I picked up the guitar at 11, but even before then, I was writing songs on the organ.
Tracy ChapmanRead
My older sister encouraged me from early on and bought me one of the first guitars I had. She listened to all of the crappy songs that I wrote when I was 8 years old and encouraged me to keep doing it.
Interpretation
Encouragement from loved ones can inspire creativity and persistence.
This quote by Tracy Chapman reflects the vital role that encouragement from family members, particularly siblings, can play in fostering talent and creativity. The support she received from her older sister not only provided her with an instrument but also a safe space to express herself, allowing her to embrace her passion for music even from a young age despite its imperfections.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of family support in personal growth.
I picked up the guitar at 11, but even before then, I was writing songs on the organ.
Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.
As I started to consider a career in music, I hoped for success, truthfully. I didn't imagine anything that would amass the level of the first record, but I hoped that I would be able to sustain a career.
I can't think of anything worse, really, than to try to live up to someone else's expectations of what you should be. You don't make art by consensus.
Now love's the only thing that's free /We must take it where it's found /Pretty soon it may be costly
I think it's important, if you are an artist, to use your music to stand up for what you believe in.
I just wonder where I was when the talent was being given out, like George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Eric Clapton... oh, there's many more! I wouldn't want to be like them, you understand, but I'd like to be equal, if you will.
All you needed was a couple of instruments and a few chords and you could be on an indie label.
Music rhythms are mathematical patterns. When you hear a song and your body starts moving with it, your body is doing math. The kids in their parents' garage practicing to be a band may not realize it, but they're also practicing math.
We'd like to think that our music will always be bigger than any one of our individual personalities.
Paul Ryan's love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades.
My songs speak for themselves. The musicians who play on them and the way they sound and where they were recorded and the way they were recorded is the old Nashville way ... they sound as country or more country than a lot of things that are on country radio.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.