Quotes on Albums

Heartbreak can definitely give you a deeper sensibility for writing songs. I drew on a lot of heartbreak when I was writing my first album, I didn't mean to but I just did.

I've seen lawyers who don't represent me and spokespeople who do not know me speaking for me. These characters always seem to surface with dreadful allegations just as another project, an album, a video is being released.

I've made over 25 studio albums, and I think probably I've made two real stinkers in my time, and some not-bad albums, and some really good albums. I'm proud of what I've done. In fact it's been a good ride.

How many 54-year-old quadriplegics are putting albums out? You just have to deal with what you got, try to sustain yourself as best you can, and look to the things that you can do.

I don't want to be owned by a corporation and obliged to make a certain type of album. I want to be free.

I'm a singer, not a politician, and I think you don't want the two to get confused. It's not OK to be on CNN talking about people starving and then tell the interviewer that your new album is coming out in six months.

As an artist, you dream about accumulating enough successful music to someday do just one greatest-hits album, but to reach the point where you're releasing your second collection of hits is beyond belief.

If I'd known white people were going to buy my last album, I never would have recorded it.

I'm one of a dying breed who goes out and tours all the time. Labels don't spend the money to send people out to play before they become famous, but we did do that so the fans we have are word of mouth fans who have been travelling around with us for years, and they buy the albums, but they are also the ones who go out and get the bootlegs. I don't discourage bootlegging, I like playing live, I don't think it hurts my album sales at all if there are bootlegs out there. Who cares?

Different phases of your life have different levels of deep, traumatizing heartbreak, and in this period of my life, my heart was not irreparably broken. So it’s not as boy-centric of an album, because my life hasn’t been boy-centric.

I didn't want to play it boring and safe. I also didn't want to innovate too much. Second albums, man, they're even scarier than first ones.

It turned out so well because it was the first album that I could identify with in terms of lyrics. ("Captain Fantastic") It was passionate...I could associate myself with every song...It's a unique album in our history. This was the story of us..."Curtains", the lyrics to that are so beautiful because it sums up our friendship so much, and our relationship.

I enjoy making solo albums because over the years it's evolved into more of a genuine personal expression of story-telling and day dreams, and I work in a way that has more control.

Although cover notes for classical music albums tend to say that the trill of flutes suggests mountain streams and so on, I don't think anybody listens to music with the expectation that they're going to be presented with a sort of landscape painting.

Albums are like diaries. You go through phases, technically and emotionally, and they reflect the state that you're in at the time.

That's the reason why I'm making albums. That's the reason why I love hip-hop: It's a challenge every time.

A family's photograph album is generally about the extended family and, often, is all that remains of it.

Look, you see those groups talkin' about negativity and anger, and they'd do that for two albums, and then you'd see them change up. I knew they couldn't do a Kurt Cobain on their whole career. You can't stay like that all the time. It's like when Hammer tried to go gangster. You can't be something that you're not.

I think Ray Charles did as much as anybody when he did his country music album. Ray Charles broke down borders and showed the similarities between country music and R&B.

A concert is not a live rendition of our album. It's a theatrical event.

I hope that what you take away from my album is not just the music - which I did want to be fun, and I did want it to be about individuality, but please also take away from it that there's no dream that's too big.