British Music Quotes & Sayings
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Top British Music Quotes

I was born in the '60s and grew up in the '70s - not exactly the best decade for food in British history. It was horrendous. It was a time when, as a nation, we excelled in art and music and acting and photography and fashion - all creative skills ... all apart from cooking. — Heston Blumenthal

My biggest poetic influences are probably 20th-century British and Irish poets. So I suppose I'm always listening for the music I associate with that poetry, the telling images, the brevity. I want to hear it in my own work as well as in the poetry I read. However, I think I'm generally more forgiving of other poets than myself. — David Starkey

I mean, i was into their music and everything way before I knew what they looked like, but they had their pictures in the CD insert and when Victoria and I got it, we were both like, "Why, hellooooo there." Plus, they were British. I'm a sucker for cute boys with guitars, as you may have noticed, but throw in a London accent and I'll happily sell my soul without a second thought. — Robin Benway

When I was younger, I was in love with everything about the British Isles, from British folklore to Celtic music. That was always where my passions were as a young girl, and so I studied folklore as a college student in England and Ireland. — Terri Windling

I was never too keen on the British music press. They've called us a supermarket hype, and they used to suggest that we didn't write our own songs. — Freddie Mercury

I've always liked country music. It's a certain aspect of America that goes back to the British Isles and the influence is very native to America. — Robert Duvall

We are devastated to learn of the death of Alexander McQueen, one of the greatest talents of his generation. He brought a uniquely British sense of daring and aesthetic fearlessness to the global stage of fashion. In such a short career, Alexander McQueen's influence was astonishing - from street style, to music culture and the world's museums. His passing marks an insurmountable loss. — Anna Wintour

Before Cliff (Richard) and The Shadows, there had been nothing worth listening to in British music. — John Lennon

Okay. Scrabble, donuts, flowers, corndogs, pre-pubescent British wizards and indie music. Am I missing anything important?"
She's still blushing and it's like the heat in her face is trapping all the words inside of her. "What is it?" I ask, an involuntary grin tugging on my mouth. I love it when she blushes like this.
Amy sighs, looks up toward the chandelier, "You, Cole. I like you. — Autumn Doughton

Back in those days, all us skinny white British kids were trying to look cool and sound black. And there was Hendrix, the ultimate in black cool. Everything he did was natural and perfect. — Ronnie Wood

The great British blues guitarists of the Sixties - people like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Peter Green - could play like virtuosos, but they also understood the importance of energy and intensity — Joe Perry

I have been long associated with British music. I have favoured it as my alternate music next to American. — Leonard Slatkin

A sad, plangent music. In the British camp, Sharpe thought, they would be singing, but no one was singing here. — Bernard Cornwell

I was in Britain that year [1963] and some music publishing people in Denmark Street in London suggested me to the BBC. So I found myself in front of a British television show, which was a nice surprise. — Gordon Lightfoot

promenade concert n. BRITISH a concert of classical music at which a part of the audience stands in an area without seating, for which tickets are sold at a reduced price. The most famous series of such concerts is the annual BBC Promenade Concerts (known as the Proms), instituted by Sir Henry Wood in 1895. — Catherine Soanes

I am not saying that you have to be a jazz fan to be a Mod. The Mod scene incorporates a wide variety of music genres, and you don't have to like all of them to be a Mod. Considering that, you may not have to like every genre generally accepted in the Mod scene, but a basic respect for the genres that helped lay the foundation for the scene (Jazz, Soul, British Rhythm and Blues), especially their place in the scene, is something I feel should be expected of anybody in the Mod scene who wants their opinion taken seriously. That said, let's be realistic: You may not have to like any one or two or ten specific genres of Mod music, but if you don't like any of them, yet still fancy yourself to be a "Mod", don't be surprised when people in the scene don't take you seriously at all. — Ruadhan J. McElroy

The British may not know much about music, but they certainly loves the noise it makes. — Richard Baker

Everybody was in tears. You turned on the radio or the television, and it was nothing but Gainsbourg. With typical British music journalist disdain, I just figured it was a testament to how poor French pop was if there was this much fuss about a guy who had one hit record, 'Je T'Aime (Moi Non Plus)'. — Sylvie Simmons

At first, I found the music I was making really hard to find a home for. I felt like my attitude was really British, but not the actual sounds I was making. Back in 2003, when I made 'Galang,' there were no clubs that had an 'anything and everything' attitude. — M.I.A.

Growing up around British music, you realise how much depth there is to it ... my stuff is different to the likes of Pitbull for that reason. — Calvin Harris

When I was 13, listening to Choice FM, I would listen to a lot of R&B from America, and whenever a British person tried to do it, it didn't really work, they just sounded like they were trying to copy that whole style. Now the music sounds British, something real rather than an imitation. — Katy B

I guess something that I've noticed from American acts who had success in touring is more of an explanation as to their music. Which is I think quite funny. I think British acts might like to leave more to the imagination - maybe a bit more obscure perhaps - a bit more shy. — Ben Lovett

[Being in the States] is almost like being on a holiday. It's kind of annoying because everyone's like "Oh, you're so obsessed with America," but it's not really that. I just really enjoy being here - I'm not the first British artist to make music here and be inspired by the country. — Marina And The Diamonds

We thought being offered the M.B.E. [Member of the Order of the British Empire] was as funny as everybody else thought it was. Why? What for? We didn't believe it. It was a part we didn't want. We all met and agreed it was daft. — John Lennon

I didn't like any British music before The Beatles. For me, it was all about black American music. But then I became a successful pop singer, even though the kind of music I liked was more elitist, which is what I'm trying to get back to. — Lulu

I've never got on with the British press because they've always given me such a hard time. Once they build a band up they just want to do people down. They shouldn't concentrate on the colour of someone's shirt they should listen to the music. — Andrew Eldritch

Since I first fell in love with choral music when I was 18 and began composing at 21, I've been listening to these recordings of British choirs. I just fell in love with that sound - that pure, clean, pristine sound - and I think it's probably been the biggest influence on my sound. — Eric Whitacre

I have to say that getting to tackle Maria in 'The Sound of Music' at Carnegie Hall was surreal. When I heard my voice, it was all I could do to keep myself from doing a British accent and sound like Julie Andrews! — Laura Osnes

I didn't really see the British punk movement, if that's what it was, as wildly original, because I had been listening so intently to all the New York music since 1973, really. — Morrissey

New Music, I guess, is all those bands Angie listens to. They have names like Depeche Mode and The Smiths and all they sound the same to me - like a bunch of skinny white British nerds on Thorazine. The Stones, when they started, were a bunch of skinny white British nerds too, but they never sounded like they were on Thorazine. Even if they were. — Dennis Lehane

I was brought up on choirs and brass bands. They formed the music of my childhood. When I heard the Treorchy Male Choir at the Royal Variety Performance it brought back such happy memories. You have your own eminent place in the history of British music. You stand for excellence in a great tradition and your work for charity is both an example and an inspiration. — Michael Parkinson

In the past, people couldn't place me. They thought that I was Danish or English or French. They never got that I am Italian. I'm not typical, maybe because my visual education was very mixed. There was a lot of London in my aesthetic: The Face, i-D, British music, and a lot of British fashion ... But I really enjoy this contrast. — Italo Zucchelli

There's always peripheral things that you like that you don't know, but starting with whatever his British influences are, are some of my favourite artists, and the American things are what I grew up on as well. In the end, for me, it's those foundations of the music business - those things that are a lot of the foundations of what music today is. You can hear a bit of all of those things that we talk about in almost all music today. — Paul Weller

I've always said that Adele has turned so many people on to British singers - whether female singers or just like music from this country in general. — Ellie Goulding

What could be more fortunate for the German propaganda machine than to be able to pump the theme that the Jews of Palestine were stealing the Arab lands just as they had tried to steal Germany. Jew hating and British imperialism - what music to the Mufti's ears! The — Leon Uris

The British like any kind of music so long as it is loud. — Thomas Beecham

I'm not a great guitarist, but I do bits and bobs. I'm mainly a songwriter and a composer. I've done a lot of scoring and some stuff for British pop music that did pretty well, but I've mainly been working on my own stuff with Duncan Sheik. — Matthew James Thomas

Being British, I don't really have a way of expressing myself in conversation. Music transcends language. — James Blunt

You certainly don't hear any country music on pop radio today. But for a while you did, and it was a lovely thing to have all the different genres of music cohabitating the Top 40 - the folk sound, The Beatles, the British sound, the Motown sounds, that kind of light country - it was a welcome relief after a few hard rock records. Everyone was sharing the airwaves, and I think it was a beautiful time for American music. — Jimmy Webb

It seemed like the only thing to do was to crank the volume of my tape of British music in protest. Even though I was the only one who could hear it, I felt like I was doing something important. — Joe Pernice

In that flash of ecstasy she suddenly knew what all poetry, all music, all sculpture, except things like winged Assyrian Bulls, or the very broken pieces in the British museum, meant. — Angela Thirkell

I once worked at a record label called London Records. The company was owned by Roger Ames, one of the most successful figures in the British music industry. Roger always placed a value on loafing, on holidays, on not being in the office all the time. — John Niven

Dizzee's just my childhood hero. He's definitely the inspiration. He's got himself to a very good place. He's defied the expectations of what British black urban music was like. He was the first person who made the rest of Britain realise it wasn't just a one-album-type situation. You've got to take your hat off to somebody like that. — Tinie Tempah

That's one of the good things about a lot of the young British bands, they are mixing all styles of music. I think that's very good because that's very modern. — Mick Jagger

The British often shy away from any cinematic interpretation of real sex. They sometimes have what I call "subtle sex," which is really introspective and has soft music in the background. Either that or it's played for comedy. The British are kind of hung up about sex. They find it kind of titillating and they make jokes about it because they're nervous. — Steve Coogan

Purcell is a composer who had a formative influence on British music - even The Who now cite him as an influence. There's an intense, dirty harmony, but there's a Louis XIV kind of elan and style, too. He had the melancholy DNA of our national folk heritage. — Charles Hazlewood

In 1965, my father was just twirling the dial of the radio to find something that would make me go to sleep, and as soon as I heard rock and roll there was no stopping me. It was during the height of Beatlemania and the British invasion, but I gravitated toward the harder, heavier music going on then, you know, the early Rolling Stones, the good Rolling Stones, and Paul Revere and the Raiders, who don't get the credit they deserve for spearheading the American '60s garage sound. — Jello Biafra

Bill Monroe spoke of bringing 'ancient tones' into his music with echoes of British and Irish fiddle and bagpipe music, while also delving deeply into American blues, gospel, folk hymnody, and hill country dance music. To that gumbo, he added the invigorating rhythms and harmonies of hot jazz. It was a new kind of American music, named in honor of his band The Blue Grass Boys to be known, simply, as bluegrass. — Paul Zollo

I'm English and I am British. I don't know if I feel part of a music scene. Musically, I have as many feelings and affinity with Americans or Canadians, or all sorts of people as I do with English people. — David Gilmour