Joe Nichols Quotes

I've never seen myself as a pop singer. I grew up listening to gospel, soul and rock. My approach to pop is that, when I was doing my album, I wanted to have raw, genuine lyrics, but wanted it to be easy to process.

Country is bringing in a little rock element... a little '80s element. Melody is king now. But its just in the music, its not so much in the songwriting, which is still very basic to the storytelling aspect of it.

I have to admit, I do not listen to much rock music.

I'm not a folk or jazz singer, more a hard-edged pop singer - with some rock, and song hooks.

I don't listen to a ton of rock music.

I've always liked pop music. There was a bit of a misunderstanding with the avant-garde rock scene, because I think I was sort of swimming the wrong way, really.

As soon as I got into country music, it was like hook, line and sinker. I was so focused on country, I ended up leaving all those '80s hair-band CDs behind - which now I still wish I had, but I was done with it.

I did country way back when I was, like, 13-14 years old, and then I kind of fell into the pop genre.

If you actually go back and listen to my first album, there are some things on there that are kind of rock 'n' roll.

Being a fan of pop music and rock bands, I am a reluctant convert into the art of instrumental rock music.

Every so often, I feel I should graduate to classical music, properly. But the truth is, I'm more likely to listen to rock music.

I was feeling really restless in my hard-rock band. I wanted to learn more about storytelling in music, and that's what country music is.

I hate most of what constitutes rock music, which is basically middle-aged crap.

I was into playing American music, especially the blues.

I'm just experimenting with every different type of music you can imagine and seeing where my voice lies and what sounds best. I think when I do finally do the album it will be very eclectic - just loads of different stuff on it. That's what I am hoping.

The industrial thing came about mainly through giving up trying to write pop songs in the early '90s. I don't think I was ever very good at pop music and as soon as I stopped trying, and started to write more the things I loved, it became much heavier and more aggressive.

I'm touched by rock n' roll. I'm touched by the Beatles. I want some of the music I do to reflect that.

I am not a pop musician; I don't want to play bubble-gummy pop stuff.

You don't see a lot of black rock stars. The music industry tends to be segregated stylistically. It's hard for a black artist to cross over to rock music.

Country music has always sort of been country music.

In England, rock music very rarely infiltrates the charts, but country music even less so.

I'm not good at happy, lightweight kind of music. I'm not really good at pop music. 'Cars' is probably the only true pop song I ever wrote. I wish I could write more, but I'm not very good at it.

I grew up mostly with classical, big band, and a lot of Irish music - I really didn't start listening to rock and roll until I was maybe sixteen.

I've always been much more of a guitar picker, but I began to feel forced into a position of being the epitome of a rock & roll guitarist. Originally, TYA wanted to make it without having to compromise to pop. It worked for a while, but after five or six years, the fun went out of it for me; a lot of the music went out of it.

I grew up loving classic rock music - The Beatles, The Rolling Stones - and then one day I heard 'Baby One More Time' on the radio and I thought 'What is this?' I was eight and it changed my life.