All I can do is focus on staying true to the style of music I write and sing because that is the only way it's going to come off as honest.
The record business is dangerous to the health of bands and individuals, which is something I'm just now learning. But it's not dangerous in any of the ways people think; it's not that they try to make you compromise your art. That's not the problem.
If you consider yourself a part of the culture, then finances can't allow you to be bigger than the actual art form.
I tell myself I use art to promote dissent, but maybe I am just using dissent to promote my art. I plead not guilty to selling out. But I plead it from a bigger house than I used to live in.
I always try to be the Madonna of wrestling in that she always changed her look and her style, but she always stayed true to herself as an artist. That's the best way to have longevity in this business, for sure.
I like getting my own thoughts out right now, I have fans to solidify, so that's why I don't do tracks with too many younger rappers or newer artists. People may consider me to be a music snob or whatever, but I like to preserve what's mine and I also don't just do tracks to do tracks, I make every song with a purpose.
Record labels and producers are not looking to change you: they are looking to make a star. And what they might think is a star may not be you.
I'm not an industry artist - I'm an artist in the industry.
Forget about musical credibility. I think, unless you're Radiohead or whatever, it's pointless striving for that. What I would like is some respect.
I don't necessarily do anything just for the money. I do it for the passion and I do it for the love, because I'm still hungry. So if I want to do music, it's not necessarily motivated because of monetary value. It's more about the passion and the love, and I think that's where music should come from, the heart, not necessarily just to cash a check.
I have cut four albums so far, and all of them have been trendsetters and commercially successful. I believe that once you start taking art in commercial terms, it ceases to be art.
Too many of the artists of Wales spend too much time talking about the position of theartists of Wales.There is only one position for an artist anywhere: and that is, upright.
A lot of people in Nashville think that the best song is the catchiest or the one that sells the most copies. They're editing songs in a way that make them seem more consumable, I guess. I'm trying to edit them in a way that makes them more honest.
I'd say the key thing is to remain true to what originally got you into music. When I wrote 'Hallelujah,' it ignited me to do music because of the love and joy that I got from writing that song. Down the road, you get all of these opinions from people; just remember what got you started in the first place.
I write what I write.
In art, immorality cannot exist. Art is always sacred.
The art world is the biggest joke going. It's a rest home for the overprivileged, the pretentious, and the weak. And modern art is a disgrace - never have so many people used so much stuff and taken so long to say so little.
Is it conceivable that mysticism is a mark of inadequate art?
If photography is allowed to stand in for art in some of its functions it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely thanks to the natural support it will find in the stupidity of the multitude. It must return to its real task, which is to be the servant of the sciences and the arts, but the very humble servant, like printing and shorthand which have neither created nor supplanted literature.
The system did not want me to make 'Go.' And I sort of stood up to the system and made the movie I wanted to make, and the fact that I did that and I'm proud of the movie means I'm really proud of myself when I look back on that.
I hate that sense of entitlement or the sense of business crawling into playing music.
I'll work with a director if I think I'm going to get into a comfortable situation, and if it's someone I respect and who respects me, even if they're not so well known. Movies are hard to make, and you have to work toward a common ethic and do your best.
There is no purity with regards to the marketplace and art, I believe.
I think what's more important to The Prodigy is that, whatever number your album goes in at, or the single, or however many plays it gets, or doesn't get, or awards you get, or don't get; our reward, as a band, is to write the best album we can and then go to Download festival and rip it to pieces.
My thing is to try to tell the truth as honestly as possible. For me, the weight is, how can I tell the truth through fiction, the best that I can?
