But Donald heard on Radio Disney that they were giving a Nintendo 64 away to the ninetieth caller every day for a week. He listened all week and kept calling in until he gauged the perfect time, and one day he ran upstairs and said, ‘I won it!’ He’s always been able to will what he wants.
People are getting more used to another language; that’s how I learned English and Spanish. I listened to other singers and tried to sing with them. Of course, I studied it, and I took classes, but music helps me a lot.
My greatest influence came from my parents’ love of classical music. We listened to a lot of arias and operas growing up.
I grew up listening to Puerto Rican music like everybody else. But when I listened to Charlie Parker for the first time, I said, ‘How does this guy play so fast?’
Music as background to me becomes like a mosquito, an insect. In the studio we have big speakers, and to me that’s the way music should be listened to. When I listen to music, I want to just listen to music.
Some people’s parents listened to the Beatles… but my family is Alquimia, Celia Cruz, and Carlos Vives – this old, rich Colombian music. I loved hearing that while I was growing up.
I listened to a lot of Ricky Skaggs’ Country stuff.
When you’re playing music and you’re starting to expose yourself for the first time, there’s nothing more powerful than being listened to and being actually heard.
I remember being in high school, and you had to draw those lines and define yourself. I don’t think when I was in high school I would have been willing to admit that I liked the Shins. I was into TSOL and Black Flag. I probably would have listened to the Shins secretly in my bedroom.
This never happens, but I was writing with my friend Ryan Hurd and Eric Arjes, and we wrote this song called ‘Last Turn Home.’ The next day, my publisher emailed it to Tim McGraw’s label. He listened to it, and I think within the week, he went into the studio and recorded it. And that never happens.
Brass bands are part of my upbringing. Brass band records were among the first records I listened to.
I listened to country music my whole life. I started writing music when I was a teenager. It all came out country.
I listen to a lot of Eighties hip-hop. I listened to a lot of Ice-T.
John Fahey, thought during his lifetime to be possibly more than a little crazy, was the author of some thirty albums of gnomically introverted droning guitar instrumentals, which I listened to heavily in my teens and twenties; I even produced an hour or so of banjo music in an imitative John Fahey style.
We lived out in the middle of nowhere – the most random places – because of my father’s work. We spent a lot of time in the car on long drives, just to get anywhere. We listened to oldies rock on the car radio, and the most-played group on oldies rock radio is the Beatles.
I didn’t know much about him, and I wasn’t a big country music fan. I listened to the Beatles and David Bowie, so I didn’t know a lot about him.
Usually, when you’re putting out a record, you have reviews from people a week before, and you have a vibe ’cause everyone’s heard it – you’ve heard feedback from everyone, and they’ve listened to your single for a couple of months. Radio’s playing it.
I don’t know how well I work in traditions. I don’t know if it’s just the way I listened to music growing up and never having my foot in one particular world, and just wanting to do my own thing.
My parents were decent, aspirant first-generation middle class. They read ‘Reader’s Digest’, listened to classical music; my grandparents had a bust of Stalin on the mantelpiece. The kids of that generation were terrified of being below par, class-wise.
Have you listened to the radio lately? Have you heard the canned, frozen and processed product being dished up to the world as American popular music today?
Mariah Carey was the first singer I ever listened to.
The main song I listened to with the ‘Firebird’ books was ‘Breath of Life’ by Florence + the Machine.
When we were growing up, we listened to all sorts of music, but the first band that really grabbed all of us live was AFI.
Growing up, I listened to a lot of everything – I fell in love with music, when I discovered people like Lauryn Hill and Tracy Chapman, people whose voices I could really feel, people with a lot of soul. That’s what I’m drawn to as a musician: Anybody that has their own voice and their own point of view.
Back in the old days, when I was a child, we sat around the family table at dinner time and exchanged our daily experiences. It wasn’t very organized, but everyone was recognized and all the news that had to be told was told by each family member. We listened to each other and the interest was not put on; it was real.
My mother’s records were formative for me, but when I became a teenager, I wanted to find songs that she wasn’t hip to. She was so hip, though, that I had to go outside rock n’ roll – so for about 10 years, I only listened to hip-hop, house and techno.
I never met Johnny Cash personally, but I feel like I did because I listened to so much of his music, and even though he’s gone, it’s still there: you can go pull a vinyl record out and hear his personal thoughts and his voice and feel connected to him.
Making words rhyme for a living is one of the great joys of my life… That’s a superpower I’ve been very conscious of developing. I started at the same level as everybody else, and then I just listened to more music and talked to myself until it was an actual superpower I could pull out on special occasions.
That’s all there was in our house: poetry and choir rehearsal and duets and so forth; I listened to Dad and Mother discuss things about poetry and delivery and voice and diction – I don’t think anyone could know how much it really means.
When I was really little, I listened to Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Barbara Mandrel, Crystal Gayle, Kenny Rogers, Willie Nelson, and Patsy Cline.
I don’t know any Beatles songs. My dad never listened to Elvis or Sting or Bowie. Any band name that’s on a t-shirt, I probably won’t know their music, like AC/DC or whatever. I don’t know what that is. As a kid, I would sing along to artists like Tania Maria.
Chromatics’ ‘Kill For Love’ has probably been the record I’ve listened to the most.
There was a phase when I and people around me listened to Prince a lot. A lot. We took Prince fandom to the extreme.
The clarinet is not so dominant in Israeli music as it is in klezmer. I heard klezmer when I was growing up, but for some reason I avoided it. I listened to Louis Armstrong instead. But the sense of melody is the connection between jazz and klezmer.
I listened to Tupac and a lot of Biggie Smalls.
People associate me with Al Green and Curtis Mayfield, but these aren’t people that I listened to growing up. I got into them much later.
When I was under house arrest, it was the BBC that spoke to me – I listened.
In high school, I listened to Lady Gaga and I was really obsessed with just being who you are and owning that experience – she was a really big inspiration in that aspect to me and my friends, who were young and growing up, and making our way through the city and the world.
My mom was a huge Adam and the Ants fan. My granddad listened to a lot of Motown and Elvis and Johnny Cash. So I was kind of well-rounded.
My mother was an orthopedic nurse for 20 years, and she forbade all of us children to ever get on a motorcycle, and we listened.
My first job on the radio was writing jokes for a Baltimore DJ called Johnny Walker, who was sort of a ’70s era shock jock who all the teenage boys listened to in my school.
I thought Steve Jobs was amazing. He was such a great businessman. Someone that has just been really continually successful with their brand and hasn’t gone away, Madonna is incredible. We’ve all kind of listened to her for years and seen her grow up and change, and she’s never strayed away from who she is.
So I went out and bought Hard Again by Muddy Waters. That was a big learning curve. I listened to that album again and again and again. James Cotton was the harmonica player on that album.
I just listened to regular commercial music from Korea. I would just follow the choreographed dance routines. I didn’t have any ambitions of pursuing rapping. I liked dancing, so I did that.
I listened to people who encouraged me and believed in me.
When I was an athlete I never listened to music because I was constantly so engaged with my own self and body.
I always made the joke that I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Warner Brothers first put ‘Tusk’ on and listened to it in their boardroom as a follow-up to ‘Rumours.’
Ray Bradbury published his first story 29 years before I was born. He established himself as an international writer long before I arrived. When my mom was nine months pregnant with me, my father read Bradbury aloud to her as I listened intently, in utero. And I later became his biographer.
Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker series also shows the potential of lighter fantastic fiction. I read the first, and listened to a tape of a later one, and it’s fun.
I listened to a lot of female pop music growing up. I started to realize that there were women out there wanting to stay something, playing instruments and writing their own songs.
My life would’ve been so different if my parents listened to Korn. That would’ve been fire!
