Music Generations Quotes & Sayings

I was part of punk's second generation, so, not the first wave of '70s punk, but the American hardcore scene. I had a really strong love for music prior to that, but punk created a new template. — Bucky Pope

When you talk or write or film, you work with the music inside you, the music that formed you. Different generations have different musics in them, so whatever they do, it's going to come out differently, and it will speak in beats of their own generation. — Robert Krulwich

The tremendous leisure industry that has arisen in the last few generations has been designed to help fill free time with enjoyable experiences. Nevertheless, instead of using our physical and mental resources to experience flow, most of us spend many hours each week watching celebrated athletes playing in enormous stadiums. Instead of making music, we listen to platinum records cut by millionaire musicians. Instead of making art, we go to admire paintings that brought in the highest bids at the latest auction. We do not run risks acting on our beliefs, but occupy hours each day watching actors who pretend to have adventures, engaged in mock-meaningful action. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

When I left politics in the early Eighties and started writing and recording, my idea was that I could have an influence further down into other generations. That Natives could come into the culture through arts and music. — John Trudell

And it may be that a crowd at a particular moment of history creates the object to justify its gathering, as it did at the first Human Be-In and Monterey Pop and Woodstock. Or it may be that two generations of war and surveillance had left people craving the embodiment of their own unease in the form of a lone, unsteady man on a slide guitar. — Jennifer Egan

I am looking for the fellowship of the burning heart
for men and women of all generations everywhere who love the Savior until adoration becomes the music of their soul until they don't have to be fooled with and entertained and amused. Jesus Christ is everything, all-in-all. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

The people who carried the Catholic faith forward in history, who made the culture of beauty, music, art, and architecture rooted in the Christian understanding of God and humanity - these generations were taught, spiritually fed, and shaped by priests exactly like the men who minister to us in our local Church, men not so different from the one who wrote this book. — Paul Scalia

A whole generation of veteran composers has never taken a stand or provided an example and has produced in the music academies generations of docile workers for the music industry. What can you expect from downtrodden workers who see music as a type of profession, like stenography, and not an act of creation that by its nature is subversive? — Itay Talgam

Music has been in our family for generations. — Henry Garza

Certainly, blame for all this [turmoil in the Middle East] doesn't rest solely with the terrible decisions that were made at the end of World War I, but it was then that one particularly toxic seed was planted. Ever since, Arab society has tended to define itself less by what it aspires to become than by what it is opposed to: colonialism, Zionism, Western imperialism in its many forms. This culture of opposition has been manipulated - indeed, feverishly nurtured - by generations of Arab dictators intent on channeling their people's anger away from their own misrule in favor of the external threat, whether it is "the great Satan" or the "illegitimate Zionist entity" or Western music playing on the streets of Cairo. — Scott Anderson

He looks at houses, chateaus, forests, and thinks about the countless generations who used to see those things and who are gone now; and he understands that everything he is seeing is oblivion; pure oblivion, the oblivion whose absolute state will soon be achieved, the moment he himself is gone. And again I think about the obvious idea (that astoundingly obvious idea) that everything that exists (nation, thought, music) can also not exist. — Milan Kundera

Now that the generation that grew up on '80s indie-rock has attained influential positions in the culture, that music is the new yardstick. And that will shift yet again some day. — Michael Azerrad

I think music influences fashion and has done so for generations. — Georgia Jagger

It's really vital to have rock music because it connects the generations. It's important in that way. — Christine Ebersole

She was clean: no piercings, tattoos, or scarifications. All the kids were now. And who could blame them, Alex thought, after watching three generations of flaccid tattoos droop like moth-eaten upholstery over poorly stuffed biceps and saggy asses? — Jennifer Egan

Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes. — Bill Cosby

Every generation thinks their music is the ultimate. But there's great stuff from every generation. — Delbert McClinton

Trends in culture all serve a purpose and that's always indicative in fashion and music, you can always tell what's going on culturally in the mindset of the young generation if you look at those mediums. — Marina And The Diamonds

The Protocol. Silence. A choice made generations ago to wipe out violence, but that had also succeeded in wiping out joy, laughter, and love. It had made the Psy an emotionless, robotic race that excelled in business and technology but produced no forms of art, no great music, no works of literature. — Nalini Singh

The ethic of ecstasy is the opposite of the trial's ethic; under its protection everybody does whatever he wants: now anyone can suck his thumb as he likes, from infancy to graduation, and it is a freedom no one will be willing to give up; look around you on the Metro; seated or standing, every single person has a finger in some orifice of his face-in the ear, in the mouth, in the nose; no one feels he's being observed, and everyone dreams of writing a book to tell about his unique and inimitable self, which is picking its nose; no one listens to anyone else, everyone writes, and each of them writes the way rock is danced to: alone, for himself, focused on himself yet making the same motions as all the others. In this situation of uniform egocentricity, the sense of guilt does not play the role it once did; the tribunals still operate, but they are fascinated exclusively by the past; they see only the core of the century; they see only the generations that are old or dead. — Milan Kundera

Well, what do you think? Avanti?"
"Avanti," cries everyone, and, after a few quick re-tunings of our instruments, and re-initialisings of our hearts, we enter the slow theme-and-variations movement.
How good it is to pay this quintet, to play it, not to work at it - to play for our own joy, with no need to convey anything to anyone outside our ring of recreation, with no expectation of a future stage, of the too-immediate sop of applause. The quintet exists without us yet cannot exist without us. It sings to us, we sing into it, and somehow, through these little black and white insects clustering along five thin lines, the man who deafly transfigured what he so many years earlier had hearingly composed speaks into us across land and water and ten generations, and fills us here with sadness, here with amazed delight. — Vikram Seth

John Lennon was a musical genius. All I have to do is think of some of his songs and even the titles make me feel good ... and I'm not the only one. His music has crossed cultures and even generations. — Ray Comfort

I'm not too embarrassed to say I'm the definition of the target audience. This is my generation, the one of exalting music in album form. — Jonathan Lethem

Music is not supposed to be nationalist. It is supposed to surpass language barriers. It is about generations communicating with each other. — Simon Le Bon

Generation after generation can't just be loaded with more and more nuclear weapons and not ultimately dance to that music. — Marianne Williamson

When I started Rolling Stone in November 1967, the magazine's initial chapter was to cover rock & roll music with intelligence and respect. Even then, we knew that the fervor sweeping our generation encompassed more than just music. — Jann Wenner

Someone once asked me why people sing. I answered that they sing for many of the same reasons the birds sing. They sing for a mate, to claim their territory, or simply to give voice to the delight of being alive in the midst of a beautiful day. Perhaps more than the birds do, humans hold a grudge. They sing to complain of how grievously they have been wronged, and how to avoid it in the future. They sing to help themselves execute a job of work. They sing so the subsequent generations won't forget what the current generation endured, or dreamed, or delighted in. — Linda Ronstadt

It's amazing how fast generations lose sight of other generations. One of the first things the young composers who come to work with me say is that they want to write music people will like, instead of gaining their credentials by being rejected by the audience. — Carlisle Floyd

Now that music is faithfully reproducible, musicians are not needed as once they were. And music itself has changed. Though small cadres of classicists keep the sacred and ineffable alive, they are under siege by coarse generations whose music is hardly as musical as a bus engine or a chain saw. Something must have occurred during their mothers' pregnancies. How else is it possible to explain that playing Bach keeps them away from public spaces the way iron spikes drive pigeons from cathedral ledges? — Mark Helprin

Let my style capture all the sounds of my time. This should make it an annoyance to my contemporaries. But later generations should hold it to their ears like a seashell in which there is the music of an ocean of mud. — Karl Kraus

We want to keep extending our brand into different places, into movies and soundtracks and our music will live on through licensing and our brand lives on through merchandise and new generations will get to wear our clothing and our T-shirts and stuff that's associated with us. — Nikki Sixx

There's no concession to the fact that Dylan might be a more sophisticated singer than Whitney Houston, that he's probably the most sophisticated singer we've had in a generation. Nobody is identifying our popular singers like a Matisse or Picasso. Dylan's a Picasso - that exuberance, range, and assimilation of the whole history of music. — Leonard Cohen

There's a jangle to the music of the dead. I mean that certain something that's so happy and so sad at the same time. The notes almost make a perfect harmony, but don't. Then they do but quickly crash into dissonance. They simmer in that sweet in-between rhythm section rattling along all the while. Chords collapse chaotically into one another and just when you think it's gonna spill into total nonsense, it stands back up and comes through sweet as a lullaby on your mami's lips. Songs that'll make people tap their feet and drink melancholically but not realize the twisting genius lurking within until generations later. — Daniel Jose Older

Every generation wants to be the last. Every generation hates the next trend in music they can't understand. We hate to give up those reins of our culture. To find our own music playing in elevators. The ballad for our revolution, turned into background music for a television commercial. To find our generation's clothes and hair suddenly retro. — Chuck Palahniuk

In the American way of life pleasure involves comfort, convenience, and sexual stimulation. Pleasure, so defined, has little to do with the past and views the future as no more than a repetition of a hedonistically driven present. This market morality stigmatizes others as objects for personal pleasure or bodily stimulation. The reduction of individuals to objects of pleasure is especially evident in the culture industries
television, radio, video, music. Like all Americans, African Americans are influenced greatly by the images of comfort. These images contribute to the predominance of the market-inspired way of life over all others and thereby edge out nonmarket values
love, care, service to others
handed down by preceding generations. The predominance of this way of life among those living in poverty-ridden conditions, with a limited capacity to ward of self-contempt and self-hatred, results in the possible triumph of the nihilistic threat in black America. — Cornel West

Our campaigns have always been based on what we consider music icons that transcend generations and they're not of the moment - they continue to evolve. — Paul Weller

New generations have unprecedented power to make great changes. Take the music business for example. The new generations have toppled the music industry by file sharing, downloading, and Myspace. Rock 'n' roll belongs to the people. — Patti Smith

I always wanted to do music that influences and inspires each generation. — Michael Jackson

We're genuinely happy if some musicians of this younger generation are influenced by our music, as we were ourselves influenced 10 years ago by older musicians. — Thomas Bangalter

To ensure that future generations have the opportunity to make a living from the creation of music, it is critical that we continue to build support behind this important initiative. Thousands of people have already voiced their opinion that it is time to vigorously defend the rights of music creators. Our goal now is to empower thousands more to carry this message forward. — Keri Hilson

We decided to start our own group because we were bored with everything we heard ... Everything was 10th-generation Led Zeppelin ... Overproduced, or just junk. We missed music like it used to be. — Joey Ramone

Right, different generations come along, and discover the music, I think. — Wanda Jackson

I want people to have their own visions for the dance. Some generations will sit back and relate to the music. And the young people ... they'll have the dance right in front of them. — Judith Jamison

Every father is given the opportunity to corrupt his daughter's nature, and the educator, husband, or psychiatrist then has to face the music. For what has been spoiled by the father can only be made good by a father, just as what has been spoiled by the mother can only be repaired by a mother. The disastrous repetition of the family pattern could be described as the psychological original sin, or as the curse of the Atrides running through the generations. — Carl Jung

The people playing on these songs are from Wisconsin and Illinois and Chicago and St. Louis and there's a certain attitude that comes across in the songs and the way that they're performed. I'm born and raised in the Midwest, and my family's been here for generations. This is where I'm from and how I think, and that's reflected in the music I make. — Pokey LaFarge

If arts and music, precious gifts in themselves, were akin to memory, literature was the self-knowing of the species; the human mind accumulated, a manifest of wisdom and knowledge, self-doubt and awareness, folly and foible, all transmitted through the generations. Books amplified the light of mind, reinforced the soul. — Mark Cantrell

I think the hymns give us a glimpse of the generations before us, and what was important to them at the time. Even though they are usually singing similiar messages that are in today's music, it is good to be reminded that the message of Christ is just as much relevant today as it was then. — Bart Millard

The classical music scene was completely unfamiliar to me. It was something that I didn't have the most fun associations around. A lot of people don't - they think of older generations and stuffiness. But it's not. You listen to the Overture of 1812, and you can hear a rock n' roll catharsis. — Lola Kirke

We recognize the universal power of music to touch the hearts of men and women everywhere and in all generations-to inspire and encourage, to sustain and lift, to comfort and bring peace. — Gordon B. Hinckley

The language of music is common to all generations and nations; it is understood by everybody, since it is understood with the heart. — Gioachino Rossini

Think about all of the families where the father is a doctor and the son is a doctor or generations of coal miners. Why did they go into that line of work? Because that's what they were taught. Or was it in their genes? It's not an either/or question. It's both. I was inclined in that way. I was sensitive to music and poetry, and it was around me growing up. — Rosanne Cash

Everybody's not going to like jazz, let's just be honest about it. Everybody doesn't like everything. There's a disconnect in generations and some people just aren't going to feel that music. — Robert Glasper

We come from a generation that wanted to make electronic music accepted, at a time [when] it was not. — Thomas Bangalter

I don't want this music to die.The older people are passing it on to the younger generation so the younger generation can pass it on to the next generation. — Vy Higginsen

I'm drawing from two generations back how to think about music, how to think about why you travel to make music, what the possible pitfalls of that are for the way your life is structured. The good and bad of all of it get into the mix of what's created, what you're creating. — Elvis Costello

There is a timelessness about sport. Like music and art, it is a quality that cuts across generations and nations. It provides a link between Australians of succeeding generations whether urging on a Donald Bradman or cheering and rejoicing in the America's Cup victory. Call it the spirit, the soul of sport - it will be in 2001 the same as it was in 1901. — Greg Hartung

I wanted to reexamine the idea of the album for generations of people who are not my age, who love music or learning about music or are finding this band called R.E.M. or have just previously heard "Losing My Religion" and "Everybody Hurts" as their elevator music. I wanted to present an idea of what an album could be in the age of YouTube and the Internet. — Christopher Bollen

I am continually influenced by the feeling that music culture captured in the late 60s - for my generation, it was a time to rebel, against our parents, against everything. — Renzo Rosso

The mythology in rock n' roll is that I'm a bit of a loose cannon. Yet I've produced more music than anybody in my generation. So how much of a loose cannon am I? But the general public believes that I'm a loose cannon, so let them believe it. I'm not going to correct them. — Billy Corgan

I believe the history of American music is just as important as anything political because it's changed generations of people. — Dave Grohl

I have a lot faith in the younger generation of music lovers. Youth isn't living in the past; if somebody tells them that there's something better than what they have, they're going to check it out. And if they like it, they're going to get it. I'm not worried about the youth. Young people aren't just looking back, they are also looking forward. — Neil Young

I come from a generation that was surrounded by popular music, but I don't know if anybody's ever going to move the ball forward as far and as fast as the Beatles did. — Steven Soderbergh

I would love to expose multiple younger generations to Frank's music. It's not an easy task because It's not ever going to be plastered all over the radio for the masses. — Dweezil Zappa

Being Irish and a citizen of the world, has made me truly appreciate Irish culture, music and history. Whether you're first, second generation Irish or even with no connection to Ireland, you should visit in 2013 for a unique experience. — Liam Neeson

Kids don't care about rock and roll as much as they used to, as the other generations have. It's already turned into nothing but a fashion statement and an identity for kids to use as a tool for them to fuck and have a social life. — Kurt Cobain

I know, for me, you know, my generation - I never would have known anything about Robert Preston's performance in 'The Music Man' if there hadn't been a film where he played the part. I just heard how great he was on Broadway way before my time. — John Lloyd Young

I am the age of the some of the grandparents that are bringing their young grandchildren to hear the music. I have been fortunate enough to see multiple generations of families come see my shows. — Sam Bush

Older generations can sometimes look down on today's hip hop but I refuse that mindset. I remember how hurt I was when older people told me that Run-D.M.C. was jungle music or that it was not music at all. Or that LL Cool J was not art. — Erik Parker

I love his music because he was my generation. But then again, Elvis is everyone's generation, and he always will be. — Margaret Thatcher

I always want to do music that inspires or influences another generation. You want what you create to live, be it sculpture or painting or music. Like Michelangelo, he said, I know the creator will go, but his work survives. That is why to escape death, I attempt to bind my soul to my work. — Michael Jackson

Our interpretations through the years and generations have always changed, but the emotions, ideas, and the thoughts of the composers are still with us, and these are the premise of the music. The time factor has little to do with it because, after all, it is about human feeling, the Universe and who we are as people. — David Finckel

It's rare when an artist's talent can touch an entire generation of people. It's even rarer when that same influence affects several generations. Elvis made an imprint on the world of pop music unequaled by any other single performer. — Dick Clark