Music Hits Quotes & Sayings

I'm a singer, not a vocal stylist. My breathing is correct; my enunciation is precise. Because of that, I can sing anybody's music. Yet there are stylists whose technical skills are so underdeveloped they can sing only their own songs their own way. They might be remembered for their hits longer than I am. I'll probably be working longer than they are. I can sing whatever the times and the trends demand. — Ronnie Milsap

I've made money, and I've been ripped off. I've had creative freedom, and I've been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will. — David Byrne

When the music hits, you feel no pain, to quote Bob Marley. But it's true. It's like all art and creation: You're completely in the moment, and you just feel free. — Cory Monteith

As soon as she sees me she swings forward and hits a key on her keyboard. The music cuts off instantly. Strangely, the silence that follows seems just as loud. — Lauren Oliver

He watched in awe as she stacked up an enormous armload of music. "There," she finished, slapping Frank Zappa's Greatest Hits on top of the pile. "That should do for a start."
"You are a music lover," said the wide-eyed cashier.
"No, I'm a kleptomaniac." And she dashed out the door.
He was so utterly shocked that it took him a moment to run after her.
With a meaningful nod in the direction of the astounded Cahills, she barreled down the cobblestone street with her load.
"Fermati!" shouted the cashier, scrambling in breathless pursuit.
Nellie let a few CDs drop and watched with satisfaction over her shoulder as the clerk stopped to pick them up. The trick would be to keep the chase going just long enough for Amy and Dan to search Disco Volante.
Yikes, she reflected suddenly, I'm starting to think like a Cahill ...
And if she was nuts enough to hang around this family, it was only going to get worse. — Gordon Korman

I have a very lively and colourful show. It's two hours of hits and the music speaks for itself. — Rod Stewart

All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations. But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours. — James Baldwin

When music hits you, you dance. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Making a record is a lot like surgery without an anesthetic. You first have to cut yourself up the middle. Then you have to rip out every single organ, every single part and lay them on a table. You then need to examine the parts, and the reality of the situation hits you. You find yourself saying things like "I didn't know that part was so ugly." Or "I better get a professional opinion about that." You go to bed hollow and then back into the operating room the next day ... facing every fear, every disgusting thing you hate about yourself. Then you pop it all back in, sew yourself shut and perform ... you perform like your life depended on it
and in those perfect moments you find beauty you never knew existed. You find yourself and you friends all over again, you find something to fight for, something to love. Something to show the world. — Gerard Way

The artists in country music who stopped having hits are the ones who were led into something that wasn't them. — Conway Twitty

The biggest problem is always getting hits. That's the one thing that has never changed. The way of delivering music has changed, the way of listening to it has changed, the way of distributing it has changed, but it's always the music. — Doug Morris

Having hits buries a singer in the past. A lot of singers hide in the past because it's safer back there. If you've ever heard today's country music, you'll know what I'm talking about. — Bob Dylan

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've always kind of been a little skeptical about bands that won't play their hits. That's really arrogant to me as a music fan. I do want to hear obscure songs, but like most people, I want to hear the hits, so we always play them. — Art Alexakis

What liberals must conserve is the middle class: the stable family who can afford to enjoy music and theater and take the kids to Europe someday and put money in the collection plate and save for college and keep up the home and be secure against catastrophe. This family has taken big hits in payroll taxes and loss of buying power and a certain suppressed panic about job security. — Garrison Keillor

Music is the only thing that doesn't hurt when it hits you. — Bob Marley

I'm one of those artists that doesn't actually hate my old hits. I love Boston music. I really like 'More than a Feeling.' After playing it to myself in a basement for such a long time, I'm happy to do it out on stage. — Tom Scholz

Music always hits me when I'm driving so I keep a recorder in my bag. — Angie Stone

I grew up listening to hits, and if I write something I feel, I think that's pretty mass appeal. I'm not very elitist with music. Love is universal; a great melody is universal; it goes around the world; it's not just American. A great song can touch the world. — Diane Warren

It began as most thing begin. Not on a dark and stormy night. Not foreshadowed by ominous here comes the villain music, dire warning at the bottom of a teacup, or dread portents in the sky.
It began small and innocuously, as most catastrophes do. A butterfly flaps its wings somewhere and the wind changes, and a warm front hits a cold front off the coast of western Africa and before you know it you've got an hurricane closing in. By the time anyone figured out the storm was coming, it was too late to do anything but batten down the hatches and exercise damage control. — Karen Marie Moning

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain. — Bob Marley

I just make the music, and people have the say. When I'm making songs, I never call them hits. — Juicy J

My main influences are pop and folk music - Bob Lind, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, the Motown collection, The Zombies, Elliott Smith, and a ton of 70's AM radio hits. I love powerpop too. — Greta Salpeter

When something really hits me, it makes me want to either jump off something really high or lie down and be buried. I want people to get hit and caught by my music. — Florence Welch

At a party in L.A., I met this middle-aged gentleman who I was talking to for ages when I asked, 'So, what do you do?' Turns out I was speaking to legendary music producer Quincy Jones, who worked on Michael Jackson's hits. And there was little old me rattling on - I was so embarrassed. — Elliot Cowan

I'm not quite sure. Probably because "Hanky Panky" and "I Think We're Alone Now" had more to do with it than anything else. For some reason, staccato eighth notes on a bass sounded like bubblegum. Basically, groups like the 1910 Fruitgum Co. took my early format and kind of perverted it, and made these mindless pre-fab hits over and over. In the 60s, anybody who was making commercial music, that is music that didn't have a political slant to it, or wasn't taking drugs, was bubblegum. And that term kind of hung on a lot of people back then, and it's unfortunate. — Tommy James

It's magazines like HITS that have to label things. — Nina Gordon

One good thing about music is that when it hits you, you feel no pain — Bob Marley

As a songwriter, I don't rush. I may sit on lyrics for two years before the music hits. — Ben Harper

Record labels collude with some of the radio stations, and the radio stations have their play lists, dependent upon what they call the, quote, 'hits.' What's commercially viable gets recycled, endlessly repeated, and as a result of that, the progressive music can't break in. — Michael Eric Dyson

I come from a musical family. Mom was a piano teacher for a large portion of her life, and Dad is a saxophone hobbyist who grew up in England during the heyday of Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott. I started taking piano lessons from my Mom, but it's too easy to slack off with your parent, so she passed me on to a friend of hers, where I got more motivated to play music by playing pop hits and TV themes. I did some classical training, but I was always more into the really thematic stuff. — Gerard Cox

Dreams and coffee and sunrises make up the rhythms of the road.
Music is a part of it, too: the popular music on the jukeboxes and radio stations. You hear it constantly, in diners and on car radios. The music has a rhythm that fits the steady drumming of tires over pavement. It seeps into your bloodstream. After a while it ceases to make any difference whether or not you like the stuff. When you're traveling alone, a nameless rider with a succession of strangers, it can give you a comforting sense of the familiar to hear the same music over and over.
At any given time, a few current hits will be overplayed to exhaustion by the rock & roll stations. In hitching across the continent, you might hear the same song fifty or sixty times. Certain songs become connected in your mind with certain trips. — Kenn Kaufman

Most producers today are little bedroom producers and then they get their record and get signed by an agency and go on the road, but they have no idea about DJ-ing. They have no culture about where that music comes from and they just stand behind the booth, put their hand in the air, and play all the hits. — Cedric Gervais

Would you like to?" he says. His voice is hardly audible above the wind
so low it's barely a whisper.
"Would I like to what?" My heart is roaring, rushing in my ears, and though
there are still several inches between his hand and mine, there's a zipping,
humming energy that connects us, and from the heat flooding my body you
would think we were pressed together, palm to palm, face to face.
"Dance," he says, at the same time closing those last few inches and finding
my hand and pulling me closer, and at that second the song hits a high note and I
confuse the two impressions, of his hand and the soaring, the lifting of the music.
We dance. — Lauren Oliver

'White Rabbit' was mostly done in about two days, the music in about half an hour. The music is a 'Bolero' rip-off and the lyrics a rearrangement of 'Alice in Wonderland.' You take two spectacular hits and throw them together, and it's hard to miss. — Grace Slick

That culture, of looking at catchy music as a negative thing, is weird. It has nothing to do with me, or the music I was into growing up. The Stones and the Beatles only tried to write hits. Every Motown song, every Credence Clearwater song - they were trying to write hits. — Dan Auerbach

I peeked in the bag. Do you know what was in there? I'll tell you what was in there: a collapsible tray table. Is there any sadder purchase in this fucking world? Maybe a CD of C+C Music Factory's Greatest Hits, but that's about it. — Caroline Kepnes

One gud thing abut music if hits u fell no pain :p <3 — Justin Bieber

Because my musical background is so diverse, it lends me to have very much my own style and it helps me to relate to the music as I'm going to play it. I just write. And if it comes out country, it's a country song. The funny thing is, I write all across the board. I just write what hits me at the time. — Casey James

It's quite liberating to get to a certain age, 'cos you're not chasing number one hits or trying to be an international superstar. I've done all that. I'm not out to prove much more to anyone but myself really, to be an artist and see if there is a new undiscovered music out there for me to make. — Paul Weller

Early Summer, loveliest season,
The world is being colored in.
While daylight lasts on the horizon,
Sudden, throaty blackbirds sing.

The dusty-colored cuckoo cuckoos.
"Welcome, summer" is what he says.
Winter's unimaginable.
The wood's a wickerwork of boughs.

Summer means the river's shallow,
Thirsty horses nose the pools.
Long heather spreads out on bog pillows.
White bog cotton droops in bloom.

Swallows swerve and flicker up.
Music starts behind the mountain.
There's moss and a lush growth underfoot.
Spongy marshland glugs and stutters.

Bog banks shine like ravens' wings.
The cuckoo keeps on calling welcome.
The speckled fish jumps; and the strong
Swift warrior is up and running.

A little, jumpy, chirpy fellow
Hits the highest note there is;
The lark sings out his clear tidings.
Summer, shimmer, perfect days. — Marie Heaney

So you do shorter versions of the hits, or you take out a long guitar solo or things like that to make time for the hits and new music as well. But I don't think any of us ever get to do as much new music as we would like to. — Lee Ann Womack

With the truth, all given facts harmonize; but with what is false, the truth soon hits a wrong note. — Aristotle.

I love making music. I never stop. I want to keep it moving forward. I like to go into the studio and make hits. It makes me feel good. — Juicy J

The blues are just a heightened sense of awareness of life's ups and downs, and things that a guy sees after a couple hits of Jack Daniels. — Steven Tyler

The rain picks up outside. It hits and slams against the window, but I think it sounds like music
a light mix of tambourine and cymbals. The wind sounds like a guitar, all low, melancholy notes. Thunder takes the drums. I'm quiet as I listen to the song. — Katie Kacvinsky

Music is feeling. You can try to verbalize it. It really just hits you or it doesn't. — Gene Simmons

But why is it that in music, anything more than 5 years old - apart from a few hits - is never played on radio to the young public? — Bill Wyman

The New Kids took some hits for, you know, not writing their own music. But on a songwriting standpoint, I mean, I'd never written music before when I was in the group, ... Now the music is my music, so it's kind of like my baby, and that was a whole different experience. — Joey McIntyre

When I really started liking music was when I could play some of it myself, and after a couple of years of playing folk music, I kinda rediscovered those hits that were on the radio all the time when I was a kid. — Jackson Browne

You can pick songs that sound like hits, but if it's not something that somebody wants to tell their friends, 'Hey man, have you heard this song?' then I don't think it's worth it. The only way to get your music out there, is for someone to tell their friends about it. — Jake Owen

There's prejudice everywhere. I don't think the music industry is as bad as the movie industry. But I have taken a few hits over the years for my sexuality, and for being honest about my life. In the end, it's the music that rules the roost. — Rufus Wainwright

I first heard Laura Branigan sing live in my brother Nesuhi's apartment, where we had gone because he had a very good piano. I immediately realized that she had a great pop voice, in the classical sense. Laura had an instinctive feel for music and melody, and her delivery was sensational. Everybody at Atlantic knew that we had a winner in this young lady, and she came through with great hits that will be remembered for many years to come. I consider Laura to be one of my best signings, and I am proud to have had such a great singer in my career in the record business. We miss her dearly. — Ahmet Ertegun

Finally, gatekeepers still matter. Technology makes it easier for people to listen to any kind of music they like, but digital availability and ubiquity are steering them increasingly to the biggest hits, not the niches. Bloggers and podcasters and tweeters have shaken up purveyors of news, but not replaced them. Book publishers, art dealers and film producers will still play the biggest role in what gets bought, read, contemplated and listened to. — Daniel Franklin

I take a lot from everywhere. I take from music, architecture, novels, and plays. Anywhere that hits you. — Alex Winter

I remember people would talk about Country Music like it was this sexist, lame thing. Well, no, because Dolly Parton is writing songs and playing her guitar and producing. She's doing it all and she's got hits on the radio. — Neko Case

I love Ray Charles. He can still teach everybody a lot about how to make great music. Not necessarily how to make hits, but how to make great music. Of course, part of it is his incredible talent. Who are the greatest jazz singers in the world? Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Ray Charles. — Ahmet Ertegun

Sometimes life just hits you, right in the face. And it's alright. Because I, for one, think it's kinda cool to have a black eye every now and then. And I think it's definitely okay to have scars, and it's definitely okay to hurt, and be in pain and show it. And that's why we have friends in this life. And it's why we have music. — Hayley Williams

...unlike Aretha, [Al Green's] only rival vocally, Al never sold himself short in the studio. Where the albums follow the vagaries of genius, the hits exploit Al's personal production line, every one a perfect soul record and a perfect pop record in whatever order suits your petty little values. Brashly feminine and seductively woman-friendly, he breaks free in a register that darts and floats and soars into falsetto with startling frequency and beguiling ease. He's so gorgeous, so sexy, so physically attractive that only masochists want to live without him. — Robert Christgau

MTV definitely has the effect of narrowing the range of music that hits the mainstream. On the other hand, isn't that the effect of television in general? — Ann Powers

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

It came from my mother. She was a singer, and literally every day of the week she sang at a different club in a different genre of music: country, R&B clubs, jazz clubs, church on Sunday morning where she was the music director, pop hits, soft rock. I grew up listening to all this music, so it was never one thing for me. — Robert Glasper

All my parents' music came from greatest hits albums. It was like the thought of getting even one bum track was too much for them to handle. — Carol Rifka Brunt

I think it's that thing of growing up all the time watching American movies and listening to American music. It hits you in a way that's a lot purer because you are not in that culture that you're watching. — Ben Mendelsohn

As an artist, you dream about accumulating enough successful music to someday do just one greatest-hits album, but to reach the point where you're releasing your second collection of hits is beyond belief. — Gloria Estefan

Superficial pop will always exist - there've always been Fabians - but when people like Dire Straits and Bruce Hornsby start having hits, it suggests that there's a revolution going on in music. — Bonnie Raitt

Music has always been in my family, but it was mainly keyboards. I learned to play classical piano, but when I first heard the amazing bass guitar of James Jamerson, who played on all the big Motown hits of the '60s and '70s, I knew bass guitar was my instrument. — Suzi Quatro

And Paul hits this chord and I turn to him and say, 'That's it! Do that again!' In those days, we really used to absolutely write like that - both playing into each other's noses. — John Lennon

I write anywhere. I'm always banging around on the dashboard. Whatever I'm doing. I can make music out of anything. Whenever a song hits me, I'll pick some sort of melody or rhythm out on it, and kind of enhance the song. — Dolly Parton

The script is like music to me. I approach it like it's a musical piece and I hear how it's supposed to sound when people say the words. There's rhythms and there's intonations and things, and so, when somebody comes in and hits the notes that I hear, I go okay. Or, they come close enough, and then I'll say "Well how about you try it like this?" and if they have a good ear and they can pick it up, then I think okay, they've got it. — Rob Reiner

Even with artists I love, only about a third of their music is what really hits the sweet spot for me. — Danger Mouse

Take Tom Jones and mix him with Enrico Caruso, the Italian tenor-cum-castrato singer. Then add tons of pathetic love songs, faked sex appeal and musical kleptomania focusing on Western hits from the 1970s. Spice it up with a political flexibility rare even for Central European standards and a personal status close to that of the Pope. What do you get? Karel Gott, Czech pop music's most mega-super, long-lasting and brightest star. — Terje B. Englund

The brilliance here is appropriation: space, form and interface combine to create a Jetsons sound machine. A dream of music access that just hovers, its floating defines a space. The shape seems so obviously sci-fi, but fresh. The function could follow the form. The shape is beautiful and functional-which hits both of the pillars of American Needs right on the head. — Tucker Viemeister