Challenging Music Quotes

Our live set's become increasingly complex recently; we've been doing stuff that's been vastly too much information for most people to deal with and I think it's quite interesting watching how people behave in those situations, under those circumstances.

King Crimson is never easy; it's challenging. That's why I like it.

A lot of the 'Back In Black' stuff is really challenging.

I'd say that it's important for music to be there that gives you a challenge, that rearranges things in your head.

Our music doesn't make many compromises, but we take it into a venue that's larger than people expect.

I like music that's more offensive. I like it to sound like nails on a blackboard, get me wild.

Music that boldly and aggressively laid out what the singer wanted, loved, hated — as good rock ’n’ roll did — challenged me to do the same, and so, even when the content was antiwoman, antisexual, in a sense anti­human, the form encouraged my struggle for liberation.

Mike Patton is a genius... It is definitely the hardest music I've ever played.

Elliott Carter does not write the kind of music that the kids go off to school whistling.

While it is true that Frank had a great sense of humor, he was also very serious about composing music. In reality there are only a handful of skilled players who can play his most complex pieces. It takes a lot of patience to learn and requires a fantastic memory.

I'm a controversial artist, one who dares to have an opinion and bothers to create music and videos that challenge people's ideas in a world that is watered-down and hollow. In my work I examine the America we live in, and I've always tried to show people that the devil we blame our atrocities on is really just each one of us. So don't expect the end of the world to come one day out of the blue – it's been happening every day for a long time.

I want to change peoples' minds about music, I want to bring the really brutal experimental stuff to peoples' attention.

As a trumpet player, I was playing Xenakis, Lindberg: very challenging, technical, atonal, and I enjoyed it.

I think the thing I've always tried to do is - and I didn't plan it, it just started to come out that way - is try to make challenging music that flirts with accessibility.

People are consuming more than ever, but I think they want a bit of honesty and depth. Adele, Gotye, Janelle Monae - they're giving you a catchy song, but it's also a challenging song at the same time.

When you do have songs where you're going to say something, some kind of statement about cultural or social stuff, that in general people love it. People love to be challenged in that way.

You don't hear it on the radio. There's something about the voices in Sleater-Kinney that's a little too challenging to ever be on the inside.

A lot of my fans want easily digestible music, which I'm not really prepared to give anyone, ever. That's just trash. That's boring.

A lot of our music came out of a lot of weird psychology and weird emotions. When you play the whole body of work, you get tossed all over the place. It's not easy listening. It's not even comfortable to listen to.

'Next to Normal' was a show many people thought couldn't be done.

The music director, Stephen Oremus, was telling me: "I hope you've done your work." We only have ten days rehearsal. The music is no joke. My solo singing is not that hard. But the stuff I have as part of the choir or as a "Dead Guest" in the second-half... I'm singing some really incredible chorus stuff that I haven't done in a long time. It's extremely difficult.

You need three or five hands to play Ligeti.

The music for 'The Last Five Years' is like running a 26-mile marathon, and singing Sondheim is like ballroom-dancing up Everest.

I hate when bands make beige, middle-of-the-road music. I guess you can say 'Lonerism' is the war on beige music.

I do find modern jazz quite tricky.