Quotes About Album

Any album that you pick up of mine, you know it's an Akon album. The guests are very limited and you get to really feel the experience. You get the Akon experience when you get the albums. I always want to make sure that stays the way it is. I don't want to flood the album to where you lose focus on why you bought it.

I grew up in the era of the concept album. What I do now is pick up on singles, and they are their own complete stories; you don't necessarily have to hear the rest of the album because I don't think albums are created like that anymore. They get songs from all over the place.

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.

I would expect another Scars album before another System album.

In those days it was pretty cut and dry. If you had a record company believing in you enough to cut an album then you had better have the ability to work the album on the road.

It's nice if you're making a regular pop or rock album and you get ten little songs. But I really try to make the album with one big story instead of ten small stories.

I've met so many amazing fans in the couple of weeks since the release of my second album, and everyone keeps telling me they feel so connected to the record. I think as an artist, all you really want out of your album is to feel like you're not alone.Because you wrote it for a reason. You wrote it because you're feeling some kind of emotion that you had to get out in the world. And if fans say, "that makes me feel like I'm not alone", then you get to say back to them, "Well, you telling me that makes me feel like I'm not alone either".

I try to explain that to my kids - the experience of going to a record store, flipping through racks and finding that album cover that intrigues you - but my kids don't want to know about it. They download the one song on the album they like, and pay their 99 cents.

So I went out and bought Hard Again by Muddy Waters. That was a big learning curve. I listened to that album again and again and again. James Cotton was the harmonica player on that album.

When I first knew Bob Dylan, he lived in the Village. And for a man who, years after, would disdain publicity or any attempts at interviews, whenever I'd write something about him, he'd be on the street corner saying, `When's it going to run? When's it going to run?' But I must say that album that was - it was the second album he did, and though I've never been a fan of his guitar-playing, he did - I have to admit, he did catch the Zeitgeist of the time.

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.

I love music. It's always been a big part of my life, and I don't think people should, you know, judge me by my last name instead of listening to the album. I think the music definitely speaks for itself, and it's a great album.

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.

The key moments in your life are when you realize how exciting music can be, like when you hear Nevermind for the first time. I grew up in the '70s and '80s. I was introduced to hip-hop when it first came out. Hip-hop music will always be my first love. That's why I love playing the drums. Any day of the week, I would rather listen to a hip-hop album than a rock album.

Actually, recording the Suite Chic album was so much fun and while working on this new album, people that I've worked with from Suite Chic has lend their voice.

Back in the day, fans wrote letters to groups - you'd get them, although it could take a while. Now, artists can go online and there's discussions about what you should and shouldn't be doing. The minute you announce that you're recording an album, thousands of people are telling you what that album should be.

All my money comes from show money. You might get your deals, your advancements to do your album, but it wasn't in great abundance. Everybody's money in the '90s came from doing shows. That's a whole lot of show money, and that's it.

In short, if we adhere to the standard of perfection in all our endeavors, we are left with nothing but mathematics and the White Album.

Miles Davis was a part of my life from 1947 on. I was born in 1941 and I first heard him in 1947 on a 78 rpm. And then I followed his career, starting with his first solo album in 1951. He was an icon and inspiration and a mentor to me.

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

I'll probably do a lot of acting first, then go to singing. but I am going to definitely sing someday. So when I do start singing, buy my album!

I picked and co-wrote the songs that if I was a guy who would be spending my hard-earned money buying an album I would want to hear.

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.

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.

I play drums and guitar. My best instrument is definitely drums, so I'm featured a lot on the album drumming. It's pretty futuristic as well.

I grew up in an age where I loved going and buying a physical record. Things that were digital and all that stuff, it wasn't around. So I loved going and buying an album and looking through the inserts and reading stuff and seeing pictures.

I called the album 'The Chemo' because it seems like the industry and music overall is dying slowly.

The next album I make might be the most messed up thing ever. It's all momentary for me.

But for the most part, for the majority of a stand-up audience, you better have new stuff they've not heard. And if you put an album out, just consider that material gone. At least that's how I see it.

If I have a song that I feel is really one of my best songs, I like it to have a formal studio recording because I believe that something being officially released on a studio record gives it a certain authority that it doesn't quite have if it comes out on a live album or is just a part of your show, you know.

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.

I tried to take some of the same records that were important to me on my album Full Speed that my fans really vibed with content-wise and just made sure that the production and actual sound was put together differently and wasn't rushed as much.

I don't want to put 12 singles on an album. I want to make a story, a little movie.

Over a year before I started recording Salad Days, so I finally sat down and was like I have to do this. And it did feel like a chore. I was looking at it in a completely wrong way, trying to one up myself. Just the typical sophomore album bullshit. The main thing I got out of it is I eventually gave up on all that stuff. I had to re-learn why I liked making music in the first place, why I liked recording in my room all the time. Because it's fun. It's fun for me.

If your album sells, that's cool, more people find out about you, more people get turned on to what we're really about-which is a live rock and roll band.

You can't control it once you turn it into the label, so there's the expectation that it'll leak a week before the album comes out. That's the world we live in.

We recorded Star Climbing over a three-year period between our studios, working on songs and lyrics until we felt like we had found the albums direction. It is our most distinctive album to date, combining all our different tastes and styles into one.

The second album of Black Mages is currently in the process of recording and the basic tracks have already been completed. Hopefully sometime in the future we will be able to have a concert.

If you get a chance to be in a film, that's great. One of my goals is to make a record as good as Don Henley's album, Building the Perfect Beast.

But we're still rehearsing and planning to make a new album next year. We have some really good new songs that we've already been playing on that last tour that we just finished.

I'd stopped doing music all of a sudden, and because of Chill and Jay and B, I got half of my album on a solo project. Then I get a call a week later and Jay is like, "Yo, Janet [Jackson] likes one of the records. We'll take five but are you cool with giving Janet one?" I was like, dude, we can do whatever you want to do.

The happening and telling are very different things. This doesn’t mean that the story isn’t true, only that I honestly don’t know anymore if I really remember it or only remember how to tell it. Language does this to our memories, simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. An off-told story is like a photograph in a family album. Eventually it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.

For me, I want to create a environment for the songs to live in. So one song by itself only tells a piece of the story, but in the context of the album, more of the colors are revealed.

I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.

An album for me as a teenager in the '70s was a fully formed concept. It was a body of work from an artist I liked or trusted or who excited me. Maybe one of the songs is really poppy and you listen to it on the radio as a hit single and then more of the world is about to find out about this artist by buying the record.

You're always frustrated, you don't have the chance to do a song on the album, like the Beatles did with Ringo and George, or like Led Zeppelin, where everybody was given a chance to contribute. There never is a chance with the Stones.

United Artists wanted to do records with me. I had no idea, what a rare thing that was... to make an album. And they put a guy with me working on songs, and I got busy with films. I just kind of let it slide. Isn't that amazing?

Just six days after its release on iTunes, a record-breaking 33 million people have already listened to the album.