Quotes & Sayings About Underground Music

But if you tame me, my life will be filled with sunshine. I'll know the sound of footsteps that will be different from all the rest. Others send me back underground. Yours will call me out of my burrow like music. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

I got caught up on drugs for a few years, I'm off it, I'm very happy, got two kids and a family and everything. And like I said I'm making the underground music, and keeping it real. — Vanilla Ice

I think what's happenin' is that, with the overflow of music, it's been diluted. There was a time when people would go search out underground records. Now, underground means free, and people don't really care for it. So now artists tend to go more pop and look for the radio. — Ice-T

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

I guess, for me, what started me getting real excited about music was the New York punk and new-wave scene. All those bands looked back to the Velvet Underground and the Stooges and the Modern Lovers as well. But that was back when Television were punk, and the Talking Heads were punk. — Dean Wareham

When the music industry started collapsing, the logical people understood that the only place to go for shelter was the underground. If the world on the surface is burning up, and you know people that have bunkers, go to the bunkers. — Will.i.am

The saxophone does not speak that language. The saxophone speaks the language of the underground, the jaded melancholy of the half-light - grimy and sexy and sweaty and hard. It is the language of orphans and bastards and whores. — Eleanor Catton

When I received the invitation to "check out" Fairport I knew absolutely nothing about them, all I knew was that they were beginning to establish themselves as an underground favorite, by playing regularly at the UFO club in Covent Garden. But the crowd I was running with at the time were listening to a completely different genre of music. So I had nothing to go on, there was nothing on vinyl, Fairport's recording days were still ahead of them. — Iain Matthews

The first thing I learned was the 'St Louis Blues' when I was eight. Both my grandmothers, my mother and uncle played the piano. This was post-war Britain, and they played boogie woogie and blues, which was the underground music of the time. — Jools Holland

As far as my New York influence, one thing I'm proud of in my career is, I rep Brooklyn, New York all day. But people don't look at my music as New York music. People consider my music underground music. — Talib Kweli

There is so much great talent in the underground, and electronic music is finally getting the props that it's deserved for so long. I feel like now that everyone is discovering it and it's so fresh sounding to so many people. It doesn't get any more rock n' roll than playing EDC or the Staples Center. It's really madness. — Kaskade

My parents didn't really restrict my movement, so I got involved in the underground music scene and the activism scene; I was doing some volunteering in food relief. I spent a lot of time throughout the city in poor areas, even though my family lived in a wealthy area. — Jess Row

I didn't really get into underground comics, though I've liked some of what I've seen. Dame Darcy was very impressive to meet, really talented. In general, I've always been more interested in searching out music, so I think I miss out on a lot of underground art. — Neil Farber

This is one of my favorite things about the Underground: the crashing of the cymbals, the screeching guitar riffs, music that moves into the blood and makes you feel hot and wild and alive. — Lauren Oliver

I feel like Harriet Tubman, except I am trying to free people through underground music, to free themselves creatively and inspirationally. — Janelle Monae

They thought we were just basically keeping ourselves underground on purpose. And it was just strange for people to approach music that way. And for rap, trying to get recognition, and be seen as a regular form of music like anything else. I mean, the Soul, R&B, Rock 'N Roll, they would dis the hell out of rap when it first came out. — Ice Cube

There are artists that are using computers in all genres - Kendrick Lamar's music is electronic-made, and Taylor Swift is the same thing. There's a lot of pop music, underground music, and music for films made with computers. In that sense, it's not going to go away. — Skrillex

Writing this now, God, how I miss the cultural side of the eighties - the rhetoric, the raggedy clothes, the politics, gigs you were frightened to go into, Radio 1 when it had weird bits, Channel 4 when it was radical, the NME when it had writers, and the thrill of discovering underground music and new comedy for yourself. — Stewart Lee

In underground music, there seems to be this real inability for people to express themselves in any kind of heroic or mythological way. There's this idea that we're all normal joes, and that creating a persona onstage or having schtick is somehow false and misleading and evil. — Ian Svenonius

I've been involved in a lot of different kinds of projects. I've been on straight hip hop tours. I've been on underground rock tours. I've been on multimillion selling rock shows. I've been in the jam band thing, and both commercial and underground hip hop. Very few people listen to one kind of music. — Boots Riley

Taking people on a journey is the fundamental element of underground dance music. I don't sell records. — Seth Troxler

I went to underground music studios. In the studios, I learned that you can make a movie without a permit. — Bahman Ghobadi

Since I loved underground music, I tried to carve a space for feminism within it. Those were my hopes. — Kathleen Hanna

I get to listen to a lot of this music again doing my DJ work on Little Steven's Underground Garage. To hear Van [Morrison] on Them's version of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"- what a vocal, and what an arrangement. Also, I get to hear so many records that I missed the first time around - The Chocolate Watchband, Roky Erikson. It's an audio food fest, a total privilege, a second chance. — Andrew Loog Oldham

I was going to be a musician, no matter what it took. I supported myself with blue-collared jobs so I could write music and be in a band and play shows. I even got into an underground art scene. I was going to do whatever. — Chris Cornell

In eras past, mainstream culture was blandly, blindly complacent, so underground music was angry and dissatisfied. But now, mainstream culture isn't complacent, it's stupid and angry; underground culture reacts by becoming smarter, more serene. That's not wimpy - it's powerful and productive. — Michael Azerrad

I grew up in the '90s. I listened to a lot of The Clash, Velvet Underground and Roxy Music. I wasn't into Boyzone, or anything. — Aaron Taylor-Johnson

From our earliest days in Liverpool, George and I on the one hand and Paul on the other had different musical tastes. Paul preferred 'pop type' music and we preferred what is now called 'underground'. This may have led to arguments, particularly between Paul and George, but the contrast in tastes, I'm sure, did more good than harm, musically speaking, and contributed to our success. — John Lennon

I started getting seriously into music when I was a kid. 1978 was my big year. It just hit home. That was before real metal. There was Black Sabbath and that kind of stuff, but the real underground, hard stuff wasn't even around yet. It was cool to watch that happen and latch onto the next edge of things every time that progression happened. — Chris Reifert

I like to go on YouTube to see the underground sounds, what the kids are listening to, and kind of gauge my music around that. — Missy Elliot

In the homes of many Western Christians, hours are sometimes spent listening to worldly music. In our homes loud music can also be heard, but it is only to cover the talk about the gospel and the underground work so that neighbors may not overhear it and inform the secret police. How underground Christians rejoice on those rare occasions when they meet a serious Christian from the West! — Richard Wurmbrand

Sometimes they ask if you want to hook up your iPod for background music. Do not do this. It's a trap. They'll put it on shuffle, and no matter how much Beastie Boys or Velvet Underground you have on there, the following four tracks will play in a row; "We'd Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover" from Annie, "Hold On" by Wilson Phillips, "That's What Friends Are For, Various Artists, and "We'd Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover" from Annie. — Tina Fey

I want to sell tracks but at the same time I want to stay true to the music I like. This is why I love the underground scene because they can stay true to what they want to do. — Rahki

A man is like a two-story house. The first floor is equipped with an entrance and a living room. On the second floor is every family member's room. They enjoy listening to music and reading books. On the first underground floor is the ruin of people's memories. The room filled with darkness is the second underground floor. How deep is it? Nobody knows. Going down to the first underground floor, people can write novels and music. However, I believe that such works cannot move people's hearts. — Haruki Murakami

At the end of the '90s and into 2000, electronic music was still an underground phenomenon, especially in America. — Tiesto

I had seen some films made about the underground music world in Tehran, and most of them were short documentaries about 30 or 40 minutes long. And I always wondered why they weren't publicized more. Really, their only flaw was they were short documentaries. — Bahman Ghobadi

If she could see the beauty of this underground world, and appreciate what it means: the music, the dancing, the feeling of fingertips and lips, like a moment of flight after a lifetime of crawling. — Lauren Oliver

I listen to all kinds of music. I love underground, new music that's popping. — Juicy J

I know Diplo knows a lot about underground music culture - he was one of the people to put me onto music like that when I used to listen to the Mad Decent Mixes. It was like, 'Oh, he knows what I want.' — Kreayshawn

I was young, but to me that was underground music. I had never heard anything like Venom or any of that stuff growing up in Louisville. That was sort of the only weird records I could find. All that stuff would be in the import section. And sometimes there would be some sort of goth type of stuff. But that was the stuff I was attracted to. — David Pajo

If you want to talk about EDM, let's talk about Detroit underground music, Chicago house and let's talk about all the things that got us to this place. We all get on the train of dance music. We need to all respectfully look through the carriages that have come before us and realize how we got here. — Goldie

Of course, I'm a dancer. Dancing grabbed me from the start and I have was never afraid to do it. With out dance I wouldn't be singing. I want to expose people to the underground dance scene through music. — Jillian Hervey

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

Underground dance music - in the nicest way possible - it's amateur — Axwell

Everybody gets a tag. If you listen to a Velvet Underground record, you don't think, 'Godfathers of Punk.' You just think, 'This sounds great.' The tags are there in order to help try to sell something by giving it a name that's going to stick in somebody's memory. But it doesn't describe it. So 'depressing' isn't a word I would use to describe my music. But there is some sadness in it
there has to be, so that the happiness in it will matter. — Elliott Smith

A lot of punk rock. I listen to various stuff just cuz my friends now listen to a lot of different bands. I listen to a lot of underground stuff like jungle music. — Cassie Steele

The American indie underground made music for like-minded people who thought for themselves. Thinking for yourself is intrinsically subversive. — Michael Azerrad

When I would play pop music at underground shows, it was offensive to some people. I wasn't doing it to piss people off: I just didn't believe in those strong divisions that you're supposed to listen to this or that. — Girl Talk

In my mind, New York was the place where they had the underground rap shows and I could get in on some ciphers and just rap. This whole fantasy world I had created in my head about New York just from listening to the music my whole life, like, I'ma go up there and do that. But when I came up here, there was none of that, that scene was dead. — J. Cole

In World War II, jazz absolutely was the music of freedom, and then in the Cold War, behind the Iron Curtain, same thing. It was all underground, but they needed the food of freedom that jazz offered. — Herbie Hancock

At 18, I moved to L.A. with my heavy metal band Avant Garde, which was very much influenced by Metallica. At 19, I got a job at Tower Records, and everything started to change very quickly. I started listening to the Velvet Underground, Pixies, early Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and also earlier music like the Beatles. — Rivers Cuomo

I listen to a lot of different music. I love hip-hop. I'm a big underground rap fan. I listen to the likes of J. Cole. Lately, I've also been getting into techno house music. And I've been on an Eighties retro kick, and I've even been experimenting with some rock. — Denzel Whitaker

As if music could be crushed like a condemned building or a stubborn anarchist. But it could not. It always rose and returned, vital, immense, fortified by new instruments, new shapes, new musicians crazy enough to give their lives to it like underground, unsanctioned priests. — Carolina De Robertis

I think Andy Kaufman is to comedy what the Velvet Underground was to music - it's like, 80 thousand records sold, but everybody who bought one started a band. — Courtney Love

One of our great problems today is that we have gotten caught up in our culture-wide quest for authenticity. We want our jeans authentic (pre-ripped at the factory), we want our apples authentic (grown locally instead of somewhere else), we want our music authentic (underground bands nobody ever heard of), we want our lettuce authentic (organically manured), we want our literature authentic (full of angst), we want our movies authentic (subtitles), and we want our coffee tables authentic (purchased from a genuine peasant while we were on some eco-tour). In short, we are a bunch of phonies. We are superficial all the way down. — Douglas Wilson

Run DMC brought us out of that underground-only feel. They brought rap above ground and made it respectable as an art form to mainstream music. — Ice Cube

Good music often starts in underground culture and then comes to the surface. — Felix Buxton

Underground electronic music is art - fundamentally it's based on contemporary art, culture, dance, and real music. If you look at EDM, how many of those cultural standpoints are the same? — Seth Troxler

There is nothing I like more than pure underground music — Kurt Cobain

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

I love to read about music and about art, but I don't try and take things about mythology or guidelines as to how I'm to behave as an artist. It's the realm of intellectual debate. Actually, more and more my direction is trying to get further away from being self-conscious of what the parameters are of the mainstream, where it intersects with the underground. — Emily Haines

The big change was reggae and hip-hop, which came along after Split Enz had started. When Bob Marley first visited New Zealand, he lit a fuse that is still burning very brightly. The Maori people particularly honor reggae music in a very big way. So there is a strong reggae scene and a strong hip-hop scene, especially among Samoans. There's still plenty of quirky stuff around. No one expects to make much money here, so it definitely does encourage an underground sense. — Tim Finn

When you break it all down, my punk rock is my dad's blues. It's music from the underground, and it's real, and it's written for the downtrodden in uncertain times. — Frank Iero

As I got older I became a kind of sub cultural junkie, foraging around in music, street fashion and eventually art, politics and the freakier reaches of the Internet, hunting the next discovery, the next seam of underground gold. — Hari Kunzru

This is the part they don't tell you about in the movies. Or in On the Road. This is not rock 'n' roll.

You are not William Burroughs, and it doesn't make a damn bit of difference if Kurt Cobain was slumped over in an alleyway in Seattle the day Bleach came out. There is no junkie chic. This is not Soho and you are not Sid Vicious. You are not a drugstore cowboy and you are not spotting trains. You are not a part of anything - no underground sect, no counter-culture movement, no music scene, nothing. You have just been released from jail and are walking down Mission Street, alternating between taking a hit off a cigarette and puking, looking for coins on the ground so you can catch a bus as you shit yourself. — Joe Clifford