Nowadays music is as disposable as a McDonald's wrapper. — Jeff Beck
Pop music, disco music, and heavy metal music is about shutting out the tensions of life, putting it away. — Peter Tork
Pop changes week to week, month to month. But great music is like literature. — Ravi Shankar
The world's most famous and popular language is music. — PSY
Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics. — Pietro Mascagni
Music is being treated as one big karaoke machine. — Robin Gibb
Latin music has many international influences - pop, rock, country, Brazilian sounds, and alternative styles. — Ednita Nazario
Super casual music listeners. That's most of the people in the world. And you have to understand, that's why Top 40 radio exists. It's not there for people who seek out music and who love music. — Michael Stipe
Music is for every single person that walks the planet. — Robert Plant
Disco is just pop music you can dance to. — Sheena Easton
The consolidation of the music business has made it difficult to encourage styles like the blues, all of which deserve to be celebrated as part of our most treasured national resources. — Bonnie Raitt
My favorite type of music to sing is a crossover between country and pop. — Lauren Alaina
My songs are like Bic razors. For fun, for modern consumption. You listen to it, like it, discard it, then on to the next. Disposable pop. — Freddie Mercury
Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it. — John Lennon
Short Popular Music Quotes
Rap music is the only vital form of music introduced since punk rock. — Kurt Cobain
Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without. — Confucius
Only sick music makes money today. — Friedrich Nietzsche
Music should be a collective magic and hysteria. — Pierre Boulez
Music is a world within itself, with a language we all understand. — Stevie Wonder
Music is always changing and the changes are unpredictable. — Billy Sheehan
Music gives color to the air of the moment. — Karl Lagerfeld
Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized. — David Sanborn
Music is a safe kind of high. — Jimi Hendrix
Popular Music Image Quotes
Life is like a piano, the white keys represent happiness and the black shows sadness, but as you go through life's journey, remember that the black keys also makes music.
What Is Music Quotes
It's pretty clear now that what looked like it might have been some kind of counterculture is, in reality, just the plain old chaos of undifferentiated weirdness. — Jerry Garcia
I'm not a lyric writer to make statements. What I enjoy doing is making paintings with lyrics, creating colorful images. I think that's more what entertainment and music should be. — Chris Cornell
The vibrations on the air are the breath of God speaking to man's soul. Music is the language of God. We musicians are as close to God as man can be. We hear his voice, we read his lips, we give birth to the children of God, who sing his praise. That's what musicians are. — Ludwig van Beethoven
Behind every girl's favorite song there is an untold story.
My music is the spiritual expression of what I am — my faith, my knowledge, my being...When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hangups...I want to speak to their souls. — John Coltrane
My music is the spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being. — John Coltrane
The only music minister to whom the Lord will say, 'Well done, thy good and faithful servant,' is the one whose life proves what their lyrics are saying, and to whom music is the least important part of their life. Glorifying the only worthy One has to be a minister's most important goal! — Keith Green
The earth has music for those who listen.
Music is a beautiful thing to listen to. It is not a thing to preach to others about, it’s not a cause. It is what it is-and that’s a beautiful artform. — Synyster Gates
I want longevity; I love music, being a musician is the greatest gift in the world to me, and if I were to get signed to a label, my family and team around me are always gonna be there to make sure they want the very best for me. My fans are what it's all about. — Christina Grimmie
The winds that sometimes take something we love, are the same that bring us something we learn to love. Therefore we should not cry about something that was taken from us, but, yes, love what we have been given. Because what is really ours is never gone forever. — Bob Marley
Life isn’t a music player where you choose whats being played, it is a radio where you have to enjoy whats being played. — Zayn Malik
Popular Song Quotes
Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning reel
As the images unwind
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind. — Michel Legrand
So I'm not very popular here with those inside the system, as you might guess. I never wanted to be. — Waylon Jennings
Go on and try to tear me down
I will be rising from the ground — Demi Lovato
Blue moon you saw me standing alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own. — Lorenz Hart
Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide,
No escape from reality.
Open your eyes,
Look up to the skies and see,
I'm just a poor boy, I need no sympathy,
Because I'm easy come, easy go,
Little high, little low,
Any way the wind blows doesn't really matter to me, to me. — Freddie Mercury
A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn't like the tune.
You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss, A sigh is just a sigh; The fundamental things apply, As time goes by. — Herman Hupfeld
How many times can a man turn his head, and pretend that he just doesn't see? — Bob Dylan
If you don't know the blues... there's no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music. — Keith Richards
Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels The dizzy dancing way you feel As every fairy tale comes real I've looked at love that way. — Joni Mitchell
Pop Music Quotes
Straight from the heart, I represent hip hop
I be three albums deep, but I don't wanna go pop
Too many candy rappers seem to be at the top
Too much candy is no good, so now I'm closing the shop. — Phife Dawg
Rock and roll by its nature is sexual. So girls playing rock and roll is saying to the world, "We own our sexuality." I think that pop music is sort of about "you can do what you want to me" kind of energy, while rock and roll is "I'm going to do what I want to you" kind of energy. — Joan Jett
That's the beautiful thing about the saxophone. It can peacefully coexist with just about anything - whether it's hip-hop, rap, rock music, pop, R&B or jazz, there's a place for the saxophone in all of those styles. — Dave Koz
Art is how we decorate space; Music is how we decorate time.
Spin Me Round was number one all over the world, everywhere. It changed the face of pop music, no question. We took technology further than Trevor Horn. — Pete Waterman
In pop music, you say, 'You can do what you want to me.' Rock 'n' roll says, 'I'm gonna do what I want to you.' — Joan Jett
The first music I bought when I was nine or 10 was pop music from the '50s and '60s, like The Everly Bros., Elvis, Del Shannon, The Flamingos, The Platters, whatever I could get my hands on. And then some musical things, like Camelot, Singing in the Rain and Hair. — Will Oldham
A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.
I respect Snoop even aside from the music, just as a man, and especially the way he still represents who he is, after being a pop star and an icon. He's done it successfully and has still been able to balance it. — Nipsey Hussle
Rap music is just computerised crap. I listen to Top of the Pops and after three songs I feel like killing someone. — George Harrison
I've never intended to be controversial but it's very easy to be controversial in pop music because nobody ever is. — Steven Morrissey
The function of pop music is to be consumed. — Pierre Boulez
Popular Entertainment Quotes
The road goes on forever and the party never ends. — Robert Earl Keen
I’m always proud to be popular with the fans. I try to smile and do my best. If they like it, it’s even better. — Antoine Griezmann
The British brand is so popular particularly in the US that they put the union jack flag on top of beer bottles because it sells. — Liz Truss
People are like Music, some speak the truth and other are just noise
It is almost a truism that nothing kills a money-making opportunity faster than its widespread popularity. — Thomas Phelps
What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish. — W. H. Auden
Riot – A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders. — Ambrose Bierce
Music is the emotional life of most people.
In the city a funeral is just an interruption of traffic; in the country it is a form of popular entertainment. — George Ade
Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special! How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer... Who'd have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and spirituality would mix so harmoniously? — Bill Watterson
My esoteric doctrine, is that if you entertain any doubt, it is safest to take the unpopular side in the first instance. Transit from the unpopular, is easy... but from the popular to the unpopular is so steep and rugged that it is impossible to maintain it. — Lord Melbourne
My esoteric doctrine, is that if you entertain any doubt, it is safest to take the unpopular side in the first instance. Transit from the unpopular, is easy... but from the popular to the unpopular is so steep and rugged that it is impossible to maintain it. — William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne
Modern Music Quotes
Music is enough for a lifetime - but a lifetime is not enough for music. — Sergei Rachmaninoff
Music expresses that which cannot be put into words. — Victor Hugo
We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams. — Albert Einstein
One good thing about music. When it hits you, you feel no pain.
I really like the city of Vienna. I like its art, its music and its architecture. In short, I like the culture that Vienna represents. What really captures me is the period around 1900 - the time of Freud, Schnitzler and Klimt. This is the period in which the modern view of mind was born. — Eric Kandel
With the Stray Cats at least, we really took the music somewhere else. First, we wrote our own songs. That's a real weak point in modern classics if you do rockabilly or blues. — Brian Setzer
My music is not modern, it is merely badly played — Arnold Schoenberg
Without music, life would be a mistake.
Modern music and artistry would look and sound completely different if not for the groundbreaking contributions Michael Jackson gifted to the world. — L.A. Reid
I had no idea of the historical evolution of the civilized world's music and had not realized that all modern music owes everything to Bach. — Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Rock ’n roll is really swing with a modern name. It began on the levees and plantations, took in folk songs, and features blues and rhythm. It's the rhythm that gets to the kids – they're starved of music they can dance to, after all those years of crooners. — Alan Freed
Music is a gut thing. You're working in a medium which is more in touch with the primal than the modern. A gig is a ritual. There's a congregation. — Siobhan Fahey
Popular Culture Quotes
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. — Clark Gable
The test of a government is not how popular it is with the powerful and privileged few but how honestly and fairly it deals with the many who must depend on it. — Jimmy Carter
The concept that an artist would be revered by popular culture is an immediate dismissal of his relevance as an artist. — Thomas Kinkade
I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse. — Marlon Brando
The standardization of world culture, with local popular or traditional forms driven out or dumbed down to make way for American television, American music, food, clothes and films, has been seen by many as the very heart of globalization. — Fredric Jameson
A few words of Hindi appear here or there, but it's all Urdu. I feel that if the popular culture, which is what Hindi films are, uses Urdu, it's not going to diminish. — Ismail Merchant
Reality TV is sleazy, it is manipulative. It is as momentary as anything in popular culture. — Morley Safer
I'm not saying Sonic Youth was a conceptual-art project for me, but in a way it was an extension of Warhol. Instead of making criticism about popular culture, as a lot of artists do, I worked within it to do something. — Kim Gordon
My older sister was at the cusp of new wave, and I had older brothers from my father's first marriage who were rock 'n' roll guys, so I was exposed to a lot of popular culture. — Paul Thomas Anderson
Contemporary Music Quotes
Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history, and race. At its best, hip hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such topics. — Michael Eric Dyson
The whole rise of new adult contemporary music and smooth jazz was a nice surprise. — Kenny G
Do I think all contemporary Christian music is good? No. — Amy Grant
Writing songs is about trying to connect with people on a deeper spiritual level - but I'm not a fan of contemporary Christian music. — Ryan Tedder
I always like to play very contemporary concepts of swing right next to New Orleans music because it highlights continuum. — Wynton Marsalis
I am a classical music lover - not necessarily the contemporary stuff, but the old stuff. — Eberhard Weber
All great music is contemporary. If it's still alive and kicking, then it's contemporary. If it fades away, it was a period piece. It had its moment, and that was it. — Steve Reich
Words that in their everyday surrealism have no parallel in contemporary writing... Music that mines the deep veins of fatalism in the Appalachian voice — Greil Marcus
I mean, people listen to music, and they like that, but I think in England, a lot of people don't like contemporary art. — Damien Hirst
I've never had any feeling of disconnection between the classical theater, or the contemporary theater, or musical theater, or the thing that we call opera. — Trevor Nunn
Pop Song Quotes
I think the true test of a pop song, for me, and I've talked to a lot of other writers about this, is you take your demo, you pop it in your car and you drive down Sunset Blvd. to Santa Monica, and that's the Hollywood car test. — Ryan Tedder
In pop or rock you can make a fast song or a slow one, but in disco there is really just the one rhythm. — Giorgio Moroder
I mean, m-m-m-my you're like pelican fly — Nicki Minaj
I see songs not as a commodity used up when the album goes off the charts, which is often the case with pop songs. I see them as a body of work. Life should be breathed into them. — Sting
Sometimes when I get home after a long day, I'll turn on music - I love Latin, disco, and pop - and do my own workout, even if it's a short one. Know a good song to work out to? 'I Will Survive. — Summer Glau
So I'll set a cycle in motion and pop it into record and I'll lay down a drum pattern, a bass line, a keyboard and guitar part, and once the groove is going I launch into the song and sing my song over the top. — Thomas Dolby
It's lifestyle music. It's not like some secretary who likes some pop song, but can't name who the band is; whereas a heavy metal fan is into every aspect of it. We'll see if rap holds up to that. Run-DMC seemed to be the Led Zeppelin of rap. — Rob Zombie
When I am seriously composing, sometimes a phrase will come into my head, a catch phrase. When I was writing pop songs for a few years, as a career, separate from my folksinging career, I used to write songs for pop singers. — Tom Glazer
Anyone can sit down and write some boring artistic song. Pop music is the hardest [stuff] to write. — Britney Spears
Teen pop will never die as long as there are teens and popular music. It just takes a different head. — Justin Timberlake
Commercial Music Quotes
Watch MTV and you can see what the music scene is like in England. The Spice Girls? Not a lot of creativity in the commercial area. There are still great musicians in England, but not a lot being heard that much. — Jimmy Carl Black
Rock became an incredible commercial success, people just became bored with serious music, and it was forgotten. — Henry Flynt
The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial. — Leonard Bernstein
The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular? — David Sarnoff
I did my own music videos, my own TV commercials. — Helen Reddy
I never do anything to strictly satisfy a fickle, ever-changing commercial world. I do the music I like to play. It's the only way I feel comfortable existing in the industry. — Charlie Hunter
I direct a lot of TV commercials and music videos. — Alex Winter
Fear is a problem with film music and films; people want to be conventional, and there's more commercialism today. If you are not daring in your art, you're bankrupt. — Alex North
Music can save people, but it can't in the commercial way it's being used. It's just too much. It's pollution. — Sayings
For all of us involved in preaching the gospel, performing music, publishing Christian materials, and all the rest, there is an uncomfortable message here: Jesus is not terribly impressed with religious commercialism — Jim Cymbala
Popular Film Quotes
Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make! — Bram Stoker
I'll make him an offer he can't refuse. — Mario Puzo
Our point isn't to make an examination of popular film but to illustrate that the yearning for a heroic adventure lies just beneath the surface of our consciousness; film, television, literature, sports, and travel are in a sense vicarious adventures. — Alan Hirsch
Audience members are only concerned about the story, the concept, the bells and whistles and the noise that a popular film starts to make even before it's popular. So audiences will not be drawn to the technology; they'll be drawn to the story. And I hope it always remains that way. — Steven Spielberg
It's become very popular in contemporary films to have the twist ending. — Bill Paxton
My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die! — William Goldman
I was definitely surprised when Talk Radio took off as a play. As a film it has become somewhere between a popular thing and a cult thing. — Eric Bogosian
Popular films are so powerful and compelling that it's often easier to accept their versions of history than the much more complicated true stories. — Melissa Harris-Perry
I'm not in this business to win a popularity contest, I just want to be a good actor. Well, you've failed at being a good actor. Why not try for the popularity contest? — Roger Moore
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room. — Peter Sellers
What is classical music if not the epitome of sensuality, passion, and understated erotica that popular music, even with all of its energy and life, cannot even begin to touch? — Lara St. John
Never sound pompous. You always sound noble, noble. Absolute character of music is nobility. Even popular music can be noble, you see. If it's not noble, then it's not very good... Music is an art of emotion, of nobility, of dignity, of greatness, of love, of tenderness. All that must be brought out in music but never a show of pompousness. — Arthur Rubinstein
If you can imagine a man having a vasectomy without anesthetic to the sound of frantic sitar-playing, you will have some idea of what popular Turkish music is like. — Bill Bryson
Music was the one thing I could control. It was the one world that offered me freedom. When I played music, my nightmares ended. My family problems disappeared. I didnt have to search for answers. The answers lay no further than the bell of my trumpet and my scrawled, pencilled scores. Music made me full, strong, popular, self-reliant and cool. — Quincy Jones
Ask anyone. If it hadn't been for Elvis, I don't know where popular music would be. He was the one that started it all off, and he was definitely the start of it for me. — Elton John
The Doors embodied—incarnated—a major upheaval in popular culture. Their music was of the times and it shaped the times. — Jac Holzman
Making an album should be an honest experience. It shouldn't be about trying to gauge where popular music is today; it should be about artistic expression and putting down what you want to put down. — Scott Weiland
I remember when I was very young, I read an article by Fats Domino which has really influenced me. He said, 'You should never sing the lyrics out very clearly. — Mick Jagger
Popular music had never had lyrical sophistication of this type [like Bob Dylan]; wit, to be sure, but "Darkness at the break of noon/Shadows even the silver spoon/The handmade blade, the child's balloon/Eclipses both the sun and moon/To understand you know too soon/ There is no sense in trying"? No. — Bob Dylan
Although we are being presented in Carnegie Hall, we have to furnish a budget for our guest stars, and for the music writing - which is a huge budget in any orchestra that plays popular music. — Skitch Henderson
Rap has been a path between cultures in the best tradition of popular music. — Jay-Z
After people like Lennon and Dylan, I think David Bowie brought a very modernistic intelligence and the necessity for change. I think he was completely positive, certainly through one and a half decades of completely overriding influence, in the best of popular music, and I take my bloody hat off to him! — Roger Meddows Taylor
There's been a shift: Country music is popular music now. Every other genre wants to come over to our land. — Miranda Lambert
Popular music is popular because a lot of people like it. — Irving Berlin
Music is for people. The word 'pop' is simply short for popular. It means that people like it. I'm just a normal jerk who happens to make music. As long as my brain and fingers work, I'm cool. — Eddie Van Halen
I only knew classical music, which to me was the only true music. The only way I could survive at the bar was to mix the classical music with popular songs, and that meant I had to sing. What happened was that I discovered I had a voice plus the talent to mix classical music together with more popular songs, which at the time I detested. — Nina Simone
Explicit material is available in a variety of forums - from popular music to television to the Internet. — Tipper Gore
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
The doctor used to tell me that every person about to die becomes a music box playing the melody that best describes his life, his character, and his hopes. For some, it's a popular waltz; for others, a march. — Patrick Modiano
Bob Geldof is a nauseating character. Band Aid was the most self-righteous platform ever in the history of popular music. — Steven Morrissey
One of the things that's clear to me from interviews that I've read is that the more popular successful jazz musicians had audiences above and beyond the music community. — Branford Marsalis
James Brown and Frank Sinatra are two different quantities in the universe. They represent two different experiences of the world. — Amiri Baraka
I met a girl who sang the blues
and I asked her for some happy news,
but she just smiled and turned away.
And the three men I admire most,
The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost,
They caught the last train to the coast
The day the music died. — Don McLean
Jazz is not the popular culture. Jazz is in the same position in our culture as classical music. A very small minority of people really love it. — John Corigliano
You have to make a choice when you start to sing and decide whether you want to service the music, and be at the top of your art, or if you want to be a very popular tenor. — Alfredo Kraus
It seems to me that the American popular song, growing out of American folk music, is the basis of the American musical theater… it is quite legitimate to use the form of the popular song and gradually fill it out with new musical content. — Kurt Weill
Contrary to popular opinion, classical music does not have to be enjoyed amid exclusive circles, there need not be any snobbishness attached to it. It's there for everyone. I play for the people. — Andre Rieu
When we came out, the kind of music that was popular was Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice In Chains, all that stuff. That was when we released our second album, 'Images And Words', and it was something people werent used to hearing maybe, and it sort of rose above all that somehow, being progressive, or whatever. — John Petrucci
Youth has many glories, but judgement is not one of them, and no amount of electronic amplification can turn a belch into an aria. — Alan Jay Lerner
Every now and again, the alternative culture is cherished by the mainstream for what it is, rather than how it should be, like the mainstream popular music. — Thurston Moore
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
The first time I started choreographing was in the dark, in my living room, with the lights completely out, to some popular music on the radio. I put the radio on full blast and I started moving. I didn't know what it looked like. I didn't want to see it... I had to start in the dark. — Judith Jamison
My own personal theory is that all popular music, in whatever form it is, to me, it all comes from Africa. Whether it's filtered through America or whatever - African-American. But I still think there's something in that roots music that's very, very African, and I think that's what unites people. — Paul Weller
I anticipated all the changes in jazz because they were all problematical things, that I was dealing with myself. In New York in the late '50s, there were a lot of experiments being made on how to avoid playing popular standards and how to get improvising out of those constricting formats. — Paul Bley
Few artists have influenced the sound and trajectory of popular music more distinctly, or touched quite so many people with their talent. A strong spirit transcends rules,' Prince once said - and nobody's spirit was stronger, bolder, or more creative. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, his band, and all who loved him. — Barack Obama
I play Irish popular music, yeah? Calling it folk is like putting it in a box. It's a living tradition, you know? — Shane MacGowan
I have found myself deeply, deeply intrigued by the ska-punk scene. It's such an expressive form of popular music, it's so real, it's got so much life: it's the most vital music in the world. — David Bowie
Somebody under 30, if the name Frank Zappa came up, they would just say, "Who?" To me that didn't sit well, because I felt my dad's accomplishments in music should be better known, not just in a popular way, but better understood. — Dweezil Zappa
Contrary to popular cable TV-induced opinion, aerobics have nothing to do with squeezing our body into hideous shiny Spandex, grinning like a deranged orangutan, and doing cretinous steps to debauched disco music. — Cynthia Heimel
With few exceptions, every major pop singer in the US during her generation has been touched in some way by her genius. It is Billie Holiday who was, and still remains, the greatest single musical influence on me. Lady Day is unquestionably the most important influence on American popular singing in the last twenty years. — Frank Sinatra
In Conclusion
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