Quotes About Albums

The albums I did around that time probably wouldn't have been the same without Ecstacy. The first three Soft Cell albums... were all really albums that were just done around Ecstacy and the whole E feeling.

I have no idea how I do anything. I never have. You know I just started playing guitar and started singing and started working on this act that I would call "Don McLean" when I was probably in high school. And I have been doing this for 40 years, adding songs and writing things, cobbling together albums, doing live things, you know, albums and tours. And then I have records on the charts. I have no idea how this happened.

I made music on Seven the same way as on the other albums. I only used acoustic instruments... I'm looking for instruments that have vocal sounds, forgotten instruments like the guimbri... The first and second albums were about the voice, what came before. This album is about introducing those sounds into modern, Western life.

If people had good albums, they'd be buying albums. But people are buying singles because they only have good songs.

In the rest of the world we had had two albums that were successful, so those two albums' hits and this new four-single package made up an album called Wham! The Final, which is basically greatest hits. We couldn't have done a greatest hits over here, because we'd only done one hit album.

To this day, we get letters at Alternative Tentacles from young teenagers who hide their Dead Kennedys albums behind their mirror or in the mattress of their bed. Wouldn't it be better if the parents just discussed this with the kids instead of creating this culture of sneaking and dishonesty within the family? The moral of the story being, you don't hide reality from your kids because then they grow up to be smarter, more aware adults.

When you do rap albums, you got to train yourself. You got to constantly be in character.

It kind of limits what we can call the albums.

In 1994, I started touring again and I recorded two albums for Chesky Jazz.

Albums, with me, have never had an easy birth. Especially when all the songs are self-written songs.

My goals have changed throughout my life. At one time it was winning awards, selling out concert dates, selling more albums than anyone else. Now, my goals are to see my grandchildren grown, live a long and healthy life with my family and friends and travel the world.

Nothing has really changed. We had bootleg albums in the '60s and today we have Internet file sharing. They just found a better way to do it -- get music for free. What's great about today is an artist has an opportunity to go direct to their audience without dealing with a middleman. People can go directly to the web for CDs, DVDs and downloads. I think that's the best thing that's happened, that people's music is being flashed around the world.

Enclosure, upon its completion, was the record which represented the achievement of all the musical goals I had been aiming at for the previous 5 years. It was recorded simultaneously with Black Knights' Medieval Chamber, and as different as the two albums appear to be, they represent one investigative creative thought process. What I learned from one fed directly into the other. Enclosure is presently my last word on the musical statement which began with PBX.

If one artist sells five million albums, the tendency is for other artists to say, 'Maybe I should do a little of that, too.' That can be tough to resist.

People are like, 'What do you mean you don't listen to 115 different types of music?'. You can't just listen to The Smiths anymore. But then there are plenty of people that do only listen to five bands and six albums and that's it. My playlists are massively varied. There's never a theme throughout, it's never like everything is based in funk or based in reggae or whatever. It's 210BPM gabber-style techno and 40BPM reggae in the same list and it's like, yeah, they work.

Don't get me wrong, I love my first two albums a lot.

Albums are chapters. They're part of a story.

I love albums that have guest performers that the audience will be happy to hear. It's really a bonus!

Music didn't really hit me again until the '90s, when the dancehall scene got going. The '90s were perfect for me. I would have really liked to have had The Slits out in the '90s again, to do tours and albums, because I think the '90s was a brilliant decade for music.

[Kids today] think "Grease" is just one long music video. So they watch it over and over again the way we, when we were kids, we listened to albums.

I have nothing against bombastic music, but when it comes to making albums, I'd prefer to make music that has a sort of vulnerable subtlety to it.

50 Words of Snow just didn't seem to have the complications that quite a lot of albums have. It felt to me like it had this very good flow of energy.

I definitely don't subscribe to the theory that more instruments, or more vocal tracks, harmony, or double tracking the voice, is a good thing. People do their early albums very stripped down, then each album becomes bloated.

I do question a band's longevity, because most of my favorite bands only made one or two good albums. After that, I didn't care about them anymore. Sometimes I wonder if people feel the same thing about us. The way I look at it is, if we can continue to inspire ourselves and write really beautiful music that we're proud of, I don't think there's any intention to stop.

One of the main things that differentiates them [artists of 70s] from artists before is that they made albums based on the fact that they didn't care about the band as a thing in its own right. They cared about manipulating the recording and that became the 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 don't care what people do. I don't care how people remember my albums. I do them for my own reasons.

Three years between records is longer than average. Double albums are much more of a statement. I really wanted to put myself out there as much as I possibly could.

Listening to albums and records is not the best way to percept Verka Serduchka. Live shows are the place where you can feel that specific atmosphere, that is not going to be the same ever.

I feel like fans who like old Southern rock and country, and more lyric-driven songs in general, have come to country radio. I think that's why you see country radio growing and albums selling: People are craving a little more of the singer-songwriter stuff going on in country.

We've done every record on our own. Its produced by our guitar player and sometimes we'll have some help mixin' it and have some outside engineers but for the most part, it's done by the band and I think that's the reason why CKY sounds like no other band, 'cause we make our own albums.

Erykah Badu projects don't even sound like Erykah Badu projects. I don't even have one album that sounds like another one of my albums.

The worst thing about me is that I'll buy albums and put them away on the shelf and forget that I've got them.

Pop was initially ignored as a moneymaker by the recording industry. In the seventies they were still relying on Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett for their big hits. You know, most of the budget for the record companies in those days went to the classical department - and those were big budget albums.

I'm free to do what I please, I'm probably not going to do albums. Just because I think releasing tracks as singles is a better way for me to stay topical.

When you are on a major record label, you're just forced to think big. You are forced to think about things like "how many radio spins did we get this week?" or "how many albums did we sell across the country. Being independent, you are just focused on the city that you are playing in tonight. How many people can I meet and become friends with tonight. That's one of the great things about being an independent artist.

If you want the old me, go buy my old albums.

When people would ask me what I’m addicted to, I always said ‘music.’ And while they’d laugh it off like it’s a cliché, I’m actually a complete shopaholic when it comes to records. I’d literally buy 10 albums a week for years, so when I went to that Virgin Records and it said ‘going out of business,’ my heart stopped.

My dad used to open up photo albums and stuff and you'd have to tell a story about the picture but you couldn't tell the truth so you had to make up a story about whatever you were looking at. He really taught us how to lie.

I write for myself; I release the albums to connect with everyone else.

I enjoy listening to the albums of my youth as much as ever.

I've been told I sold 110m albums and singles. If that's the case, I should've come here in a space rocket.

I write songs simply because I get a kick out of making them exist. I'm also sort of addicted to the recording studio, and making albums is my idea of fun.

The drama teacher that I had in high school, back in Texas, was the only teacher who didn't kick me out of his class. He turned me on to 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.' I had picked up Dylan with 'Bringing It All Back Home,' and he turned me on to the first couple of albums, which I hadn't heard.

What excites me is the idea of doing a record that's pretty clean and focused on songs. I've rushed a lot with previous albums and there's not a rush now - it's not a race.

I spent five years, at least, working with Miles. Together, we recorded ESP, Nefertiti, Sorcerer -- and I can tell you; each of these albums instantly became jazz classics. Hey, we had Wayne Shorter playing tenor sax, Ron [Carter] on bass, Tony Williams played drums. That was great band we had.

I think I was around 10 or 11 years of age when I got my first guitar, but I can remember being as young as 3 or 4 watching my father jam on acoustic to his favorite rush and Jimmy Hendrix albums so I have always been around music.

If you look at my career, doing albums with Norah Jones, Justin Timberlake, Gucci Mane and Lil Wayne or KRS-One and Jean Grae, I can't be pigeonholed.