of life? I believe a lot of our lives are spent asleep, and what I've been trying to do is hold on to those moments when a little spark cuts through the fog and nudges you.
I'm gonna make music, and I'm gonna capture every aspect of being a human being. That's really all I'm trying to do. I think that artists and pop culture identities are used to simplify what it means to be a human and pigeon-hole people into looking up to one role model.
As late as the early '50s, jazz was still, for the most part, a genuinely popular music, a utilitarian, song-based idiom to which ordinary people could dance if they felt like it.
Unfortunately or fortunately, in order to become acquainted with the idiom of country or rock music, it is necessary to occasionally play in a bar. Bars are a rehearsal place.
The development of new instrumental and vocal idioms has been one of the remarkable phenomena of recent music.
Playing with Iggy pulled me back in for a while and reminded me of what I love about music.
I was raised to think that rock was music for ignorant people who didn't think for themselves.
We're not here to make the ignorant people happy. We're here to write our music for those people that are interested in good rock n' roll music.
I like to think I don't make music for ignorant people.
I wanted to stay independent because I figured there was no way I was going to be able to have control to create the type of music I want. I was basically ignoring a lot of labels.
What I like to do when I get to a new place is buy local music early on and listen to it while we're driving around. I think it helps explain and illuminate the culture of where you are if local music is playing.
We don't need to illustrate music; music illustrates itself.
I think the thing that we agreed to so many years ago, actually, was that the music didn't have to support the dance nor the dance illustrate the music, but they could be two things going on at the same time.
Things like 'mad as a hatter' or 'grinning like a Cheshire cat', are so powerful that music and songs incorporate the imagery. Writers, artists, illustrators, a lot of them have incorporated that.
When I first was putting out music, I was like, 'I don't want to be overly sexy or do too much with the imaging or show too much skin, and I want to make sure my lyrics are balanced.'
