I've never been - I don't think I'm, like, a great A&R by any means. I don't even know production lingo, in all honesty.
You can talk to a fade but a hook won't listen.
I used to think of 'alternative rock' as a radio format, kind of the way 'indie rock' used to have more meaning. But it means different things depending on where you are or what country you're in.
I don't really know what 'folk music' means anymore.
I don't know anybody who doesn't hate being called alt.country. It just sounds like a website. I don't mind being called Americana, I don't mind being called country noir, or independent country is fine, but the words alt.country make me insane.
I've often cringed when I heard myself described as a jazz singer. I've always thought of myself as a jazz vocalist.
I'm serious; I don't, I don't rap. I flow; I'm a flow-er. You've got rappers, you got MCs, and then you got flow-ers, I'm a flow-er.
For me, I always have looked at 'indie' as a term of 'independence.' Never associated a sonic gesture with that in the same way that pop music has always meant 'popular' to me; you know, it didn't define a sound.
'Swing' is an adjective or a verb, not a noun. All jazz musicians should swing. There is no such thing as a 'swing band' in music.
I have a lot of friends who do EDM music; they had to tell me what a 'drop' was.
The term "genius" gets used far too loosely in rock & roll.
When you sit down and think about what rock 'n' roll music really is, then you have to change that question. Played up-tempo, you call it rock 'n' roll; at a regular tempo, you call it rhythm and blues.
I didn't grow up with indie rock - I mean, I listened to bands that are considered indie rock, but I think that term is dead and uninteresting.
Rock n' roll was one thing, and then they chopped off the 'roll' and called it 'rock,' which became a sort of umbrella term for anything with a guitar in it. Like hair bands. How could we possibly believe that? It's just gotten downright silly, to the point where now it's sort of become like professional wrestling.
'Career' is not a musical term.
I don't like to use the word 'fans;' I call them 'Dick Dale music lovers.'
Anyone that thinks 'pop' is a dirty word is living in the '90s.
The word [jazz] never lost its association with those New Orleans bordellos. In the 1920s I used to try to convince Fletcher Henderson that we ought to call what we were doing 'Negro music'. But it's too late for that now.
Jazz is a word they use to sell our music, but to me that word does not exist.
My friend and I were in a band together and we used to always refer it it as 'floor-core,' meaning that we would sit on the floor and play stuff.
What I'm doing, I prefer to call that jazz, because it is a beautiful word - I love it.
It's really hard to name a band.
It used to be called boogie-woogie, it used to be called blues, used to be called rhythm and blues...It's called rock now.
Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, and many other great jazz musicians objected to their music being called jazz. While the outside world may want to put a label on it, those who create it think of it just as music, and tend not to classify it.
The word music is a convenient way to talk about what I'm interested in, but actually, in some ways, it's a limitation.
