Popular Music Quotes

• Teen pop will never die as long as there are teens and popular music. It just takes a different head.

  Justin Timberlake

  Long, Different, Popular Song

  Justin Timberlake, Susan Black (2003). “Justin Timberlake”, Omnibus Press& Schirmer Trade Books

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• I think popular music in this country is one of the few things in the twentieth century that have made giant strides in reverse.

  Bing Crosby

  Music, Country, Thinking

  50 Copy quote

• 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

  Culture, Alternatives, Mainstream

  12 Copy quote

• Popular music sucks so bad right now.

  Kristin Hersh

  Right Now

  8 Copy quote

• James Brown and Frank Sinatra are two different quantities in the universe. They represent two different experiences of the world.

  Amiri Baraka

  Two, Different Experiences, World

  16 Copy quote

• The new sound-sphere is global. It ripples at great speed across languages, ideologies, frontiers and races. The economics of this musical Esperanto is staggering. Rock and pop breed concentric worlds of fashion, setting and life-style. Popular music has brought with it sociologies of private and public manner, of group solidarity. The politics of Eden come loud.

  George Steiner

  Life, Music, Fashion

  62 Copy quote
• 

  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

  Guitar, Rock And Roll, Rocks

  70 Copy quote

• 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

  Music, Would Be, Knows

  57 Copy quote

• Very few opera singers in history have been able to cross into popular music.

  Renee Fleming

  Opera, Singers, Able

  "Larry King Live", edition.cnn.com. May 21, 2005.

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• To the average mind popular music would mean compositions vulgarly conceived and commonplace in their treatment. That is absolutely false.

  John Philip Sousa

  Mean, Average, Mind

  7 Copy quote

• We were playing popular music, but we were doing our own arrangements because we were too lazy to sit down and figure out the originals

  Tommy Shaw

  Lazy, Popular Song, Down And

  7 Copy quote

• Rock musicians, and a vast array of popular-music musicians, due to their wealth, acquired through the mass of their notoriety, are able to be listened to and heard and thus are able to effect change on an international level.

  Bill Dixon

  Change, Rocks, Musician

  7 Copy quote

• The idea that rhythm is intrinsically human — not just primitive — that we all have hearts that beat at a steady rate and don't stop...reminds me of life itself. In that sense my music is like certain popular music where the rhythm drives from beginning to end.

  Michael Torke

  Heart, Ideas, Beats

  6 Copy quote

• The country experience was more of a departure. When you consider my education and my upbringing, you can see that was more of country rock outgrowth of my popular music aspirations.

  Tom Wopat

  Education, Country, Rocks

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Stars, Writing, Play

  24 Copy quote

• The imminent demise of the large record companies as gatekeepers of the world's popular music is a good thing, for the most part.

  David Byrne

  Records, Demise, World

  Interview with Anne Pasternak, creativetime.org.

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• We had various kinds of tape-recorded concerts and popular music. But by the end of the flight what we listened to most was Russian folk songs. We also had recordings of nature sounds: thunder, rain, the singing of birds. We switched them on most frequently of all, and we never grew tired of them. It was as if they returned us to Earth.

  Anatoly Berezovoy

  Song, Rain, Tired

  7 Copy quote

• Parents...rigidly monitor the selection of television programs...and other forms of entertainment for your family. Foster in your homes a love of knowledge through uplifting literature; wholesome books; selective movies; classical and exemplary popular music; entertainment that uplifts and edifies the spirit and mind.

  David B. Haight

  Uplifting, Book, Home

  5 Copy quote

• Bill Withers, Van Morrison and Marvin Gaye are pioneers in popular music for the last century, and these are people who have influenced me as well, so it's pretty flattering. I've got a long way to go to reach anywhere near what those guys have done. But it's a good encouragement.

  Michael Kiwanuka

  Encouragement, Long, People

  Source: www.wbur.org

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• I think we as a band, as individuals, understand that all popular music stems from blues and jazz and even pop, but rock 'n' roll especially comes from blues. What we're trying to do is play rock 'n' roll, but other people call it different things.

  David Johansen

  Thinking, People, Trying

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I fell into hip-hop right from the beginning. I was a teenager in the '60s, so I was putting all my pocket money into buying LPs. I followed the ascent of the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and Stevie Wonder. I followed popular music very closely, and I've never stopped.

  Simon de Pury

  Teenager, Hip Hop, Pockets

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Essentially, the popular musician in America must learn that his basic job is to entertain people, to make them forget their sorrows for a moment or two; in the same sense that any popular art form must aim at the same distraction value. Any such job as that is basically a young man's business. It takes a young man's energy to go traveling around the country, night after night in a different place, prancing and cavorting around in front of mobs of people all out to try to forget their problems for an evening. And for a young man it can be a good enough way of life, if he happens to like it.

  Artie Shaw

  Country, Art, Jobs

  17 Copy quote

• Popular music is popular because a lot of people like it.

  Irving Berlin

  People, Music Is

  21 Copy quote

• I have to say I owe my career to the master composers of the Great American Songbook who have written such high-quality songs - the best popular music ever composed.

  Tony Bennett

  Song, Careers, Quality

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I feel the popular music of a certain time really tells you a lot about what life was like in that period.

  Paz de la Huerta

  Periods, Certain, Feels

  HBO Interview, www.hbo.com.

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