Neil Tennant Quotes

I'm not saying I wasn't flawed or amateurish. But you can never say I did anything to appease the music business.

I started my music career at 18 and for a long while I let other people handle my affairs.

Drake was a fan before a friend. He already was a Cash Money millionaire. When opportunity came, maybe we put the most on the table. That was my thinking because I just thought that this was a very talented young man. We saw a future with him, so it was about him being comfortable.

My experience with record labels throughout my career has generally fallen into wishing I could do things that they're not built to do, whether it be arguing about having a nicer package - because I do believe some people care about that - to trying to always bank on art-versus-the-easy-commerce route; there's always been headbutting involved.

I actually knew I was going to be perfect for Def Leppard, sorry I hate to say that but I knew it.

With Lady Antebellum, there's always pressure. It's hard for commerce not to rear its ugly head when you're making decisions.

When we got quite big and were generating a lot of money through the arenas, we became quite a big thing, and a lot of managers appeared, and it became a big machine, like we were in Pink Floyd or something, and I don't think we were into that. We didn't really compromise.

Being a pop-leaning, female artist, you'd think that I'd have my record company breathing down my neck and trying to control everything I'm doing. Actually, they've just kind of let me take the wheel.

I had to put me foot down with the first record company. It was about 1975, when singers were being given names like Gary Glitter and Alvin Stardust, so they wanted to call me Benny Santini just because me dad's an Irish-Italian with an ice-cream business!

When you become a commodity to a record label because you're making them millions of dollars, you can take all of your artistic integrity and throw it out the window.

I always felt like I could combine good pop songs that are easy for people to like with a real person and a real mind and integrity.

I've been offered things from alot of different labels and stuff like that, but it's just like, it has to be perfect. I'm not going to sign my life away.

My experience with being on a record label over the years has been when both of your agendas are in sync, and they're the same goal, it's great to have another army of people and resources and money. But most of the time, they're not the same. Their agenda is just simply to sell plastic discs at any cost, and yours is to preserve - at least in my case - your integrity, and hopefully sell some plastic discs, too.

Corporations have steered the industry into what it wants, and a lot of times they will make artists record what it wants or to make songs talk to who they want to talk to. But sometimes the heart and the head have to be able to talk and deal with a situation that's evident.

When I was a young actor, I just didn’t understand how to function in this business as an artist. It is a business, it’s called the film business for a reason, there’s money involved ... But on the flip side, now I do not let the business side of it rule either. It’s a balance.

A lot of artists still will not get that far. And get that far and be as successful. So, it's a great thing for me, and hopefully I can make it to number 10. And then I would want to start managing other artists, 'cause I think the best manager is an artist, his, or herself, that has been in the business and been successful and knows the ins and outs of the business.

When you go out to make something, you want it to be great. You need to put a bubble around that, so no one can get into the force field and change what you're setting out to make. That's all us being producers is doing, is allowing our power to protect the integrity of what you're doing.

I once asked a studio guy in Toronto, "How many people don't use auto tune?" and he said, "You and Nelly Furtado are the only two people who've never used it in here." Even though I'm not into Nelly Furtado, it kind of made me respect her. It's cool that she has some integrity.

There is such a thing as good interference from your record label. I don't think I get enough interference from my record label.

They wanted to 'radiofy' what I was doing. I was also in a position where I was compromised. I was much younger and maybe it is because I am Irish but there was a guilt factor when the record company pays you a lot of money, you feel obliged.

Clive [Davis] tried to tell me that saying certain words in a song - or as he says, 'putting some balls into it' - isn't bad, it's just strong emotion. Well, there are certain words and emotions I don't want kids hearing, and I'm not changing because they think it's going to sell better. This is going to sound horrible, but I got 12 million votes doing what I did.

I was like just writing and writing and then I kinda developed my sound. And then, my managers were like, "Okay, we're gonna try to get a deal." And then first it was Interscope, and then it was Atlantic. And then, I ended up signing with Atlantic, but it was like a long process, a really long... it was A LONG PROCESS. I feel like it took me two years to do it.

I've failed a million times on stage. I've listened to notes that I knew weren't right. I've pitched ideas and let other people change them, knowing that it was the wrong choice. The question you have to ask yourself is: How do you want to fail? Do you want to fail in a way that feels like it respects your tastes and value system?

Music is a big machine that would go on with or without me.