Originality in Music Quotes

I'm 100 percent original, and that's what got me here. My rap music is more understandable, slower. It tells a story. You can write a book on each of my thoughts.

A lot of bands have managed to borrow parts of our style for their music. That's fine with me, because we've borrowed from people like the Stones. But we don't want to sound like we're copying anyone, including ourselves, so we're moving on.

In fact, a lot of critics seemed to consider R.E.M. the first American music since the '60s to break out on its own and develop a stand-alone sound.

Every good band in the world was a cover band first. The Beatles were and the Stones were. Everybody was a cover band.

I think I have to expand my creativity a bit, because it's difficult for critics to be, "Oh, this person writes their own lyrics and sometimes writes their own beats and sometimes makes her own videos." They funnel me through, "Oh, is it as good as blah-blah's record, which has had 50 million writers on it?"

I used to try to play like [Miles Davis], and Miles caught me copying him one night at Birdland. He said, 'Hey man, why don't you play some of your own stuff.' So, I finally did, because I had copied all his solos.

Often people poopoo melody as if it's a cheap trick to make people like things, but in my experience it's the hardest part of the tune, to find something that doesn't immediately remind you of something that's happened before.

I would give the same advice to anyone, celebrity or not. Produce your own music, keep in original, and be real. You need to earn the respect of your fans for your original work in music, and not rely on your celebrity in other mediums. The same would apply for actors who sing, dance, or even play sports.

The challenge for a good musician is to bring out compositions that seem fresh to the listener, even if the listener has heard the song or the composition before.

Part of me likes a more ragged, jagged guitar sound or performance, but our work might not have been as innovative had we followed in the footsteps of what came before. We were very proud of what we had hit on.

And then, also, when you're doing something that doesn't sound like anything else on the radio at the time, you almost need to, like, ironclad it to make sure it gets through, you know?

I prefer music that invents a universe.

The older I get, the more I think it's this listening. You listen for it, and you have a bit of patience. And it'll come until it sounds - to me, the best songs I've written, I think, are ones that I can't hear anything - any of myself in it. It sounds like a cover song, like somebody else's song - really something you've stolen wholesale off a radio that you've listened to in someone else's flat.

I just try to be more creative and come with something new because I actually care about the music.

If someone wants to make very, very original music that no one has ever heard before, you shouldn't know anything about music. It just narrows you down, you know?

You might pick up some influences from another type of music that you wouldn't normally think of, but, you know, maybe as a guitar player, it will come out in your improvisational style, maybe as a song writer it might come out in your note choices, or in your melodic choices, and it just helps to making your music that much more original and unique.

There's always that struggle between me wanting to keep [song] new and fresh and then be - I can never get with pop songs being so repetitive.