Musical Value Quotes

I think the music of the Fifties is really good. I suspect it's much better musically than much of what's available now. Not in terms of production, but in terms of content.

But I think a song that is really emotionally packed, with a great melody that just will soar, that's the keeper.

I didn't aim at anything except good music.

Nothing sounded as sincere as Nirvana's music. It took a long time for me to accept that any other music could be good in other ways. Including my own.

You must have the music to justify an instrument's extensive use.

A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.

The best music of any era lasts well, I think.

Music was kind of a precious commodity growing up.

There's no difference in a lot of people's minds between good musicians and popular musicians.

In other words, I think that if an audience listens to something as an experience of how in tune it is or something of that kind, that the whole point is somehow being missed, and the music has failed.

People who play conventional music are threatened by electronica and don't consider it to be as valuable as what they do.

Fast is only cool if it's melodic and has substance.

I think great songs appeal to people at any age. Kids love the Beatles, too. Kids love Tom T. Hall. Of course, Tom T. wrote some things that were specifically for kids. But I think kids recognize quality more than they get credit for sometimes.

Pop just didn't have enough substance for me. All this nyah-nyah-nyah, you know, 'Paper Tiger' and 'Hold the Ladder, James' and 'Crimson and Clover.' That wasn't music!

My intent for EPs - and, really, my philosophy on my music - is that every single song has to be worth it.

All music is beautiful.

I just want the songs to have the staying power as my favorite songs. If you listen to any Hank Williams song, when you're in a good mood, it's going to put you in a better mood. If you happen to be bummed-out, you're going to feel maybe a little more bummed-out and better at the same time. At any time in my life, his music has had meaning and value to me. If a song can shape-shift in that way, that's a sign of success.

What is the best music is impossible to define. Just because it's played by a virtuoso player, doesn't mean it's great music. It might not reflect the soul of a people, which is really my criteria for great music.

I can go write an absolutely saccharine pop record with a really catchy lyric for another artist that could become a hit without meaning anything to me, but that's more the science laboratory, that's the other thing.

The value of music is not dazzling yourself and others with technique.

...in song the words tend to lose their significance, do often lose it, while at the other extreme, in current prose it is the musical value that tends to disappear - so that verse stands symmetrically, as it were, between song, on the one hand, and prose on the other - and is thus admirably and delicately balanced between the sensual and the intellectual power of language.

What bothers me is when music becomes entertainment. Of course, music is supposed to be entertaining, but go back to any period of time - music had a cultural significance on different levels, whether it was folk music, it was the news of the village, or it had to do with the rites of passage.

You have to follow every melodic line, every emotional idea, or you don't get your money's worth.

Sometimes I think to talk too much about music almost cheapens it.

Music is neither old nor modern: it is either good or bad music, and the date at which it was written has no significance whatever.