British Music Quotes

I have been long associated with British music. I have favoured it as my alternate music next to American. ~ Leonard Slatkin

I didn't like any British music before The Beatles. For me, it was all about black American music. But then I became a successful pop singer, even though the kind of music I liked was more elitist, which is what I'm trying to get back to. ~ Lulu

I was brought up on choirs and brass bands. They formed the music of my childhood. When I heard the Treorchy Male Choir at the Royal Variety Performance it brought back such happy memories. You have your own eminent place in the history of British music. You stand for excellence in a great tradition and your work for charity is both an example and an inspiration. ~ Michael Parkinson

I once worked at a record label called London Records. The company was owned by Roger Ames, one of the most successful figures in the British music industry. Roger always placed a value on loafing, on holidays, on not being in the office all the time. ~ John Niven

I guess the two Manifesto, Communicating Vessels, Mad Love, and some of his poetry made a significant mark on me but as far as bringing a literary element into the music I see it as a much broader assimilation. ~ Trevor Dunn

People have their own interests and they want to play a certain kind of music. People want to play in orchestras. They want to play on Broadway. Those that want to play traditional jazz and have no interests in the ideas of improvisation. So in spit of the fact that there are fifty violin players, you might only narrow it down to ten and within those ten, there might only be three who have the right kind of background and credentials to deal with what you need to deal with. Everybody's got their own special thing that they are after and a lot of times you don't have time to be training people. ~ Henry Threadgill

Think of me as deep music. You can always hear me if you try. ~ Julia Cameron

I do covers for CDs and LPs of music that I like, reissues of old-time music, and then I'm inspired to make some kind of drawing based on this love of the music. I don't do album covers or CD covers for groups or musicians I don't like or have no interest in. ~ Robert Crumb

I have major respect for Kenny Chesney and Carrie Underwood and Sugarland. They are wonderful. They're superstars in the music business. ~ Darius Rucker

Like, Mission Of Burma to me always sounded almost like they were part of the British Arty New Wave. I kind of like that. I like not being able to tell the difference. ~ Graham Coxon

Musical talent is maybe something, but there are no unmusical people. You're moved by music. It's total rubbish to say, "Oh, I'm unmusical." It doesn't exist; it's ridiculous. ~ Igor Levit

Eternity hums with every beating heart, with every up-lifted voice, with the crash of waves, the whirl of wind across the shifting dunes, the cry of sea birds, and the trumpets of heavenly angels. ~ Janell Rhiannon

U.S.-based readers now account for about 52 percent of The Economist 's circulation, but the magazine continues to resolutely employ British spelling and usage. "It's part of our marketing," says the Economist correspondent Lane Greene, who originally hails from Marietta, Georgia. "We're an outside view on America, and that's signaled all the time by the style. It feels British and it reads British, and that's by design. ~ Anonymous

I only knew classical music, which to me was the only true music. The only way I could survive at the bar was to mix the classical music with popular songs, and that meant I had to sing. What happened was that I discovered I had a voice plus the talent to mix classical music together with more popular songs, which at the time I detested. ~ Nina Simone

I had always loved music. I grew up listening to classic country, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard. My dad loved Vern Gosdin and Keith Whitley. So I kept going to class and started getting totally into playing guitar and teaching myself these songs. ~ Jake Owen

I have total respect for anyone who discovers a band like Snow Patrol. I would be hopeless at signing a rock band, or anything alternative, cause I don't know what that audience are into and I don't particularly like that kind of music. ~ Simon Cowell

My beloved,
I write to you from Rawalpindi, with the help of a Turkic-speaking imam, a kind man with a twinkle in his eyes and a soft spot for lovers. Now two years after I left Chinese Turkestan, I am about to embark on a solo journey there to find you, and my heart shakes with both hope and dread.
If I do not find you, then I will leave this letter in our cave, and pray that God willing, someday, as you ride by, you will be moved by an inexplicable urge to see the place where we had been so happy.
I was a fool to leave. If you can forgive me, please come and find me in Rawalpindi. Ask for Arvand the gem dealer at the British garrison, and they will know where to direct you.
I enclose a bar of chocolate, a packet of tea from Darjeeling, and all my fervent wishes for your well-being and happiness.
The one who loves you, always ~ Sherry Thomas

Every day the bucket a-go a well, one day the bottom a-go drop out. ~ Bob Marley

I was the first records editor at Rolling Stone, and there were no rules. There was nothing to fall back on as to how do you write about this kind of music, so people were trying absolutely everything with a great sense of freedom and experimentation and success and failure, and a feeling of, My God, people are actually paying attention to this. Let's pretend they aren't because we don't want to be intimidated by what somebody might think of what we're saying. ~ Greil Marcus

If I had the capabilities of being something other than I am, I would. It's no fun being an artist. You know what it's like, writing, it's torture. ~ John Lennon

Appalling numbers of youth have been led into a cynical ultra-sophisticated attitude which regards drinking as a badge of social aptitude, which makes a fetish of sport and professes eroticism as a way of life. A perverted and insane pictorial art, lewd exhibitionistic dancing and jungle music form the spiritual norm of this sector of America's youth. ~ Francis Parker Yockey

Until House came along I don't think the English made very good dance records, you know, there were very few really good English Rap records, whereas once House came along all of a sudden we started and now I think we probably lead the world, and have overtaken America in dance music. ~ Fatboy Slim

It's more about when you come back from being out somewhere; in a minicab or a night bus, or with someone, or walking home across London late at night, dreamlike, and you've still got the music kind of echoing in you, in your bloodstream, but with real life trying to get in the way. I want it to be like a little sanctuary. It's like that 24-hour stand selling tea on a rainy night, glowing in the dark. It's pretty simple. ~ Burial

Music, of all the arts, stands in a special region, unlit by any star but its own, and utterly without meaning ... except its own. ~ Leonard Bernstein

Oh, the truth I must tell
Is I'm lonely as hell
Still looking for myself ~ The Summer Set

Some people hate the remixes, some people think it's cool. If you don't like that type of music and just like rock, you probably won't like it. But if you are open to more things, you just might dig it. ~ Rob Zombie

The music is so euphoric,as a way of battling the words. It's like an exorcism, beating it out with drums, shake this demon out, it's so visceral because the melancholy has to be drummed out. I can't let it sit inside me. ~ Florence Welch

In the deep places he gives thought to music great and terrible; and the echo of that music runs through all the veins of the world in sorrow and in joy; for if joyful is the fountain that rises in the sun, its springs are in the wells of sorrow unfathomed at the foundations of the Earth. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

This is where rock happens! This is where young people come! Rock music smells of toilet and cigarettes! ~ Caitlin Moran

It's all about music, because music is basically what's ... been my avenue out of maybe being involved in things I shouldn't be. ~ Pitbull

And as long as there are even a few who belong to the Old Music, you are still our brothers and sisters. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

I love music. I love making songs. I feel like I've been given a path where I can contribute, where I can protest if somebody does something really obviously wrong or inhuman right in front of me, where I can make a difference. Where I can most especially elevate, make you happy, elevate the condition, elevate the thing. ~ David Crosby

I swear, I didn't really go in thinking, 'I'll be the Simon Cowell' of 'Top Chef.' I was just used to being a judge on British food shows where people are much more outspoken and rather rude. That's the culture over here. ~ Toby Young

If any immigrants are found guilty of crime the punishment, for a minor crime such as shoplifting, should be double that of someone born or bred here.
A bit harsh? Not really. The country will have bent over backwards to offer them assistance, they'll have cost the British taxpayer money, and if they repay that by committing crime then they need to be sorely punished. The British Taxpayer who's helped them should feel safe from any criminal activities that they themselves are inadvertently funding ~ Karl Wiggins

You're in direct contact with the music by having the strings under your fingers. It's not mechanical like a piano. ~ Tommy Bolin

People say there's no trace of an accent anymore, and there isn't because I worked very hard to lose it. And the reason I did that is a British accent in America is a real status symbol. ~ John Mahoney

When I first started out in music, I was so negative. I was knee-deep in the streets. Then my friends started going to jail. They said, 'Boy, you better start taking this seriously; you got a chance to do something with your life.' That's when I realised I had to focus. The music led to the acting. ~ Ice-T

Carrie was a girl from my music appreciation class. She had beautiful, dark brown eyes, though it was hard to notice them; she hid behind a scrim of mousy hair and soft chub, which gave her the sodden air of someone who'd found a tenuous contentment on Paxil ~ Siel Ju

I always felt I never chose music, it chose me. ~ Ben E. King

We're passionate musicians, but we felt classical concerts were more like a funeral because nobody talked and everybody was dressed so conservatively. We thought that's kind of strange, because music is full of life! We thought we could break through that barrier with theater and comedy elements. ~ Aleksey Igudesman

The ripe, the golden month has come again, and in Virginia the chinkapins are falling. Frost sharps the middle music of the seasons, and all things living on the earth turn home again ... the fields are cut, the granaries are full, the bins are loaded to the brim with fatness, and from the cider-press the rich brown oozings of the York Imperials run. The bee bores to the belly of the grape, the fly gets old and fat and blue, he buzzes loud, crawls slow, creeps heavily to death on sill and ceiling, the sun goes down in blood and pollen across the bronzed and mown fields of the old October. ~ Thomas Wolfe

Therefore it has always been said that music is the language of feeling and of passion, as words are the language of reason. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

It's up to the people. If they really want to keep it going, they'll keep it going ... they'll appreciate the music. ~ Jimi Hendrix

How the world loves her sad songs! ~ Marty Rubin

The virtuoso element in jazz playing, all those very fast runs in the upper extremes, simply doesn't appeal to me. That's why I don't want to make my concerto "virtuosic" in the sense of a technical show-off. I want a beautiful sound and a melodic and lyrical line. I am more interested in the way someone can play musically. ~ Gavin Bryars

What is the true and original root of Dutch aversion to British rule? It is the abiding fear and hatred of the movement that seeks to place the native on a level with the white man ... the Kaffir is to be declared the brother of the European, to be constituted his legal equal, to be armed with political rights. ~ Winston Churchill

I have fun when I'm making music, and I want people to have fun when they listen to it. ~ Becky G

After a while Luce curled up with her head leaning on a rock, wondering why she wasn't consumed with despair. Instead she felt an inexplicable sense of peace. She was cradled in music. The rocks around her chanted like slow, growling bells, and each curl of the water stroked her fins with silky notes. She'd been so afraid of leaving her tribe, but she understood that she never would have heard the music resonating out of every crook of the world if she hadn't taken so many risks. She'd opened her heart to the music of solitude, and it had come to her. ~ Sarah Porter

I guess you could say I devoted myself so strongly to my music that for awhile I forgot about my family. But I only get one set of parents, and I think I forgot about that for a little while. ~ Lady Gaga

I do like Marylin Manson, actually. I think, he's very talented and he did make some great music. ~ Bruce Dickinson

I use biography, I use literary connections (as with Platen - this seems to me extremely helpful for appreciating the nuances of Mann's and Aschenbach's sexuality), I use philosophical sources (but not in the way many Mann critics do, where the philosophical theses and concepts seem to be counters to be pushed around rather than ideas to be probed), and I use juxtapositions with other literary works (including Mann's other fiction) and with works of music. ~ Philip Kitcher

Anytime fashion and music go hand-in-hand and it really is an organic fit, it's amazing. ~ Solange Knowles