Best Alternative Music Quotes & Sayings

There's a certain sense of ownership that the fans have over you ... The thing is, it's all good. You just have to get used to it. If somebody comes up to you while you're eating dinner or something, it's kind of like, 'Well, I asked for it.' It's much better than the alternative-nobody caring and nobody buying your music. The point is to try to just realize that these people are really excited, and that's a good thing. You want them to be that way. — Carrie Underwood

Every now and again, the alternative culture is cherished by the mainstream for what it is, rather than how it should be, like the mainstream popular music. — Thurston Moore

Traditions that cease to evolve render themselves irrelevant or obsolete. And what's the problem with inventing new performance practices? Are customs being slandered? Do successful alternative diminish the value of traditional ones? *The argument that musicians must embrace conventional rituals is just as perilous as unilaterally rejecting them.* — David Cutler

Yeah, I always listen to both classic and newer folk-influenced music. Singer-songwriter, alternative music. I also listen to more experimental dance music. — Brad Delson

4Shbab has been dubbed Islamic MTV. Its creator, who is an Egyptian TV producer called Ahmed Abu Haiba, wants young people to be inspired by Islam to lead better lives. He reckons the best way to get that message across is to use the enormously popular medium of music videos. 4Shbab was set up as an alternative to existing Arab music channels. — Shereen El Feki

I listen to a wide range of music, from country to pop to alternative rock, as well as Indian music. You know, what excites me are new ideas. And with a lot of the international hits - from Lady Gaga to Rihanna and others - you'd find excellent production and groundbreaking ideas that lift the music to a greater realm. — Shreya Ghoshal

I don't want to pooh-pooh modern pop. I appreciate that as well, but my personal favorite kind of music is guitar-based rock. I like grunge and garage bands and alternative music, but that's more my personal taste. — Al Yankovic

I have total respect for anyone who discovers a band like Snow Patrol. I would be hopeless at signing a rock band, or anything alternative, cause I don't know what that audience are into and I don't particularly like that kind of music. — Simon Cowell

Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy. It's purpose is to discern the consequences of various ways of allocating resources which have alternative uses. It has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature. — Thomas Sowell

I listen to all those kinds of music, from classic soul to hip-hop to Brazilian music to, you know, jazz to indie to alternative. So whatever. I listen to all if it. Classic rock and classic pop, all of that. — John Legend

I'm sure there are a few things in my CD collection that might surprise people. I like classical music, the blues, and I'm a big fan of alternative rock. — Brad Paisley

For the life of me I cannot remember, what made us think that we were wise and we'd never compromise. For the life of me I cannot believe we'd ever die for these sins, we were merely freshmen. — The Verve Pipe

Creativity is the catalyst to the future. — Ann Marie Frohoff

A long apprenticeship is the most logical way to success. The only alternative is overnight stardom, but I can't give you a formula for that. — Chet Atkins

When I was in seventh grade, I totally had a crush on a guy who was older than me, and he listened to alternative music. So he was into Days of the New and stuff like that, and more poppy stuff, too, like Matchbox Twenty. — Carrie Underwood

I think it's really cool, but Jimmy Eat World and Gin Blossoms did it better than anyone. People don't realize just how awesome the Arizona history is, especially for alternative music. Growing up, that's all I ever wanted to be was those two bands. — Nate Ruess

I love ... different kinds of music. I like classical music and pop music. I like alternative, and I like rap, hip-hop, and I kind of collected all these things that I love, and they infused my sensibilities, and I just wanted to sing because it felt like it needed to come out of me. — Rachel Platten

In the '90s, the radio was still alive with all different kinds of points of view, and I think that's why people are longing for that time. It was the first time that alternative music broke through to the mainstream. — Shirley Manson

The Beats were tremendously significant, but chiefly in the way that they provided a preview in the 1950s of the cultural, intellectual, and moral disasters that would fully flower in the late 1960s. The ideas of the Beats, their sensibility, contained in ovo all the characteristics we think of as defining the cultural revolution of the Sixties and Seventies. The adolescent longing for liberation from conventional manners and intellectual standards; the polymorphous sexuality; the narcissism; the destructive absorption in drugs; the undercurrent of criminality; the irrationalism; the naive political radicalism and reflexive anti-Americanism; the adulation of pop music as a kind of spiritual weapon; the Romantic elevation of art as an alternative to rather than as an illumination of normal reality; the pseudo-spirituality, especially the spurious infatuation with Eastern religions: in all this and more the Beats provided a vivid glimpse of what was to come. — Roger Kimball

I think pop music is in such an exciting place right now, and I do kind of credit that to Lorde with 'Royals.' I think that song changed everything in the pop scene. All of the sudden, alternative pop music became pop music. — Troye Sivan

I think I fall into a lot of cracks in terms of I'm too something. I'm too this, I'm too that. And my music has never really had a home. I've been this floating alternative. I'm too mainstream for alternative. I'm too alternative for mainstream. And I'm just kind of wandering. — K.d. Lang

I have periods where I listen to regular rap, Jay-Z, Eminem and Lil Wayne. The next day I might have some Christian alternative music. The next day I have on some dance music. It all varies what I listen to. — Steve Blake

I listen to a lot of alternative types of music: I listen to a lot of Chinese music, I listen to a lot of Asian music. It might surprise you, but I listen to a lot of Arabic music. And I don't care - music is music. — Timbaland

I'm tired of the music industry these days! They polish everything until it no longer sounds real. The raw uncut sound is something I think no genre but alternative and Aerow music retain. — Clive Langer

When I hear the word 'independent' I reach for my revolver. At this point, what the hell does that mean? The English Patient is an independent film. Hootie and the Blowfish are alternative music. I'm the Queen of Denmark. I don't know what it means anymore. — Jim Jarmusch

In the presence of great music we have no alternative but to live nobly. — Sean O Faolain

Punk is not just the sound, the music, punk is a lifestyle. — Green Day

Thank you to BBC6 Music and Something Else for the opportunity to broadcast my corner of electronic and alternative music across the airwaves for the last 6 years. # RIP6MIX — Erol Alkan

the old anti-'commercial' tendencies mocked throughout this book have been bulked up into a worldview by the runaway growth of what I call semipopular music." (Oh yeah, "semipopular music." Er, "music more popular in form than in market share." At least when it starts out. Under the rubric "alternative," now also an established image-making strategy that informs many of the "brands" ambitious young musicians concoct for themselves. — Robert Christgau

Latin music has many international influences - pop, rock, country, Brazilian sounds, and alternative styles. — Ednita Nazario

I knew about Heatmiser, and I saw them one time at Pine Street [later changed to La Luna], which was the center of a lot of alternative bands during the 80s. But I didn't really know too much about their music. — Gus Van Sant

We grew up listening to alternative music from the '90s, and there was no shame in being on a major label and still making the music you wanted to make. I feel like rap rock came around and drew a line in the sand, and everybody that was like me ran away from that and started making indie-rock. — Nate Ruess