Musical Stagnation Quotes

I have this theory about us. When we started writing our own songs, we were 17 years old. When you're 17, you write songs for other 17-year-olds. We stopped growing musically when we were 17. We still write songs for 17-year-olds.

If you are playing repertoire material, you're stuck. There's not huge amounts you can do.

My musical development stopped when Frank Sinatra died.

I'm not gonna do the same album over and over and over again.

People are very adamant about maintaining a certain sound or a certain era, like, "There were three years of rap that were great, so let's just keep doing that." The genre itself is just stuck in place. It's been treading water for a while.

A lot of singers think all they have to do is exercise their tonsils to get ahead. They refuse to look for new ideas and new outlets, so they fall by the wayside... I'm going to try to find out the new ideas before the others do.

Fight the tendency to become complacent and do one kind of music - that is the death of a musician.

Towards the end with Pantera - although I was never unhappy with the music we were making - it became one-dimensional, and we wanted to open things back up.

The songwriting has never really stepped forward from the '50's.

I think to stay in one sound is a career killer.

I get bored quickly. I kind of take my hat off to bands who have been around for a long time and still do the same thing, because it's hard to keep a band together for decades. But I couldn't do that. I couldn't play the same songs night after night or just trade on my past glories, because it wouldn't interest me as a person.

Aly and I went through just a long period of time where we just didn't feel creative musically. And, you know, we went through the whole writer's block thing, and we went through having two pretty successful records and figuring out how we want to transition as adults.

The danger in playing a piece over and over again lies in getting stuck in a rut where you don't ask questions anymore and you always play it the same way.

I don't think anyone has exhausted the range of sound possible in a conventional rock band, but people do become slaves to their own easiest techniques.

I felt kind of bored at the prospect of writing some more of my own songs because I really wasn't saying what I wanted to say.

I hate bands that hang around, like, 10 years too long - they're like the drunk at a party you can't get rid of.

After 10 years, I have been touring for 20, playing basically the same type of music, a four-piece or three-piece type of music with loud, crashing drums and screaming vocals. It gets to the point where you're looking for something new, and you don't want to do something that's way too left-field, for fear that it might seem contrived.

If you go out and just play the old stuff and never write new stuff, you're not really a complete musician, you're a performer.

If you take your last album & try to copy it, then thats sure to hell the way to stagnation. And that makes me bored...and if I'm bored then the music is boring and so are the band!

My guitar playing has not developed as much as I think it could because I never practice. I only play when I'm writing or recording or when I'm playing on tour. When I'm sitting around at home, I never play.

I haven't learned anything new on guitar since high school. And I think it's time to learn something.

So few hip-hop artists have ever advanced. Their songs on their seventh, eighth albums sound exactly like the songs on their first album. More than an artist, I'm a real person-and real people grow. And I wanna just sing my growth.

With Hall & Oates, honestly, after years and years of playing the same material, it's easy to coast. I can coast through a show.

I'm definitely tired of playing 'Acid Rap.' I'm definitely tired of playing 'Juice.'

Now there is no taboo; everything is allowed. But one cannot simply go back to tonality, it’s not the way. We must find a way of neither going back nor continuing the avant-garde. I am in a prison: one wall is the avant-garde, the other wall is the past, and I want to escape.