John Grant Quotes

I'm kind of still learning my voice and learning my style.

My biggest challenge was to make sure that the songs I did were who I am.

He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise.

Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do, and then just go for it.

I get very frustrated by this term 'genre exercise.' I mean, what exactly is that? Genre is not really relevant when you are writing a song; hopefully you are doing it to explore something, to create something, and I don't agree that any of my albums are genre exercises.

I know what my sound is. I'm just trying to get it out there how I can explain it. I'm not trying to write or put out some music that doesn't represent me.

It wasn't until Duotones that I felt my true voice come out.

I picked Dad's guitar up when I was 8. It hurt to play, so I put it down and picked it back up when I was 15 and dug in. The guitar helped me come out of my shell and kind of gave me an identity at school.

So it's not so much that I set out to do something different, it's just that the songs themselves require their own individual voice and attention.

Part of the reason that I moved to Los Angeles is that even though my mom introduced me to all kinds of music, I really wanted to work on having my own identify, on being who I am and doing what I do, and seeing how people responded.

Joanne' is a progression for me. It was about going into the studio and forgetting that I was famous.

Every now and then, as a composer and producer, it's important to write music for yourself.

I feel like I've mastered Dave East. For a long time I was trying to figure out who I was and what sound I wanted to come with.

When you're young and starting out, a lot of artists think they know exactly who they are. There are others who come out in someone else's skin. They learn to take it off bit-by-bit and work out the core of what they're trying to say.

I used to sing like Nat King Cole. I mean he was the guy when I was comin' up, and you know, man, people used to say of me, "Damn, he sure do sound like Nat King Cole." But there was a day, and luckily for me it was early, when I woke up and asked myself, "Well, when are the ask me to sing because I sound like me?" So my advice is, never do anything that you don't like.

I'm not very good at sounding like other people. When you're going through your 20's and trying to get a break and that kind of thing, and you're trying to do something that sounds like film music, your idea of what it would be, it never really worked out for me and it's only really when I learned to trust the fact that I could only really sound like me.

People always want to talk about who I was, but I've always been singing, always been experimenting with pop music.

All my songs are where I am.

Music is such an intensely personal thing for me, and I knew if I was going to do it, it would be in my own way.

My dream is to one day just be me and my guitar. I'm working myself to the core. Who am I, underneath everything else? I'm still on that journey, to find that core.

When I turned 19 I kinda realized that I needed to write my own songs instead of singing songs written by other people.

I've been making music for a long time, since I was very young, but at the same time, I'm still exploring what works for me. I feel like I'm just starting out.

The music I turn out these days is the kind of music I want to hear myself.

I loved the Brazilian music I played. But this is finally me. For the first time I think it's really me.

I try to make my music interesting to me first, then hopefully other people will find it interesting, too.