Musical Boundaries Quotes

Maybe the biggest thing that I've learned musically is that anything is possible. Things can work when maybe they don't seem like they can.

I'm not really allowed to talk about the Dead though. I think when we are at our best, we definitely do things that the Dead or no other band could do. We explore things and take things to the extreme.

Musically, I'm always gonna take it a little farther, and Lord willing, people are gonna get that and understand that: that there's not really one genre I'm trying to be in, but just as a producer, as a writer, as an artist, that I'm planning on going farther.

Musically, I always allow myself to jump off of cliffs. At least that's what it feels like to me. Whether that's what it actually sounds like might depend on what the listener brings to the songs.

I think our storytellers - our songwriters should be great storytellers, and they should be mountain climbers and explorers, because music is something that can cross all different borders.

I have always been a singer/songwriter, and I was pushed in places I didn't want to do, like pop or top forty. I don't belong there.

Performing with Thomas Rhett our song 'Craving You,' I'm so excited for the fans to see it and sort of see our worlds come together because I feel like he's sort of a genre pusher and boundary pusher, and I feel the same way about my music.

I kept hearing all these rules: 'You can't say that in country music.' 'You can't use that kind of beat.' I became so frustrated. It may have slingshotted me, in a rebellious way, toward doing something different.

I hate when I get pinned down to a genre. I have a sound, a lane I want to go down, but I never want to be stuck in my song choices.

I pride myself on being the type of artist who can work half in the R&B world and half in the pop world.

I've always had creative freedom. Instrumental rock wasn't really a genre, but the success of 'Surfing With the Alien' legitimized my approach.

I don't think a song should be put in a category.

Listen, man: I am not the industrial godfather, king, whatever. I don't relish that title. I don't like it. I think it's limiting. I do country, I do blues. I don't just go straight.

David Harrington, who's the violinist and founder of Kronos, is a super open-minded and adventurous guy.

I don't look at my instrument as having one specific role; I was raised to go as far as you can. But Raphael Saadiq hated my bass. He told me to throw it away. And playing in Snoop's band, there was a time when my bass was more annoying to everyone than helpful. They would get on my case: 'Can you make your bass sound like more of a bass?'

'Some Kind of Monster' is a challenge, and 'Through the Never' is an extension of that. Even the album we made with Lou Reed, it was a challenge.

Free form jazz means absolutely nothing to me. Because there are no boundaries.

I don't know how much more what I've done is any more important than what Ella Fitzgerald did. Ella crossed those lines, as did George Benson before me. There've been lots of people who brought a pop audience to jazz because they were able to link the two and give people easy access to the world of jazz.

My music translates again and again to younger generations of players because I broke all the rules, and they can break all the rules now, too.

There are a lot of great recording artists, like Jack White and Jack Johnson, who stay confined inside a very small box, but I'm more like Bon Iver, who recorded an album with programmed drums, and the next record was totally organic. I get that.

I think every artist reaches a place where they want to transcend genre.

Good records - from my point of view, where I grew up which was Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull... bands that were pushing the envelope a little - musically and in production.

I hate the idea of genres.

To break R&B into subcategories does a disservice to the music. I like to live in a zone where I can do whatever I want, where I don't have to worry about genre.

Heavy metal is the enemy. Everybody but me keeps going back and forth between metal and punk, but I'm narrow-minded and a purist. I'd never mess with it.