Quotes About Album

I read the reviews sometimes, but I don't let it really affect the next album because, for me, when I approach an album, it's usually coming to me pretty naturally. It's not like I set out, like, "Okay, I'm going to write an album this month." It's more like I'm just always writing songs and eventually I start to realize that a group of songs sort of fits together, and I go from there in putting together the album and themes and artwork and things like that.

What novel - or what else in the world - can have the epic scope of a photograph album? May our Father in Heaven, the untiring amateur who each Sunday snaps us from above, at an unfortunate angle that makes for hideous foreshortening, and pastes our pictures, properly exposed or not, in his album, guide me safely through this album of mine.

The Sicilian Defence was our attempt at quickly fulfilling our contractual obligation after I Robot, Pyramid and Eve had been delivered. The album was rejected by Arista, not surprisingly, and we then renegotiated our deal for the future and the next album, The Turn of a Friendly Card. The Sicilian Defence album was never released and never will be, if I have anything to do with it. I have not heard it since it was finished. I hope the tapes no longer exist.

I know six years is a big break. But I never walked away from music. I never released an album because I wanted to do a different album, something I have never done before.

I gave the album [You're Under Arrest] to Quincy Jones and he loved "D Train". We couldn't call it "D Train"; it's called "MDI/Something's On Your Mind/MD2". That's on the album.

My first introduction to African music was by my mother, who bought the 'Pata Pata' album by the great Miriam Makeba when it came out. Now that is an album. What a voice.

You know, your first album is about really amazing things. Your first album is always about coming of age, first love, first loss, usually you suffer a first loss of someone that you love to death, even, you know, really big life lessons, things you learn from your parents' divorce or from the travels that you took.

I didn't know how well my first album had done; it was enough to get me to do the second album, which was a continuation of the music I'd worked on and perfected.

It is definitely much easier to feel that an album is disposable - to dismiss an album or delete the tracks you don't like or to just throw it into shuffle or whatever.

I don't really marinate in anybody's album because I don't really want to sound like anybody else when I put my album out. So I'd rather not even be tempted to listen to a bunch of other stuff with any degree of emersion in it, cause I just don't want to sound like anything else, so I kinda focus on my own music.

You sing songs hundreds of times over and over, but certain ones just morph and naturally, as you age and get life experience, take on a different form as well. When I was looking at songs for the album, I thought, "Which are the ones that connect with me the most? What do I think would work in album form?" Almost all of them I've done in shows.

Carole King's second album, 'Tapestry,' has fulfilled the promise of her first and confirmed the fact that she is one of the most creative figures in all of pop music. It is an album of surpassing personal-intimacy and musical accomplishment and a work infused with a sense of artistic purpose. It is also easy to listen to and easy to enjoy.

There's an album by Antonio Carlos Jobim - the album with 'The Girl From Ipanema.' That's the most seductive music ever.

For the second album I look forward to doing a lot of serious collaboration and taking the experiences I've had over this last year, good and bad, and working it into the album.

When you love what you do, you just really fall in love with it. Sometimes you record a lot more songs than the album will even hold. You record like 300 songs and only 12 songs go on the album. It takes time. But if you love what you do, it works out.

I've got a song on every album, two songs as a matter of fact on every album without Auto-Tune, and that's the song that nobody talks about. It's weird.

I had a record on the Terror Squad album "My Kinda Girls", and then I had a record on the second Terror Squad album and was featured all over it. I wasn't really introduced into the game until about late 2000 where people got to see where I look like.

But when you hear the complete album, it gets dark, really straight-up rock, with some really intimate moments with just me and the piano. It's not completely me because there are parts of me that aren't on that song, that are on the album.

I've always loved playing in bands where there's like three or four people and we're all throwing out ideas and coming together to make an album.

I find it so funny that for the first time in history, people have access to this great equalizer in the Internet, which grants everyone the same knowledge base, and we use it to read album reviews and watch kitten videos... not to put those two things in the same light!

I'm a very open and loving person. My whole thing has been "let love rule" since my first album. I'm about unity and peace and God.

I listened to my first comedy album in 6th grade. It was Bill Cosby. My brother and I would play it over and over on a Fisher Price record player. A friend in high school also introduced me to Richard Pryor. I wasn't writing material back then, but I would say funny stuff. I was good at making fun of people's moms. If I knew something personal about you, it would be used against you.

Sometimes when you record an album in the end, there are things here and there you regret production wise or in composition.

A lot of times, people have forgotten about an album by the time it's released, because it leaked three months earlier. Very strange days we live in.

I always hated the Grateful Dead. Never even bought a Led Zeppelin album.

It was always a great challenge: how can I make a dreampop album that's still very Alcest, but not a ripoff - how to keep the core.

I don't want to give too much lugubrious thought to the gravitas of a coherent album. I don't want to develop a life of slavery to a large topic. I want to throw out some singles and that's what I'm doing, and they're not to be done in any other way.

Jimmy Page is an excellent producer. Led Zeppelin I and II are classics. As a player he's very good in the studio, but I've never seen him play well live. He's sloppy. He plays like he's got a broken hand and he's two years old. If you put out a good album and play like a two year old, what's the purpose?

It's my intention to make something stand outside the realm of album art, but it also feels comfortable to me to be in it. It's tricky and definitely a requires striking a delicate balance.

But I've got to think of myself as the luckiest guy. Robert Johnson only had one album's worth of work as his legacy. That's all that life allowed him.

Our first album was a stupid mistake by the record company. They tried to sell us as an alternative act. A big mistake!

You realize that the first Bryan Ferry album was pretty good although at the time it seemed a bit cheesy.

When I was a kid I really didn't have my own opinions and then sort of transformed into this angel which is really Marilyn Manson and then the final stage is Antichrist Superstar which is the more nihilistic, totalitarian element in everybody's personality, that, is a real struggle on the album and in my life, between that power.

The best way to listen to the album is to put it on, get some Moet, lay back with your boys, and kick it.

When I'm writing my album, it's totally my world. Even though it's myself and another producer creating the project, Conceptually it's more under my power and on my own terms. At the same time, it's a different type of pressure because I'm ultimately speaking, I'm solely responsible for the end result.

I didn't want to become a personality, I wanted to be a musician, but because I didn't have an album to stand by yet it was hard for people to see that. But now, two albums in, I'm happy with things.

I've never listened to an album once I've finished it. All I hear is what I should've done different. I beat myself up over it.

The album was very agressive. It kicks you right in the balls.

I wanted to make an album that I wanted to put on myself and could listen to again and again. In the past I've done these records that are very in-depth. I love them and I'm very proud of them but I've always found it hard to listen to them again and again...they're very demanding.

Now that that album's done [TModern Vampires of the City], I have time to revisit things that I was working on earlier, previous to it. I actually found it very helpful to be working on some music on my own.

I'm working on my new album right now. Hopefully to get that out at the top of 2005, January 2005.

I don't want to do a gimmick. It's a bummer that that's how it is. I would say, personally speaking, consuming music now is harder than it was before. It's like being stuck in a slot machine. There's just so much noise. It's just constant noise. It's harder to clear your head and give the time to music that a lot of it really deserves. It's really crazy how different your relationship to an album or music becomes, even if it's digital, if you spend the $7 to $10 on it. It forms this relationship where you're not just going to throw it away.

I tend to just do whatever I want on an album and try to make it work. I'm just adventurous. It's most exciting to be at the edge of your abilities. I want to see how far I can push things.

Since the release of my single 'Born To Try' I have been so busy completing the album as well as my busy Neighbours schedule I have not had much spare time. When I do get the chance I just love to hang around at home with friends and family.

I like albums where all the songs are written in one go. If you're trying to create the number-one album with the best songs ever, I get why you'd want to write for three years and pick the best ones, but for me, I'd rather hear a group of songs that are all expressing a state, or time of your life. I think it's more that.

When I made Illmatic, I was trying to make the perfect album. It comes from the days of Wild Style. I was trying to make you experience my life. I wanted you to look at hip-hop differently. I wanted you to feel that hip-hop was changing and becoming something more real.

Even though the album is an endangered species, can we try and make a coherent and good one, even if it's like making a horse and cart at a Nascar conference?

We are made of stardust; why not take a few moments to look up at the family album?