Popular quotes about Albums! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 2
I find the fact that so few people buy albums to be strangely emancipating. There's absolutely no reason for 99% of musicians making albums to think about actually selling albums. So as a musician you can just make an album for the love of making albums.
MobyWith The Pogues, at least the first three albums I'll stand by completely, yeah? Because I was in artistic control then, yeah? And the last couple of albums I'll stand by anything that's got my name on it, yeah? But I'll stand by anything that is on The Popes' albums, you know? I wouldn't put stuff out that I didn't like. I don't put out bad music. And I can tell the difference. I know that.
Shane MacGowanMy iPod holds 3,000 albums. I own, like, 90 albums. My iPod sits at home, sullen, frustrated, and underused, like a wife who gave up her career and the kids turned out to be shite.
Dara O BriainBetween the Dinosaur Jr. albums and his recent solo albums, 'Several Shades of Why' and 'Heavy Blanket,' J Mascis is emerging as one of the last men from all that '80s indie madness, still writing songs that you want to listen to over and over.
Henry RollinsI just liked stand-up comedy so much. I used to memorize Bill Cosby albums and other people's albums, George Carlin, Flip Wilson.
Drew CareyI think most albums deserve a documentary because [an album] is a visual book. You don't have to read up on it because you can listen and watch the whole story. I would love to see lots of albums [become films.]
NasI'm not like a voracious hoarder who has 50,000 albums of vinyl stacked in a storage space in the San Fernando Valley. But I do have albums from the last 40 years of my life.
Dave GrohlI think everything happens for a reason and all of my choices have led me up to my solo album and made me stronger, not only as an artist but as a person. I want to do more the Black Eyed Peas albums and more of my own albums. I'm in this for the long run.
FergieWhat I love about making albums in the 21st century is that so few people buy albums! I can make an album without any commercial concerns whatsoever.
MobyOne day when I was like 9, I heard the Beatles on the radio, and I asked my dad who they were. He told me they were the best band in the world, and I became obsessed. He started giving me their albums in sequential order, and I listened to them - and only them - until I was probably in high school.
Lukas HaasI was always real back and forth about the whole religion and God. That comes from me just dealing with that pain when I was younger, and just growing up, living that particular street lifestyle. It brought my relationship with God into question many times. I wanted to repair that and fix that, and that's what I went in and did. I did all of that. I wrote many albums and all that kind of stuff, but the most important part was fixing my mind, body, and soul; getting it together, really getting it together where I could have a future, and a successful future.
ProdigyTo 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.
Jello BiafraWe got a little waylaid along the way. The whole problem started about 10 years ago with management and legal battles, then still trying to make albums while I was doing all of that.
Pat TraversI guess, a lot of people think is a long time between albums. It was needed for me. I went through a lot to get the album ["Wild Things"] finished. I actually went through a lot to even get the album started.
LadyhawkeMy audience are the same people who bought my albums years ago. These people are now married, with their own homes, their own families. If I'm in concert, I get people now who bring their kids.
Helen ReddyI was so frustrated in Sabbath after the last few albums. I just didn't like the musical direction Sabbath was going in
Geezer ButlerI 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.
Ben LeeIn 1975,Bob Dylan was almost 10 years past his prime - and then he released the best album of his career, Blood on the Tracks. Written and recorded amid a painful divorce, Blood on the Tracks is proof that heartbreak makes great art - just as many of the albums that followed were the opposite.
Bob DylanEverywhere I go, kids walk around not with books under their arms, but with radios up against their heads. Children can't read or write, but they can memorize whole albums.
Jesse JacksonIf you are not going to produce albums then you are not going to produce new fans. It's impossible. I'm a huge believer in putting music out as quickly as early as possible, touring hard and then working on putting the next one out. I don't need to break. I just need to put a record out.
Alan CooperThe Photo Album is the weakest record. For the first time in our careers, we found ourselves with an economic incentive to be on the road and to be making albums. We had cut ourselves free from the security of day-job life. The goals became primarily financial, at least for a while. That was the roughest time we had ever had as a band, because that was the first moment we realized that this was for real. We were not goofing around anymore. We all threw everything we had into this in a way where we all found ourselves really far from home, and we were stuck with each other.
Ben GibbardOn the musical side, I always wanted to kind of carry on Pink Floyd's sound. You know, Pink Floyd always had such an original, creative and masterful sound, but there are no new albums. My thought was that there's a way to keep their sound alive.
Corey Feldman[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.
Didi ConnI'm Here All Weak might be the strangest comedy album I have ever heard. But I've listened twice, which is more than I listen to 90 percent of all comedy albums, so I think I love it?
Tom ScharplingNobody wants to make great albums now because nobody wants to buy them and there's no place to sell them.
John MellencampAccessible music is much harder. I could throw out the other kind of albums with my eyes closed. I wouldn't belittle those who want to do the Tricky thing, but it does make me wonder sometimes.
Jamie LidellMost every album - and especially metal albums these days - are made in a way that you can grow tired of them very easily: They're made to be dissected and played on radio, released as singles or stuck on at parties.
Mat McNerneyFor my birthday this year, my girlfriends - who knew I'd just inherited my dad's turntable - gave me a carton of albums like "Blue Kentucky Girl," by Emmylou Harris, and "Off the Wall," by Michael Jackson. It's all stuff we grew up with. I mean, you can't have a music collection without Prince's "Purple Rain" - it just can't be done!
Connie BrittonIf I would get an album out every eight months and if I would write songs that were more up-tempo and try to focus more on making singles, then I could probably get more attention. But I don't think the albums would be very fun to listen to, and it would be a drag for me.
Chris IsaakI don't know what type of music my son will want. By the time he starts listening to music, really, at like 15, 16, I'll probably have 10 albums out by that time.
Meek MillIt's a different world now: Stars come and go quickly, and there are so many of them. I read a statistic that all the record companies combined used to put out around 3,000 albums in a year. Now they put out something like 30,000!
Bette MidlerWhat I was going for in the first two albums I didn't necessarily achieve. Because I was young and because it was my first time out. And the second album was such a 'quickie' sort of 'Let's just get it over with!' But the kind of music I make, there's a lot of subtlety in it. And I think it takes a couple of listens to actually really get it.
Norah JonesI wish more artists would do that sort of thing - just focus on one sound on a record instead of "Here's my club banger, here's my metro booming track, and then here's my Americana song." I like albums to feel like a world. That's just me.
Flying LotusI've always had a bazillion songs in my archive, but I want to play people stuff they know. Now that I have two albums' worth of material, that gives me freedom to compose a set that's more well-balanced and build a show rather than just a recital of some songs.
Kate VoegeleThe Band never really played big concert tours. We never sold millions and millions of albums.
Levon HelmPop 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.
Tony ViscontiIf you go to Japan, they're still buying vinyl, and they want the education. They know who's playing on what tracks from the '60s and the '70s - who the guitar player is, who the drummer is, who the producer was, what studio it was recorded in. That's how I grew up listening to music. We bought albums. We read the liner notes. It was important to know the whole history behind it.
Lenny KravitzI write almost everything on my albums, all the hooks etc, but I can't sing them as I hear them in my head. I would struggle to write for just my own voice as it would be pretty limiting on what my tracks are capable of sounding like, so being open to collaboration is crucial for what I do.
IllyWhat is Norah Jones' style? Is it just the albums that we've heard? She has a rock group where she plays guitar in, downtown in New York, so do we really know her style?
Talib Kweli