We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces, which represent 30% of our musical experience.
Brian EnoRead
The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the profound influence of a piece of art, suggesting that its value is not measured by sales but by its impact on creativity.
Brian Eno's quote about the first Velvet Underground album illustrates how true artistic significance often transcends commercial success. Although the album sold only a modest number of copies, its profound impact inspired a generation of musicians to create their own music, demonstrating that influential art can shape culture and create movements, regardless of its initial popularity.
Themes
Velvet UndergroundMusicInfluenceArtCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
During a panel discussion on music innovation, one might say this quote to emphasize the power of influential albums.
More from Brian Eno
All quotes βI think that technology is always invented for historical reasons, to solve a historical problem. But they very soon reveal themselves to be capable of doing things that aren't historical that nobody had ever thought of doing before.
Brian EnoRead
When I first started making ambient music, I was setting up systems using synthesizers that generated pulses more or less randomly. The end result is a kind of music that continuously changes. Of course, until computers came along, all I could actually present of that work was a piece of its output.
Brian EnoRead
People do dismiss ambient music, don't they? They call it 'easy listening,' as if to suggest that it should be hard to listen to.
Brian EnoRead
In the future, you won't buy artists' works; you'll buy software that makes original pieces of 'their' works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box.
Brian EnoRead
Ambient music must be as ignorable as it is interesting.
Brian EnoRead
Similar quotes
The blues is the roots, the rest is the fruits.
Willie DixonRead
With the lights out, It's less dangerous. Here we are now, Entertain us. I feel stupid, And contagious. Here we are now. Entertain us.
Kurt CobainRead
Clare Fischer was a major influence on my harmonic concept. He and Bill Evans, and Ravel and Gil Evans, finally. You know, that's where it really came from. Almost all of the harmony that I play can be traced to one of those four people and whoever their influences were.
Herbie HancockRead
What came first β the music or the misery? Did I listen to the music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to the music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?
Nick HornbyRead
My introduction of Whitney was that if there's going to be one performer for the next generation who combined the beauty and lyric phrasing of a Lena Horne with those Gospel fiery roots of an Aretha Franklin, it would be Whitney Houston.
Clive DavisRead
When my time is up in hip-hop, it's going to remain what Afrika Bambaataa thought it was supposed to be. It's going to remain what Kool Herc thought it was supposed to be; what Wu-Tang Clan sees it as; what Outkast sees it as; what Snoop Dogg sees it as. People are trying to forget that brand of hip-hop.
Krs-OneRead