Top 45 Michael McDonald Quotes

I just don’t think many people would have crossed the street to hear me doing a hip hop-influenced album!

I like to celebrate the holiday season – not so much in a religious way, per se, but in a unifying way.

Being in the studio, for me, can be a miserable experience – I can really psych myself out.

I’ve always had a dream that I might write a Christmas song that might resonate with people during the holidays.

I love Coldplay.

I think, as musicians, that’s really all we want is to keep working. We want to have a reason to be, and we want to play for as many people in this span of life that we’re allowed as we possibly can, and in as many places as we possibly can.

My wife is, by and large, the best thing that ever happened to me.

‘Livin’ on the Fault Line’ was kind of a commercial disappointment for us, although it seemed to have a certain buzz with the smaller fan base we had.

I love writing Christmas music. It’s some of the easiest songs to write… You draw from your own memories – it’s kind of a wellspring of inspiration, in a way. With other songs, you know, you spend six months just trying to figure out what to write about.

I think when you’re not prepared for something, success can be as crippling a thing as failure to people. I think it touches whatever insecurities you have, that you may not be as in touch with you as you should be or whatever.

I played so many clubs growing up, and back in that period, in the ’60s, we’d play, like, four, five sets a night.

Since the ’60s, we’ve lived so much in an age of quick fixes that the culture itself has become a quick fix.

I’ve always written short stories.

I didn’t own a record player when I was younger. I just played every day after school and then started gigging around town. I heard bands and songs through friends of mine, but a lot of what I picked up on was learned by traveling through college towns.

In one way or another, all my songs are about the necessity for trust.

We’ve reached a point where people don’t even know how to look for anything fundamentally important anymore.

I suppose I hit my lowest point in the early to mid-80s, which is when things really spun out of control for me.

What I particularly liked about Nineties hip hop was it had a certain reverence for the groove that I hadn’t been hearing in a while.

I’ve always been an artist that has had a problem with genres, staying in the box, and being told what I had to be.

I’d like to do something with Frank Ocean, you know, and I love working with Thundercat, and I’d love to do more with him.

Working with Thundercat was really a thrill.

I love to write songs, but they don’t come easy to me – I spend a lot of time writing really dumb stuff that I have to look at the next day and think, ‘God, what was I thinking?’ That’s my process, is just to go through a lot of dumb stuff and hope that, after a lot of hard work, I’ll find a good idea.

I don’t know that we ever overcome doubt. We just have to remember that it’s more than likely a poodle in the bushes and not a grizzly bear.

Aretha Franklin is and will always be a national treasure.

I enjoy it immensely, but I’m not comfortable on stage as a person.

I’ve always felt like the Forrest Gump of the music business. I’ve been fortunate to work with a lot of great people.

I went to Catholic grade school, so we sang a lot of religious songs: ‘O Holy Night,’ ‘Silent Night.’

Probably some of the most miserable years of my life were grappling with some definition of what success was.

My musical education started before I could see over the dashboard, just listening to the radio and cranking up our favorite songs as they came on.

I grew up with this idea that songwriters had a great job. My family was Irish Catholic, so if you became a priest or a songwriter, you were golden.

I write about humility, because it’s something I hope I one day actually possess.

I’m a very slow songwriter; it takes me sometimes years to write one song, if I ever finish.

I’m a big country fan. I remember, as a kid, when Ray Charles did the ‘Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music’ record. That’s one of the reasons I became a country fan.

Laziness can be virtuous in the right setting, I guess.

My friendship with The Doobie Brothers never really changed. We’re all still good friends, and I really admire those guys a lot.

We try to promote the Christmas season and remind people that it is a season of peace. That’s what the season’s real meaning is about. No matter what religion you are, there is that point in time where we should celebrate that idea of peace and humanity.

Everything’s challenging for me, singing-wise. I’m like an old truck with one gear left on it.

I think it takes longer for me to make a record than most artists.

I wish I wrote songs like Donald Fagen, Walter Becker, Don Henley, Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, so many of the songwriters I admire. They have the ability to say things.

There have been albums I’ve recorded in the past that have had success, and then there have been ones I’ve had extreme faith in, and they ended up as commercial failures.

For me, one of the best things of having been a Doobie Brother is that the people involved always were great people.

The ‘Motown’ detour for me was almost like it wasn’t work. It was more fun than work, and that’s all it takes for me to not be very responsible to other things I should have been paying attention to.

Beck is obviously a consummate musician. He plays instruments, many instruments. He can make his own record without having a fleet of computer operators onboard.

I tell my son, when your music becomes less relevant, your pathetic comic value might be of some use. So you’ve got to go with it, you know.

Warner Bros. was a great label to be affiliated with. It’s the best label out there, and the fact that I was with them for 20 years was just an honor.