Shankar Mahadevan Quotes

I've always been very independent, and I love being able to enjoy different parts of music. It's amazing to be able to hear the sound in your head and instantly make it come to life.

I don't go into any album with pressing issues. I just try to write songs.

My first album didn't come out until I was 27, which in pop years is late, you know. But when it came time to arrange it, I became a kid in a toy shop. I had a harp and a saxophone quartet and a symphony orchestra. I went berserk for a time.

'My Life' is not an autobiography. It's just music.

I think I've always approached making albums pretty much the same way. I'm just looking for a mixture of songs and topics that aren't the same thing over and over.

I think there's a good pop song in pretty much anything.

I make records with an open mind, I always have.

When I want to put out an album, I want to write it. I want to be able to say that I wrote my album, and all this stuff is from me.

Make your own music. It can be done.

I don't think there is anything hard at all about having a lot of songs. It makes it easier to be less precious about them, and know that everybody's going to want to work on some of them.

I have a passion for music, and I enjoy the process of expressing myself within the parameters of a pop song, and I don't do it to seek anybody's approval, necessarily. Obviously, you go on stage, and you enjoy it when people respond to a particular song, but the overall concept of playing music I do for myself.

In my own life I studied music, not creative writing; I see a novel as music - an opening as an overture, themes and subplots as lines in a fugue. The chance to write a novel about a musician boxed in by all kinds of limitations but who plays out his ultimate struggle for freedom at the piano was irresistible.

To me, music has to be about freedom. It's the most important thing in my life.

There is still some art in pop music. But it can't happen if you're not inspired.

My music is like my freedom space.

You just wake up and make music.

I've been really trying to hone the art of songwriting in a way that doesn't follow any sort of guideline.

Writing 'February' made me realize that breaking form is a way of letting the song be human.

For me, the great thing about music is that anybody can do it.

Acting is awesome, but I'm really, really able to express myself creatively in music.

I made records purely for fun - songs that made you feel good. I left the message songs to people like John Lennon.

For me, jazz offers so much freedom in the way the music can be interpreted. It's natural to me. It's where I feel most free.

To me, that's what music entails. It's freedom, it's having the undeniable confidence to express yourself in a way that you know is right.

I'm a songwriter and producer, so I'm always wanting to make my own stuff, and not use anybody else's.

The way I did the first album... the way I wrote 'Church'... was just to trust my instincts with the music and let it kind of do what it does.