Top 45 Jack Garratt Quotes

When I was a kid and writing more acoustic songs, I was doing it more for the attention than for the love of the music. I knew I needed to change something because I wasn’t having fun and wasn’t liking the songs I was writing.

I feel the best way to respect my audience is to not give them what they expect from me… ’cause it’s fun that way.

I enjoy the music I make because I have to – if I didn’t, I wouldn’t want to make it, and I wouldn’t want it to be heard by other people.

Winning the BBC Music Sound Of 2016 poll has left me feeling pretty stunned at the end of one of the most emotionally and physically intense years of my life.

I didn’t do myself any favours. I would be resentful of my own ideas even before I’d said them out loud. But music was always the most consistent and peaceful thing for me. So I taught myself to be my harshest critic rather than just a mean voice in the back of my head.

I find it hard to not like music if it has passion behind it and good integrity. Only if it’s made for the wrong reasons and shows a lack of respect for its audience will I find something to dislike.

With every milestone that I’ve come across, there’s always been a little note at the bottom that’s said, ‘Don’t worry, there’s another milestone coming up.’

I’ve always said that I would only ever release something that I would want to listen to as a fan.

With the BBC Sound list, it’s just humbling even being put aside those other musicians – people like Alicia Kava, who I am a huge fan of.

I’m ultimately a perfectionist who doesn’t believe in perfection.

I don’t think there’s any such thing as perfection. But I’m a perfectionist. I don’t believe in the idea of perfection, but I will strive to achieve it.

I had a passion and a soul in me that was screaming to be heard, and I had to let them out in as honest and challenging a way as I could.

I genre-hop quite a lot. I love manipulating genre and deconstructing it and making it irrelevant. Genreless music is great because it means you get to write in any genre that you like.

I get inspired by the sounds that evoke an emotion from me. That’s what I am drawn to; that’s what turns me on.

The ‘Remnants’ EP was the first time I got to really explore myself as a producer, and I got the insane idea of doing it on my own in my future career.

Music has always been part of my family’s life. My brother, sister, and I all have the same ability to pick up an instrument and play.

I’m just here to do the best that I can do with the music that I make, and I’m not making it for any other reason than I feel like I have to. These ideas have to be created because they’re in me, and if I leave them in my head, I’ll go crazy.

I spent my entire childhood going ‘look at me, look at me, look at me,’ before realising I needed someone to look at me for more than just what I was showing off for.

I was put through piano lessons when I was a kid. I say ‘put through’ because it was fun and I loved it, and it’s been beneficial now, but it was difficult because, although I can read music, I much prefer just playing and improvising and at least finding my own way to play an instrument.

When I perform live, I’m doing a lot, but I kind of black out. I don’t think about it too much.

People don’t want to hear the same song 12 times in a row on an album.

There is a pressure, but my job essentially is not to listen to that pressure, not to buckle underneath that pressure, but instead to continue making music in the way that I have been making it.

I find it really difficult to turn my head off. I find it difficult to zone out.

For me, creating music is just as relaxing as sitting down and doing nothing.

I would go to school and try to talk to my mates about music and playing instruments and stuff, and they would turn around and go, ‘What’re you talking about? Shut up.’ And I realised that I was the weird one.

I’m fascinated by film scores, especially film scores for children’s movies because they have to be able to entertain an audience that isn’t interested in music yet.

I remember, from aged six to nine, I was loud and abrasive and loved making noise and loved playing instruments and doing all those things. When I was about ten, I realised I could get attention by doing that, so when I was eleven, I started writing songs.

I grew up with parents who really encouraged me to listen to as much music as I could.

All I do is hope that someone feels something from listening to my music.

Who am I to sit here and say I’m going to change the face of music?

I watch cartoons a lot. I’m a big ‘Rick and Morty’ and ‘South Park’ fan.

I got to a point when I was 20 that I dropped out of university because I felt I didn’t have any purpose, and I wanted to find a fire in me.

Festivals are the best because you can’t control anything, and for a control freak like me, that’s a wonderful experience.

Every single pair of trousers I own has a plectrum in it.

Tech gives people more opportunities to be themselves in front of other people. Sometimes that’s great; sometimes it’s bad.

Lyrics are really, really hard, I think, or at least they’re really hard for me. Some people can channel lyrics faster. I find them very hard to find, so because of it, they take me a long time, and I really think about them.

My grandfather was a church organist and would sing in choirs and was a musical genius to a certain extent.

Ever since I was a little kid, my ears and my hands would talk to each other very well, so I could pick up instruments quite easily.

I don’t want to write the song that I wrote yesterday, and I don’t want to write the song I’m going to write tomorrow; I only write the music I’m writing now.

It’s amazing to be nominated for the Brits’ Critics’ Choice Award 2016. It’s such a significant award that highlights the importance of new music, so it’s a genuine honour to have been nominated alongside some other incredible new acts from the U.K.

My mum would play Stevie Wonder around the house, and I remember just loving the songs and feeling so blown away by how much was going on.

I got my first laptop, what I learned to do everything on, when I was 17 or 18, and I had no idea what I was doing. I’d only ever produced on an 8-track before. When I was about 13 and writing songs, I would write on that. It would literally be eight tracks, and that’s all I had.

I want my music to sound good on whatever people are listening – laptop speakers, those crappy little white ones you get with your PC.

I wanted to be a teacher because that is all I knew. It was a great course on primary school education, in which I could specialise in music, but I ended up dropping out after I was honest with myself about what I really wanted to do with my life.

My guitar setup is inspired by Stevie Ray Vaughan.