Madonna Music Quotes & Sayings

In my head, I wanted to be Madonna, but the music I was writing on paper was not what you'd choreograph dancers in costumes to. It was more coffee-house stuff. — Bonnie McKee

When I was very little, I was into Michael Jackson. At six or seven, it was Madonna, but she's not what she used to be. I've been into everything from Edith Piaf to Joe Strummer to the Velvet Underground to Suicide to A Tribe Called Quest to African music. — Lykke Li

The movies, I thought, have got the soundtrack to war all wrong. War isn't rock 'n' roll. It's got nothing to do with Jimi Hendrix or Richard Wagner. War is nursery rhymes and early Madonna tracks. War is the music from your childhood. Because war, when it's not making you kill or be killed, turns you into an infant. For the past eight days, I'd been living like a five-year-old - a nonexistence of daytime naps, mushy food, and lavatory breaks. My adult life was back in Los Angeles with my dirty dishes and credit card bills. — Chris Ayres

I don't want to sound presumptuous, but I've made it my goal to revolutionize pop music. The last revolution was launched by Madonna 25 years ago — Lady Gaga

When I discovered that I could write music, it felt like the most natural way for me to connect with people and tell my stories. I've always thought of that as what I do: I tell stories. — Madonna Ciccone

When I first came to New York I was a dancer, and a French record label offered me a recording contract and I had to go to Paris to do it. So I went there and that's how I really got into the music business. But I didn't like what I was doing when I got there, so I left, and I never did a record there. — Madonna Ciccone

On any given night, catch me on the floor, working up a sweat, that's what music's for. — Madonna Ciccone

I feel like I've survived so much, and been through so much. And sometimes I miss the innocence of those times. Life was different. New York was different. The music business was different. I miss the simplicity of it, the naivete of everyone around me. — Madonna Ciccone

I am a true 80s girl. I loved Kylie, Madonna, The Bangles and Human League. I fancied a couple of the Neighbours kids too and I loved Bros. God, I had terrible music taste. I'm getting a taste of my own medicine now, as my daughter's been asking for some quite scary albums. — Donna Air

Nowadays New-York is not the exciting place it used to be. It still has great energy; I still put my finger in the socket. But it doesn't feel alive, cracking with that synergy between the art world and music world and fashion world that was happening in the 80s. A lot of people died. — Madonna Ciccone

I've never seen Madonna. I just grew up listening to her music - I want to see her. — Juicy J

Music ... makes the people ... come together ... — Madonna Ciccone

The Indians are the Italians of Asia", Didier pronounced with a sage and mischievous grin. "It can be said, certainly, with equal justice, that the Italians are the Indians of Europe, but you do understand me, I think. There is so much Italian in the Indians, and so much Indians in the Italians. They are both people of the Madonna - they demand a goddess, even if the religion does not provide one. Every man in both countries is a singer when he is happy, and every woman is a dancer when she walks to the shop at the corner. For them, food is music inside the body, and music is food inside the heart. The Language of India and the language of Italy, they make every man a poet, and make something beautiful from every banalite. They are nations where love - amore, pyaar - makes a cavalier of a Borsalino on a street corner, and makes a princess of a peasant girl, if only for the second that her eyes meet yours. — Gregory David Roberts

When I was in N.Y. bartending, I was in a billion music videos. I was in Madonna, George Michael, Salt-n-Pepa - it goes on and on. — Pauley Perrette

I don't want to be a flash in the pan. I want to be around for a very long time. I want to be like a Sheryl Crow or a Melissa Etheridge or even a Madonna with how her career has lasted so long and she is still respected in the music business. That's really what I am aiming for. I'm not really looking for 15 minutes of fame. — Cheyenne Kimball

Dance music is Madonna's base. It's what she likes, it's what she listens to. It's not anything other than that. She doesn't read what's on the charts. And if it's on time, great. This is who she is. — Guy Oseary

I try to have thick skin, but every once in a while I read something that someone says about me, and it's so slanderous and moralistic and it has nothing to do with my music. — Madonna Ciccone

Who is my role model and how long can I keep this going? I just move around and do different things and come back to music, try making films and come back to music, write children's books and come back to music. — Madonna Ciccone

One of the things that helps me tell a story through music is to create a character. I have to have a muse, whether it's Frida Kahlo, Martha Graham, Marlene Dietrich, or Pippi Longstocking. — Madonna Ciccone

The only thing that could soothe and calm me during this era was music. That's continued to be true throughout my life. My mother would put my sister and me to bed and turn on the radio to sing us to sleep. There was something very comforting about being in a dark, cold room with Prince, Tina Turner, Cyndi Lauper, or Madonna playing quietly. I didn't have to think about anything - the music took me away from myself and I got lost in it. I needed it like a drug. I felt disconnected and alone, and I realized around this time that things would never get better. It got so bad that I would pretend to be sick at school just so I could come home and lie in bed listening to music. It was like being adrift on the ocean at night. I still have trouble falling asleep without music now. — Damien Echols

I've gone from having a huge fan base to losing a huge fan base to having a kind of fluctuating fan base. I've always had a core of fans who've stuck by me but, depending on the kind of music I do, I end up appealing to certain groups of people and alienating others. — Madonna Ciccone

This game wears on you. It tears you down. It's perpetual motion for some people who've achieved a level of independence, like Madonna and Jay-Z - they don't need to do music anymore. But there's people who need it. And in that need, that's when it's tough and it tears you to pieces. — Lupe Fiasco

Hollywood is about playing the game, and I can't think of any successful actresses who didn't play the game. There's a lot more renegades in the music business, from Patti Smith to Janis Joplin. — Madonna Ciccone

I wanted to do it my way with my career, and I had this arrogant notion that people weren't just interested in my music but me as a person. That was my bit of arrogance, I guess. That's something I learned from Madonna. I was a fan right from the first time I heard 'Holiday.' — Pink

I'm not crazy about how sort of homogenized pop music become. It used to be much more diverse. Maybe it's just what's played on the radio sounds very much the same. — Madonna Ciccone

I've always been interested in electronica, techno, trip-hop, that kind of music. The thing that bothered me about a lot of that music, though, was it seemed devoid of emotion. There wasn't a lot that felt personal. — Madonna Ciccone

My father's record collection was full of New Orleans music of all kinds. I used to listen to the radio in New York, and all there was on it at the time was Madonna and Michael Jackson, so it sort of passed me by. — Madeleine Peyroux

Music never dies. Do we really need another Madonna tour? Does she have to compete with women performers 25 years her junior? — Camille Paglia

People do not respect music anymore ... They go by what's hot ... If you're hot, you deserve 4 or 5 Grammys ... Madonna is a genius and she only has 2 or 3 Grammys ... What is that about? — Timbaland

My parents were big music fans, and my dad plays music, so I grew up with Madonna, Frank Zappa, the Beatles, Alice In Chains ... it was all over the place. I had a Third Eye Blind record, but I also had Korn, Courtney Love, and Shania Twain. — Madi Diaz

If you look at the history of popular music, the most successful musicians have started out being really marginal and esoteric. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Madonna. Prince. Bruce Springsteen. Fleetwood Mac. David Bowie. Public Enemy. Nirvana. — Moby

I love Lady Gaga! I think she's incredible. I think she's so clever - you know, about what she wears and when she does it. Plus, her music is just incredible. You can really compare her to Madonna now - she's really amazing. — Kerry Ellis

I really want to see everything. If it's around me and it's part of my show, I need to be a part of all of it. From the creation of the music, to the surface of the floor, to everyone's hairstyle, to the details with the buttons and the bows and the snaps and the zippers. All of those things! — Madonna Ciccone

I love to listen to pop all the time! I like to be updated on the new hits; I think it's important for what we do. Among my favorites of all time is, of course, Madonna. But I also love Kylie, our little princess; Beyonce, Bruno Mars, and Justin Bieber. And I listen to Italian pop music like Tiziano Ferro. — Domenico Dolce

I like to listen to different kinds of music - it just depends on my mood. I love Madonna, Russian singers ... I like the Rolling Stones a lot! — Oksana Baiul

I think the music comes first, then comes the fashion, and thus, the lifestyle. I believe it starts with music, and then the person delivering it delivers the lifestyle, the fashion. Madonna is a great example of that. — Questlove

My home base - pop music and the Catholic Church. — Madonna Ciccone

Lady Madonna lying on the bed
Listen to the music playing in your head. — Paul McCartney

Madonna is interesting. She changed music. She definitely did. She gave me an opportunity that no one else would give me, so I am very grateful to her. — Meshell Ndegeocello

They don't want to see rap music. They don't want to see the Beastie Boys. They don't care what we're doing. They want one thing and one thing only: that's to see Madonna come on stage. — Ad-Rock

...While many who have debated the image of female sexuality have put "explicit" and "self-objectifying" on one side and "respectable" and "covered-up" on the other, I find this a flawed means of categorization. [...] There is a creative possibility for liberatory explicitness because it may expand the confines of what women are allowed to say and do. We just need to refer to the history of blues music - one full of raunchy, irreverent, and transgressive women artists - for examples. Yet the overwhelming prevalence of the Madonna/whore dichotomy in American culture means that any woman who uses explicit language or images in her creative expression is in danger of being symbolically cast into the role of whore regardless of what liberatory intentions she may have. — Imani Perry