Quotes on Album

I always had an eye toward the stage for the story of Hamilton's life, but I began with the idea of a concept album, the way Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Evita' and 'Jesus Christ Superstar' were albums before they were musicals.

When you produce an album, you're dealing with it theatrically. It has to have a structure, and the inner response to that is that the ear loves it.

I understand that people want to just listen to a track and put it on their iPod, and that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that, but why can't that exist hand in hand with an album? They're such different experiences.

Until it's on the radio or online, it's not real. With U2, our album isn't finished until it's in the stores.

I always wanted to make a three-record set. 'Sign o' the Times' was originally supposed to be a triple album, but it ended up as a double.

I found the most difficult thing when you became successful - when I had the record album, it won Album of the Year - that you were cut off from the source of your material. Your material was everyday people, and you were kind of cut off from that, and you had to work at it.

My mother had found this album of all these old slides from the '50s of me as a kid and I said, 'We should have these made into pictures because the color's so beautiful.' There were pictures of me from 1955 as a little baby wearing all these elaborate outfits, and in these pictures was this amazing story of a gay man and his mother.

I do a lot of curiosity buying; I buy it if I like the album cover, I buy it if I like the name of the band, anything that sparks my imagination.

A good producer brings out the best in the artist he's working with. You shouldn't be able to listen to something and say, 'So-and-so produced this album.'

My first album didn't come out until I was 27, which in pop years is late, you know. But when it came time to arrange it, I became a kid in a toy shop. I had a harp and a saxophone quartet and a symphony orchestra. I went berserk for a time.

If there is such a thing for Sparks as a mission statement, it's more general in that we want each new album to be musically and lyrically provocative. We want to really go at it as though this might be the first album that anyone will ever hear of Sparks.

I realized at a young age that sequence in an album is almost as important as the songs that are on the album.

People have responded to my stories so well. They come up after a show and say things like, 'Your album really helped me,' or 'I have stage four cancer. I'm terminally ill.' Somebody told me it gave them the courage to die.

I feel blessed that I found not just a profession, but a 24/7 way of life that I purely love. That curiosity to be current, to listen to the Hozier album, to be early in recognition of a Lorde and spending time with her and Miguel, the pleasure of seeing new talent erupt... I love it.

The main focus for me is not trying to find duet partners. It's about just making great songs. I want most of my album to be in my voice because it's my point of view.

I was told so many times when I was a kid, 'I can't be friends with you, you're too intense, you're too sad all the time.' I really thought that when I made the first album that everyone would understand me, all the people who weren't my friends would become my friends.

I always say this about my music, and music in general: Music is like a time capsule. Each album reflects what I'm going through or what's going on in my life at that moment.