Popular Music Quotes - Page 3

• It was such an amazing time for music in the Sixties. When popular music hit me, it was like magic was in the air.

  Ozzy Osbourne

  Air, Magic, Sixty

  Interview with David Furnish, www.gq-magazine.co.uk. October 2004.

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• ....the popular music of Jamaica, the music of the people, is an essentially experiential music, not merely in the sense that the people experience the music, but also in the sense that the music is true to the historical experience, that the music reflects the historical experience. It is the spiritual expression of the historical experience of the Afro-Jamaican.

  Linton Kwesi Johnson

  Spiritual, Expression, Jamaica

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• I was interested in a whole range of music that I used to play, popular music -- particularly American music -- that I heard a lot of when I was a teenager," "I think at a certain point it dawned on me that myself playing this music wasn't very convincing. It was more convincing when we played music that came from our own stock of tradition. ... I certainly feel a lot more comfortable playing so-called Celtic music.

  John Renbourn

  Teenager, Thinking, Play

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• If you look at the history of popular music, the most successful musicians have started out being really marginal and esoteric. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Madonna. Prince. Bruce Springsteen. Fleetwood Mac. David Bowie. Public Enemy. Nirvana.

  Moby

  Successful, Being Real, Enemy

  "David Bowie EW Cover: Inside David Bowie and Moby's out-of-this-world 2002 tour". Interview with Jeff Gordinier, ew.com. January 11, 2016.

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• Steve Marcus was one of the greatest saxophonists in all of music. He truly was able to unite jazz with the popular music of the time.

  Larry Coryell

  Able, Jazz

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• In country music the lyric is important and the melodies get a little more complex all the time, and you hear marvelous new singers who are interested in writing and interpreting a lyric and in all form of popular music.

  Dinah Shore

  Country, Writing, Important

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• Popular music of the last 50 years has failed to keep in step with advances in musical theater, namely Stephen Sondheim. But the two have grown apart so that popular music is based more than ever on a rhythmic grid that is irrelevant in musical theater. In popular music, words matter less and less. Especially now that it's so international, the fewer words the better. While theater music becomes more and more confined to a few blocks in midtown.

  Stephin Merritt

  Block, Musical, Music Is

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• Van Morrison remains a singer who can be compared to no other in the history of modern popular music.

  Greil Marcus

  Singers, Modern, Vans

  "When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison". Book by Greil Marcus, 2010.

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• We are living in a time when American popular music is finally being recognized as one of our most successful exports. The demand is huge.

  Billy Joel

  Successful, Demand, Music Is

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• I like musicianship, and it's quite lacking in most modern popular music. You're always safe with old Chicago, the Allman Brothers, Gov't Mule, or Tower of Power.

  Mark Rippetoe

  Brother, Chicago, Towers

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• Without David Bowie, popular music as we know it pretty much wouldn't exist.

  Moby

  Bowie, Knows

  "David Bowie: Back in the spotlight, still refusing to play along" by Andrew Harrison, www.theguardian.com. January 2, 2016.

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• Entertainment isn't just based on the very structured syndrome of European popular music, and it's great that there are so many thousands of people who are of the same opinion.

  Robert Plant

  People, Entertainment, Opinion

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• There is no essential difference between classical and popular music. Music is music. I want to communicate with the listener who finds Indian classical music remote.

  Amjad Ali Khan

  Differences, Essentials, Want

  "Indian Legend Ustad Amjad Ali Khan and Sons Perform in NYC" by Jim Luce, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 26, 2011.

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• Popular music formed the soundtrack of my life.

  Martin Scorsese

  Soundtracks

  "Martin Scorsese: '3D is liberating. Every shot is rethinking cinema'". Interview with Mark Kermode, www.theguardian.com. November 20, 2010.

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• It is inescapable that Ringo was the catalyst for the others. He certainly completed the jigsaw and The Beatles, with Ringo, became a magnet for the great camera artists of the world, a target for the jaded, lately hostile eyes of people who had hardly known that popular music existed.

  Brian Epstein

  Eye, Artist, People

  Brian Epstein (2011). “A Cellarful of Noise”, p.72, Souvenir Press

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• Popular music is slowly being laid to rest in every conceivable way... the ashes are already about us if we could but notice them.

  Steven Morrissey

  Ashes, Way, Music Is

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• That seems like one of the differences in expectations of "serious" and "popular" music that you can actually depend on the liner notes to explain yourself? Yeah. Whereas in popular music you depend on photo shoots. A hardcore band who looked like Duran Duran would have to depend upon those liner notes.

  Stephin Merritt

  Expectations, Serious, Hardcore

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• Composers are influenced by all the important music in their lives - and I suppose that since radio started playing popular music, that's as likely to be The Beatles or Aphex Twin as it is to be Verdi or Ravel.

  Jonny Greenwood

  Music, Important, Ravel

  "Music (For A Film): Jonny Greenwood Of Radiohead Interviewed". Interview with Chris Woolfrey, thequietus.com. February 18, 2014.

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• Bob Geldof is a nauseating character. Band Aid was the most self-righteous platform ever in the history of popular music.

  Steven Morrissey

  Memorable, Character, Self

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• Have you listened to the radio lately? Have you heard the canned, frozen and processed product being dished up to the world as American popular music today?

  Billy Joel

  Halloween, Frozen, World

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• In rap, as in most popular lyrics, a very low standard is set for rhyme; but this was not always the case with popular music.

  James Fenton

  Rap, Lows, Cases

  "It ain't necessarily so" by James Fenton, www.theguardian.com. October 18, 2002.

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• For instance, I'm always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.

  Brian Eno

  Magic, Kind, Form

  "The 77 Million Faces of Brian Eno". Interview with Andrew Marantz, www.motherjones.com. November 12, 2012.

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• It just sort of happened. I wrote like what I'd always read and what was in the movies... I'm sure popular music is supposed to be like this.

  Warren Zevon

  Music Is, Happened, Supposed To Be

  "My Lunch with Warren Zevon" by David Bowman, Salon.com, March 17, 2000.

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• For me personally - because I do it myself - the scoring of a picture is fun. I edit the picture and when I've finished I go into my room and I have many many records - jazz, classical and popular music. And I have this all at my disposal. I don't have to get a composer.

  Woody Allen

  Fun, Records, Rooms

  Interview with Geoff Andrew, www.theguardian.com. September 27, 2001.

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• People say modernism killed poetry for them: it doesn't rhyme, it doesn't touch a popular musical oral tradition. Years ago, you memorized and read poetry; it was one of the things you were forced to learn. Now it has tiny role in school.

  Campbell McGrath

  School, Years, People

  "Campbell McGrath on Poetry, Walt Whitman and Schaefer Beer" by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, www.wsj.com. March 01, 2008.

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