Moby Music Quotes & Sayings

I learned in the last few years that it's really unhappy and really unsustainable to try and base your well being on something as arbitrary as record sale and critical acclaim and the interests of the public. All of those things are so fickle. So my approach now to music is I want to make records that I love, and I hope that other people love them, then that's OK. — Moby

When I tour I'm going to countries to play music for people. My presence in a country is not an endorsement or a condemnation of that country's policies. My presence in a country is an effort to connect with people through playing music. — Moby

I love going on tour and playing music for people. — Moby

For his sake I'm sorry that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil, but for our sake and the sake of music I'm glad he did. — Moby

There is a long and interesting tradition of really marginal left-field music that becomes commercially successful. And I will, for a brief minute, fit into that tradition. — Moby

I know it's simple, but my main inspiration is just my love of music. I know that sounds overly naive. But it's true. — Moby

New York has inspired more remarkable music than any other city I can think of. — Moby

Up until I started working with him, I had thought that music was a nice thing that I enjoyed and liked making, but it wasn't a serious healing modality. What Dr. Sacks has proven is that music is actually a quantifiable, profound healing modality. — Moby

One of the central flaws in the state of contemporary music is that the major record companies have failed to incorporate that simple fact into their business plans. They've come into an industry that's based on idiosyncratic artists and tried to erase every idiosyncratic aspect out of it. — Moby

I can't think of any musician or producer who has influenced me more than Brian Eno. From when he was in Roxy Music, producing Devo, the Talking Heads and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. — Moby

When I saw music as a means to an end - more fame, more money, dating celebrities - that's when things have gone terribly wrong. Now my life is focused on just trying to keep making music. Because when it's really good, it's just the most remarkable feeling on the planet. — Moby

Scotland is one of my favourite places to perform: it's really something special. Scottish audiences are just so enthusiastic; their approach to dance music just feels similar to my own somehow. — Moby

Led Zeppelin created their music from a diet of Bert Jansch, Memphis Minnie, John Fahey, Billy Fury, Phil Spector, Richard 'Rabbit' Brown, Moby Grape, Manitas De Plata and Om Kalsoum. Those who came afterwards were content with a diet of Led Zeppelin, which is not the same thing at all. — David Hepworth

How do I transform pain. I guess the number one way in which I do that is by working on music, but also it can be anything from just talking about it with other people or doing kickboxing or meditating or running around with dogs. Or just simply trying to sit with it and be mindful and be aware of it. — Moby

The way I work on music is that I go into my studio, and I start playing music, and I see what happens, and ... I never think about it. — Moby

When I was fifteen years old, the only distinction in music my friends and I made was [that] there's music made by people with short hair and music made by people with long hair. — Moby

It's much easier to have a diversified career as an electronic musician than it is as a drummer. Nothing against drummers. If you're a drummer, you just wait around for people to ask you to play drums. But if you have your own studio and can make music, you have the ability to approach music a lot differently. — Moby

When I was nine years old, I started playing guitar, and I took classical guitar lessons and studied music theory. And played jazz for a while. And then when I was around fourteen years old, I discovered punk rock. And so I then tried to unlearn everything I had learned in classical music and jazz so I could play in punk rock bands. — Moby

I change my mind about things - for a while I was punk rocker, and if you weren't a punk rocker you were an apostate. Then I was a dance music enthusiast, and if you weren't a dance music enthusiast, you were an apostate. I was carnivore, and if you were a vegan, I didn't want to talk to you. Then I was vegan, and if you were a carnivore I didn't want to talk to you. — Moby

I always just made music that resonates with me emotionally. — Moby

Punishing people for listening to music is exactly the wrong way to protect the music business. — Moby

I'd much rather go out and have music randomly presented to me by different DJs than stay home and discover it on my own. — Moby

In some ways it's hard to see electronic music as a genre because the word "electronic" just refers to how it's made. Hip-hop is electronic music. Most reggae is electronic. Pop is electronic. House music, techno, all these sorts of ostensibly disparate genres are sort of being created with the same equipment. — Moby

If you look at someone like Joe Strummer or John Lennon, when you heard their music you knew that they wrote it and they cared about it. — Moby

I honestly just love being in my studio working on music. That's all the inspiration I need. And I don't write with an end result in mind, I just write for the simple love of writing. — Moby

When I was growing up, I was the most pretentious person I have ever met. I only read obscure books and watched obscure movies and only listened to obscure music. — Moby

I thought that my life would be spent working in a bookstore, teaching community college, and making music in my spare time that no one would be willing to listen to. — Moby

A great song is a great song, whether it's on vinyl or CD or cassette or reel to reel or mp3. Then again, that might be an overly optimistic view, but I do think that great music will transcend the medium in which it is delivered. — Moby

When I was very young, I played in a punk-rock band, but I also studied music theory and classical music. — Moby

Without David Bowie, popular music as we know it pretty much wouldn't exist. — Moby

A lot of times good, pristine recordings prevent the listener from getting emotionally involved in the music. — Moby

There is a lot of music in the world that I love that does not always get the appropriate exposure. — Moby

I just want to try - on a daily basis keep trying - to make music that I really love. — Moby

When I do have time to work on music, I'm kind of selfish, and would rather work on my own stuff than someone else's. — Moby

But the reason why the grave-digger made music must have been because there was none in his spade — Herman Melville

When someone comes to me and says the music I've made has affected them emotionally, that's the most gratifying part of my job. — Moby

I don't think too much about how it might exist in the world in a commercial sense - I more just try and focus on making music that I love and trying to put it out into the world. — Moby

I've experienced tons of failure. I've been making music for 30 years, and I'd say failure and success have happened in equal measure. — Moby

I have nothing against bombastic music, but when it comes to making albums, I'd prefer to make music that has a sort of vulnerable subtlety to it. — Moby

I think that Eminem is very talented and remarkably bright, and I actually do like a lot of his music. — Moby

If I spend 100 days in a row making music there's a chance nothing will come of it. But if I spend 100 days not making music it's guaranteed that nothing will come of it. So keep working. — Moby

As music became more profitable in the 1990s, it seemed like it attracted a lot of people who were just interested in the financial aspect of it, which is depressing. — Moby

In 1992 I was doing one of my first ever tours and I was in Heathrow airport and I saw these middle-aged musicians who had clearly been on tour for decades, and they all looked haggard and unhappy and unhealthy. I vowed to myself that I would never be that person. Flash forward 20 years and I found myself in Heathrow looking haggard and unhappy and unhealthy. I decided I would rather spend my time staying home working on music and making dinner with friends, instead of spending six months in a hotel in a state of depressing suspended adolescence. — Moby

To choose one type of music at the exclusion of another would feel kind of sad and arbitrary. — Moby

For years, my mom dated a man who was really active in the Baptist church in the town next to the town I grew up in, and so he used to drag me to these Baptist church services that lasted forever. I remember that I didn't like the church services, but I really liked the music. — Moby

Luckily almost no one buys music anymore, so selling music doesn't really affect any of my professional decisions. — Moby

I've been making electronic music for twenty some odd years but, because I grew up playing in punk rock bands, when I started touring, I thought in order to be a viable touring musician I had to do it with a band. I would DJ or tour with a full rock band. — Moby

In the long, nonillustrious history of white people pilfering African American culture, have I just perpetrated that? I'm motivated by a love for the music and by a love of the performances, and I really hope I haven't done anything bad. — Moby

I love lots of different types of music, but it's music that has this up-swelling of beauty and emotion that is most important to me. — Moby

Musically, New York is a big influence on me. Walk down the street for five minutes and you'll hear homeless punk rockers, people playing Caribbean music and reggae, sacred Islamic music and Latino music, so many different types of music. — Moby

An artist in 2014 who is thinking about album sales is either sadly deluded or has to make so many commercial compromises that it sort of takes the joy out of making music. — Moby

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

All I want to do with my life is try and make music that I really love, and so every day I try and work on music. — Moby

Most artists, you know, you spend their entire lives learning how to play music and write songs, and they don't really know how the music business works. — Moby

When playing big festivals, I tend to play big, over the top techno tracks, like hands in the air songs that make sense being played in front of 30,000 people. I steer away from subtlety in the interests of big bombastic dance music. — Moby

My interest in gospel music and liturgical art and Biblically-inspired literature has nothing to do with organised religion and everything to do with human beings trying to figure out their place on this planet. — Moby

THERE ARE ENORMOUS HOLES IN MY EDUCATION. I left college in March of my freshman year and never went back. I've never read Moby-Dick and it's probably too late now. I know nothing about the history of music or the history of art except what I've learned through osmosis. But Outsider Art is its own context. I don't have to know all about the Impressionists or the Abstract Expressionists. I don't have to be able to fit this art into any historic chronology. I don't feel like an ignoramus. Irony of ironies, I don't feel like an outsider - to fall in love I only need eyes. — Abigail Thomas

Everyone experiences grace, even if they don't realize it.
It's kind of like Moby's music. You could ask your average sixty-something-year-old retired banker in Connecticut if he's ever heard of Moby and/or his music and the response you'd receive more than likely would be a resounding, "No - what's a Moby?"
But if you say, "Remember that American Express commercial where Tiger Woods is putting around New York City? Remember the song playing? That was Moby."
"Oh, then, OK. I guess I have heard Moby," our theoretical retired banker in New Canaan might say.
"So ... what exactly is a Moby?"
That's like grace. Not that grace is a pretentious vegan techno-rocker, but you get the idea.
Grace is everywhere, all around us, all of the time. We only need the ears to hear it and the eyes to see it. — Cathleen Falsani

As far as I'm concerned, the whole point of making music is to get it heard by as many people as possible. — Moby

Doing interviews and touring are two ways that I can try to bring my music to people. It can be tiring, but it's better than working at Burger King. — Moby

The only sort of descriptive adjective or catch phrase for my music would be 'eclectic.' — Moby

As a New Yorker you can't help but be proud of the fact that so much music and culture started here. Punk rock, jazz, hip-hop and house music started here, George Gershwin debuted 'Rhapsody in Blue' here; the Velvet Underground are from New York. — Moby

Why do anything
why wash my hair, why read Moby Dick, why fall in love, why sit through six hours of Nicholas Nickleby, why care about American intervention in Central America, why spend time trying to get into the right schools, why dance to the music when all of us are just slouching toward the same inevitable conclusion? The shortness of life, I keep saying, makes everything seem pointless when I think about the longness of death. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

One of the nice things about licensing music to movies or advertisements is you can reach a lot of people who normally wouldn't hear music. — Moby

Music can always serve a role in people's lives when it's emotional and warm and inviting and beautiful. — Moby

I've been making music for thirty-six years and, you know, I'm still just as in love with working on music now as I was thirty-six years ago. — Moby

For me my biggest inspiration is trying to make music that effects me as much as the music made by my heroes. — Moby

David Lynch is my friend, and I love his movies and his art and his music. Few things make me happier than working with him. — Moby

In the course of my life, I've made some happy songs but it's the more sort of like pathos-laden, emotional, melancholic music that either I make or that other people make that really resonates with me. — Moby

Music is just air moving around. — Moby

I feel like once the song is done, you put it out there and if people want to do bizarre remixes, if people want to make strange videos, great. You know, like chaos theory applied to the music business. — Moby

I'm straight, but I love going to house music clubs and flirting with women and gay men. — Moby

The main thing that excites me and makes me want to get out of bed is the thought of being able to go into my studio to work on music. — Moby

For better or worse, I'm interested in just about everything: every different type of music I can imagine. I can never see a reason to choose just one type of music at the exclusion of everything else. Different types of music are capable of being rewarding in different kinds of ways. — Moby