Quotes & Sayings About Pop Music

Magne Furuholmen is a very dear friend of mine. A-ha are a classic pop band and they've got some brilliant songs. I'd say 'The Living Daylights' was one of my favourite Bond tunes: regardless of it being a Bond song, it stands alone as a great piece of music. — Guy Berryman

Times were changing in the world of id. They had finally fired Jason, narrowing the group to Carmack, Romero, Adrian, and Tom. But something else was in the air. The Reagan-Bush era was finally coming to a close and a new spirit rising. It began in Seattle, where a sloppily dressed grunge rock trio called Nirvana ousted Michael Jackson from the top of the pop charts with their album Nevermind. Soon grunge and hip-hop were dominating the world with more brutal and honest views. Id was braced to do for games what those artists had done for music: overthrow the status quo. Games until this point had been ruled by their own equivalent of pop, in the form of Mario and Pac-Man. Unlike music, the software industry had never experienced anything as rebellious as Wolfenstein 3-D. The — David Kushner

I listen to pop music and it sounds like mantra to me, there's this power to it. There's also something to be said about how it reaches people on a mass level, there's some magic to that. — Taraka Larson

Anybody who thinks pop music's easy should try to make a pop single and find out that it isn't. — Robert Wyatt

As a producer, I'm trying to challenge myself to just make something that is of a professional quality - not necessarily pop music, but maybe in the sense that Nine Inch Nails is professional quality. — Grimes

I am not dogging on non-melodic pop music because I love it, but I am saying that is why the timeless songs are still here. It's because of the melody. As far as what shouldn't be brought back, the high-waisted bikini bottoms. — Julianne Hough

You never know that this is the moment when you're in the moment. When I was sixteen I moved to a smaller town in Vermont, and at that time I didn't have a band to play in. So I was forced to play in Top 40 bands and fraternity bands and wedding bands. That was all pop music, but I was listening to Weather Report and classical music. Then I went to Berklee College of Music in 1978, and you had Victor Bailey there, and Steve Vai. And suddenly I was among my ilk. — Stuart Hamm

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

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

Pop music can get inside us and enter our memory bubbles. It provides those true Proustian moments, unlocking sensations, unlocking our imaginations. Music inspired me as a filmmaker. — Todd Haynes

You make decisions, and that's what separates art from some other pop music. It doesn't mean that you can't make an embarrassing amount of money, for a borderline Marxist, doing something that you love, but it does mean that this huge pool of money that was out there when I started making records in the '80s is gone. — Steve Earle

I consider the Stooges to be pop music. — Siobhan Fahey

We're not a band because we're trying to be the Mother Teresas of the music industry, out to serve everybody. We're a band first and foremost because we love playing pop music. — Alice Nutter

I've always thought that if comics are a part of pop culture [then] they should reflect pop culture, but a lot of the time comics, superhero comics especially, just feed on themselves. For me, comics should take from every bit of pop culture that they can; they've got the same DNA as music and film and TV and fashion and all of these things. — Kieron Gillen

It's lifestyle music. It's not like some secretary who likes some pop song, but can't name who the band is; whereas a heavy metal fan is into every aspect of it. We'll see if rap holds up to that. Run-DMC seemed to be the Led Zeppelin of rap. — Rob Zombie

I feel like kids that grew up in New York City or in L.A. were exposed to all these subcultures and subgenres, whereas I was only exposed to the poppiest of pop music so I never had this negative connotation towards pop music. That's not South African music having an effect on me, but just how international music was filtered through South Africa affected me. It gave me a not-negative connotation towards pop music growing up. — St. Lucia

I have so many songs, it's ridiculous. I love so many different types of music and tend to write all over the map, style-wise. R&B, rock 'n' roll, screamers, pop, good-time songs. — Taryn Manning

As a DJ, it's my job to break new music. And instead of it just being the stuff that's coming from the major labels or the big pop records, I've always gravitated to something that's just different, you know? — Diplo

Anyone who watches a lot of television, or listens to pop music, is familiar with a certain vision of America. If not exactly colorblind, this America is one in which different races easily interact, in which a white person might have an Asian boss, Hispanic stepson, or African-American frenemy. — Wesley Morris

Pop music, disco music, and heavy metal music is about shutting out the tensions of life, putting it away. — Peter Tork

And this is the origin of pop music: it's a professional music which draws upon both folk music and fine arts music as well. — Pete Seeger

The experiences of promoting my first album were really something; there is so much illusion in my environment (touring and pop music) that I wanted to clear away. — Duncan Sheik

If anyone asks you what kind of music you play, tell him 'pop.' Don't tell him 'rock'n'roll' or they won't even let you in the hotel. — Buddy Holly

inquiries. You will feel it in the music and cherish it as the most magical part of the jazz idiom. If you don't, you can always leave the jazz club and check out a rock or pop covers band. That's perfect entertainment for people who want to live in the realm of perfect replication. Jazz, in — Ted Gioia

Pop music provides not just the soundtrack to our lives, as the cliche goes; it releases our emotions and helps us to articulate them. This is why music is so important to adolescents, who are struggling with questions of identity and self-expression. — Sarah Churchwell

If you try to do that in pop music - to play only rare show tunes, for example - people don't come. — Bobby Short

I wasn't very aware of pop music because I attended an arts school. For me, it was all about jazz. — Norah Jones

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

There's the paradox of making pop music when you're in your 50s. People weren't meant to be doing that originally and yet they are. Mick Jagger [used to say] we're not going to be doing Satisfaction when I'm in a wheelchair. — Neil Tennant

When I'm in the car sometimes it's like, 'Yeah, man, just put on the pop music.' You know what I mean? I don't want to listen to Tom Waits. — Max Greenfield

I grew up in the church, with traditional hymns, but at the same time I was beginning to listen to pop music, the mid-60s, The Beatles, which had just as much influence on me as those hymns did. Then the hippy stuff like Pink Floyd started to raise questions about how I lived my life and the world in which I lived. — Alan Green

I don't think my record collection or musical knowledge is vast. I just listen to the radio all the time - I'm a pop music enthusiast. — Girl Talk

Pop stars are sending the message that their sexuality is the strongest thing they have to offer, and that's confusing and misleading to girls and women, especially since there's not enough of a counterbalance from those who rely on their other assets, like their music. Also, with the new obsession with all things "booty," it's important that women - and it's often women of color - aren't turned into mere caricatures. Right now it's: "Bend over." That's all people want to see. That's crazy. It's so far from where we should be. — Santigold

I've grown up playing pop music for the experimental crowd and I always feel like I'm pushing something weird on people. I had this underdog feeling. It's crazy that all of a sudden I'm the overhyped band you read about on the blogs. — Girl Talk

Growing up, there was only classical music on BBC Radio. We had to listen to the American Forces Network in Germany, which played pop songs, or the pirate radio boats off the coast. — Michael Caine

When I was young, we were quite strongly discouraged from listening to pop music. It was an uncomfortable thing, pop music; I think my parents felt threatened by it. They were always happy when they were listening to Mozart, so if your parents are happy, then you're happy. — William Orbit

My music is not a particular genre. It's not bubblegum or cheese. It's just good songs, pop songs. It's just my songs. — Eliza Doolittle

I love pop music. It's not easy to write a good pop song. — John Lydon

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

I felt that the elegance of pop music was that it was reflective: we were holding up a mirror to our audience and reflecting them philosophically and spiritually, rather than just reflecting society or something called 'rock and roll.' — Pete Townshend

I love Lady Gaga, Rihanna - all the pop girls like Katy Perry. I think Miley Cyrus is very talented, too. Apart from the visuals, which you may like or not like, but her music is quite good, actually. 'Wrecking Ball' is quite a good song, and she sang it really nicely. — Giorgio Moroder

Her fierce and fearful friend
who loved country music and cherry Pop Tarts and singing in public and the color pink, who was terrified of germs and dogs and ladders. — Lauren Oliver

As hard as it is, as ghetto as it is, hip-hop is pop music. It's the sound of music getting out of the ghetto, while rock is looking for a ghetto. — Bono

I wanted to get rid of the element that had been considered essential in pop music: the voice. — Brian Eno

Pop music can absorb so many peculiar talents, ranging from the completely nonmusical poseur who just uses music as a kind of springboard for a sense of style, to people who just love putting all that complicated stuff together, brick by brick, on their computers, to people like me who like playing conceptual games and being surprised. — Brian Eno

I adored Freddie Mercury and Queen had a hit called Radio Gaga. That's why I love the name. Freddie was unique - one of the biggest personalities in the whole of pop music. He was not only a singer but also a fantastic performer, a man of the theatre and someone who constantly transformed himself. In short: a genius. — Lady Gaga

I don't hate pop music. I liked the Beatles, but then, I knew them. — John Tavener

I'm a businesswoman. I am a music lover. I like for people to like my music. When you listen to top 40 radio, you hear pop stuff. You hear rock stuff. You hear all these different influences. — Lee Ann Womack

I have a great body, I really do. But I want to be taken seriously as an artist, and wearing anything that shows it off will be a distraction from the music. That's how my signature uniform, my tuxedo, came about. It's classic and timeless. You'll see me in black, white, and a pop of color on my lips. That pop adds a little magic. — Janelle Monae

Pop music seems to be the way radio programming has chosen to support female artists. They have chosen not to support a more provocative voice from women, which I find disappointing. — Shirley Manson

I describe me sound as international: reggae, pop, rap, R&B all in one. I think I have my own style. I can't really even describe it. People say, "What type of genre is your music?" It's Sean Kingston genre. I have my own genre. No disrespect to no artist or dudes out there. I feel like I am my own person. I am doing my own thing. — Sean Kingston

It was around this time that I'd begun trying to perfect the art of fucking with people's minds. I'd figured out that when someone else was hogging the limelight, you could cut him down to size by bringing up a subject he didn't know anything about. If the other person knew a lot about literature, I'd talk about the Velvet Underground; if he knew a lot about rock, I'd talk about Messiaen; if he knew a lot about classical music, I'd talk about Roy Lichtenstein; if he knew a lot about pop art, I'd talk about Jean Genet; and so on. Do that in a small provincial city and you never lose an argument. — Ryu Murakami

What's good is that my music is different from everyone else's. It's got the soul element, like Duffy, but it's not very retro. It's a contemporary, pop, fresh sound. That's what makes it different. — Pixie Lott

I enjoy all forms of music - pop, classical and opera. — Stephen Hawking

The Beatles and Ray Charles were in the same charts together, and that was just called pop music - it wasn't called soul or rock. The best pop music just stands out as something that's just original, and I think it should all be called pop again. — Eliza Doolittle

I try to listen to over a hundred different songs a day. I listen to every single thing. If you're just listening to pop music, you're just gonna make pop music. I listen to Adele, Yo Yo Ma, Gucci Mane. — Benny Blanco

Pop music is aspirin and the blues are vitamins. — Peter Tork

...And you're the only one who knows. — Billy Joel

I like pop music. Earnestly. Most of the greatest technicians, mix engineers, and players are working in pop music. — Autre Ne Veut

Pop is actually my least favorite kind of music, because it lacks real depth. — Christina Aguilera

Actually, Wilson's art can't fit into these neat categories. My own take is that the best way to think of Wilson is as an outsider musician, but one who actually happens to have a huge amount of talent. Much like, say, Wesley Willis, Wilson is focussed on having huge commercial success, but has little to no idea what actually counts as commercial. He's very easily swayed by people around him, so if he's told he should be doing three-minute pop songs, he does three-minute pop songs, and if he's told he should do epic suites about the American Dream, he does those. But at all times there are two things that remain true about him: he has an unerring ability as an arranger, and a directness that makes his music more communicative than any other music I've ever heard. — Andrew Hickey

I'm not going to say I'm not a fan, but I'm a fan of house music, essentially, and kind of indie, and I was always into the kind of sub-pop Seattle Mud Honey and Pearl Jam kind of sound. But my kind of big love was house music ever since I was 15/16, going to raves when I was 15 or 16 years old and not going to school, like a naughty boy. — Nick Frost

We (pop stars) are people not androids. We've got views. I've got opinions and I don't see why I shouldn't use a bit of my art to put them over. I think music is one of the most powerful media forces in the world today. — Roger Meddows Taylor

Some of the music I listen to is pop. I sing it in the shower - and then for public consumption. — Kathleen Battle

People have always said that I could have been a highly successful pop artist, if only that were my intention. It never was. My original intention was to be a kind of behind-the-scenes participant in music, to just be a record producer and engineer. And I made a record for myself just so I could have an outlet for my musical ideas. — Todd Rundgren

Sometimes with pop music, you have to see it to love it. With soul music, it's sparse. There's nothing that's pretentious or planned. It's just so gutsy. — Adele

It is the transcendent (or 'abstract' or 'self-contained') nature of music that the new so called concretism
Pop Art, eighteen-hour slices-of-reality films, musique concrete
opposes. But instead of bringing art and reality closer together, the new movement merely thins out the distinction. — Igor Stravinsky

God bless pop music and God bless MTV. — Lady Gaga

There were a lot of things I listened to, but so-called pop music never killed me, you know, the type of stuff that always seems to make it on the radio. The whole radio thing seems so ... it's like they've accepted the whole "new wave" thing only because this kind of pop element came into it. In Europe they really love emotion, but here it's like, "let's stay away from it because we might cry or something". — Tom Verlaine

Teen pop will never die as long as there are teens and popular music. It just takes a different head. — Justin Timberlake

I definitely try to broaden the scope of music. I don't know if it's pop or classical or what, but I'm religiously challenging myself all the time, for better or for worse. — Rufus Wainwright

I actually do see rock and roll as pop music. I think the distinction I was making was that I was going out of my way to have a very consistent approach to production, where nothing kind of punctures the reality - or, I guess, the fake reality - of the album and what you're listening to from beginning to end. — Dan Bejar

It doesn't matter the kind of music, it doesn't matter whether it's a cowboy hat or a yarmulke. I don't care if it's outer space or pop, the spirit is the same. — David Lee Roth

All the big pop acts that I've been into over the years - whether it's ABBA or Prince - managed to combine amazing melodies and honest human emotion. But coming out of the super-super-commerical pop industry in the 90s, maybe people forgot about the fact that pop music can do both of those things. — Robyn

We've always described our sound as a bit more guitar driven than normal pop music. Kind of Pink in a boy band form. We've heard a few people say that so now we use it. I think Pink is amazing person to be compared to. — Liam Payne

Two people, two hands, and two songs, in this case "Big Shot" and "Bette Davis Eyes." The lyrics of the two songs provided no commentary, honest or ironic, on the proceedings. They were merely there and always underfoot, the insistent gray muck that was pop culture. It stuck to our shoes and we tracked it through our lives. — Colson Whitehead

I like adding little elements into the final mix. I'm more fond of the '70s glam than '80s. I have that style of vocals ... there are a lot of pop artists who are using the glam vibe in their music. I'm part of that wave. — Adam Lambert

Pop music for me was definitely escapist, but never studious. — Siouxsie Sioux

But the idea of taking things and mixing them together is what I do in my music. I take hip-hop, R&B, pop, dance, funk and soul and mix it all together to get my own sound. — Jennifer Lopez

Being a pop artist or making music like a jingle or something - I don't do that. — Chris Robinson

Pop music is music that's made more accessible to people. And there's a certain lifestyle and everything that goes with it normally. — Michelle Chamuel

I was raised on pop music. — Jane Siberry

If our cultural lives are sick, it is likely to be an impediment to our spiritual lives. Much popular culture promotes a spirit of restlessness. That is likely to be an obstacle to prayer, to concerned reflection, and to attentiveness to the needs of others. Popular culture also has an extremely limited range of sensibilities. I have never heard a work of popular music that has the depth of poignancy of the opening bars of Brahms's 'German Requiem,' for example, with its text, 'Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.' I learn something about mourning when I hear Brahms; I know of no similar lessons in popular music. — Kenneth A. Myers

I'm always thinking about that young girl or young boy who doesn't quite know if their music, their messaging, their imaging, their voice is going to pop, if people are going to understand them. So I represent the other and those who feel like they don't even want to be normal. They embrace the things that make them unique. — Janelle Monae

I remember Tim telling me that he had an idea for a musical and he said to me that he was hoping that ABBA would be writing the music, which I thought was a pretty wild idea because they were obviously known very much as pop writers. — Elaine Paige

It's ok to say you've got a weak spot,you don't always have to be on top.
Better to be hated then loved(x3) for what you're not. — Marina And The Diamonds

I do like pop music. It's that certain thing that it gives you: the adrenaline rush, that instant gratification. — Lorelei Linklater

Pop music has greater power to change people and to affect people because it's a universal language. You don't have to understand music to understand the power of a pop song. — Paul Epworth

It's so frustrating that everybody rags on eighties music, when there's a lot of terrific stuff out there," he said. "There's no irony to it. It's not afraid to just be happy or enthusiastic or earnest. Or to have melody. Sure, you can blame it for being naive, but isn't that refreshing next to the whiny navel-gazing that came after it? — Amanda DeWees

The only thing that exists to me is commercial pop music. — Barry Gibb

Games is like hardwired plumbing in the house of pop. It's not pop itself, its sort of like the behind-the-scenes arteries and capillaries of pop music. — Daniel Lopatin

I still don't know how to express the really delicate personal stuff. People think that Plastic Ono is very personal, but there are some subtleties of emotions which I cannot seem to express in pop music, and it frustrates me. Maybe that's why I still search for other ways of expressing myself. Song writing is a limiting experience in some ways - writing down words that have to rhyme. — John Lennon

middle of the room, stands my stylist, Micah, beside a foldaway beauty chair, arranging cosmetics and other paraphernalia atop his portable vanity table, as he sings along with the music playing from his Tab. He's a good looking man, tall and broad shouldered, with dark chocolate skin, gaping flesh-holes in both ears, black dreadlocks pulled back into a thick ponytail and heavy eye make-up which makes his eyes appear to pop out of his face. Too bad he's gay. — M.L. Sparrow

I like all kinds of music - classical, pop, rock, electronic. — Ha-Joon Chang

I think pop music has done more for oral intercourse than anything else that has ever happened, and vice versa. — Frank Zappa

I would consider my music like, pop-R&B. So it can reach a lot of people. Pop is popular music. That's what it stands for. So I'm just making music that I know that I like, I know other people will like, and my fans will like. — Justin Bieber

If it weren't for Criminal Records, Wax-n-facts and other indie record stores I could have only sold my CD's at my shows and by mail order as an independent artist. The greatest stores that have character and include a much wider range of music of music are all independent, mom and pop stores. — Shawn Mullins

Pop music is not a threatening style of music. — Joan Jett

Sometimes it's difficult because you like some regularity in your life, but never knowing who's gonna pop up at what show, what person you might see that you don't expect to see in that city, what problem you're gonna have that night, even the problems at some of these venues, if you look at them the right way, it's an adventure. You're like a cowboy. That's the best part about being in the music industry. You get your gun and you ride your horse. — Colin Munroe

All my teenage years my punk was hip-hop - I just hated pop music. — Gustav Ejstes