Sly Stone doesn’t make good albums: only good records. His style is so infinite and revolves around so many crucial aspects that it has only come together perfectly on a handful of his singles.
If you look at my career, doing albums with Norah Jones, Justin Timberlake, Gucci Mane and Lil Wayne or KRS-One and Jean Grae, I can’t be pigeonholed.
Selling another 10 million albums is not a priority. Putting out something you’re proud of is.
The great thing about albums is it gives you a lot of choices, and we can all say that the album business is dead, but watch Taylor Swift. I don’t think it’s dead. I just think we’ve got to hit on the energies that make people want to collect albums.
I take certain steps to make sure I’m relevant artistically. I always have new music and a reason to be on the road. I’m not just playing ‘Get By’ over and over. I have 12 albums.
Albums take a lot out of you.
I was a huge fan of comedy and movies and TV growing up, and I was able to memorize and mimic a lot of things, not realizing that that meant I probably wanted to be an actor. I just really, really amused myself and my friends with memorizing entire George Carlin or Steve Martin albums.
All my real heroes made instrumental albums. All my own career has been spent playing in bands, but I never forgot that dream of what inspired me to pick up the guitar in the first place.
Singles, whatever. But selling a million albums feels like an impossible thing to do.
If you pretend to be somebody that you’re not when you write songs – and I did that on some of the early Styx albums – nobody cares about what you have to say.
I did albums for Cash Money. I didn’t do singles – I did whole albums for Cash Money – and at the end of the day, I’m saying I wasn’t paid for albums, so its like you’re doing 10 songs, and somebody pays you for 1.
I listened to a lot of Amy Winehouse: her albums ‘Frank’ and ‘Back to Black’. She was such an incredible artist. She was just so raw and had her unique sound; she paired jazz with pop and was so soulful at the same time. So I pulled from her a lot in the beginning.
It’s important to show the new generation that soundtracks can be just as exciting as traditional albums if put in the hands of the right curator.
I go to the local record store to buy my albums.
I used to babysit. And the kids I babysat were huge Hilary Duff fans, and so we used to have dance parties every day to her music. So I am very familiar with the albums of Miss Hilary Duff.
We’ve done very different Yes albums – 11 bars, 13. I think we had something that had 17/4 in it. It’s just like anything – the more you do it, the more you have to do it.
Selling millions of albums is a sign you’ve infiltrated the culture.
I feel quite excited about the possibility of working on multiple albums. There’s something really iconic about having a catalog featuring a lot of albums, and I’d love to have that legacy.
Well, you know, back then there wasn’t many albums, it was the singles. You sold singles.
I feel like I’m only in the beginning of my career. I’ve only made five albums. It’s not a lot.
I didn’t want to become a personality, I wanted to be a musician, but because I didn’t have an album to stand by yet it was hard for people to see that. But now, two albums in, I’m happy with things.
The idea of the duets albums was the people who joined Frank Sinatra in each song were themselves successful record artists, I never was. I felt a certain apprehension at the time that some people thought my being there was pure nepotism. I felt kind of out of place about that.
I want to be around for a long time, singing and making albums and movies.
We’re all fascinated by the way other people live their lives, how they cope with hardship and triumph, what they put in their home movies and family albums.
I think albums should be dynamic, man.
I just wanted to do my own albums where nobody could tell me what to do. Roc Nation was the perfect fit because I could do what I wanted to do.
Me and Skepta, we’re kind of from the same world but have totally different-sounding albums. That’s why I get funny sometimes when people say I’m a grime artist. Not in a negative way, but I don’t feel it’s a true representation of the music I’m making.
The groups I liked, you really looked forward to their albums and you rushed to get them the first day, because you knew it was going to be different than what they did before. The records told you what that group was into at that time.
I keep reminding myself I’m the same guy who was lucky enough to get my break because Roger Daltrey commissioned me to write the songs for one of his earlier albums.
After a post-Bill Berry softening with albums like ‘Up’ and ‘Reveal,’ R.E.M. seems to be toughening up again; on the strength of the first single, ‘Discoverer,’ the band’s new record looks to continue with the same muscular rock and roll that defined its last album, ‘Accelerate.’
Back in ’75 I had five albums in the top 10. Simultaneously. And among them the number one album and the number one single. And my name was mentioned twice or three times in the Guinness Book of Records.
I feel that people really feel they’ve got a part of me when they listen to my albums and the themes just show themselves.
So many people release albums before Christmas and they get lost in the Christmas rush.
I don’t think the record company is aware of it. Because they just bury my albums and don’t release them.
Looking back, I wonder where my head was at on some of the last few albums, and I know I was just doing what I thought I needed to at the time.
I think most albums should be 13 tracks, to be fair. It’s a matter of interest. It’s quality over quantity.
I genuinely don’t know how many albums I’m going to sell when the new album comes out, because I honestly don’t know how many fans I’ve actually got at the moment.
I’m a fan of Rihanna. I have all her albums. I love her music; she’s a great performer. We’ve both gone on to great things. It’s all love.
I love hip hop, and I have a bunch of urban songs I write for fun that I can’t put on my albums because people would laugh and point.
I never imagined in my wildest dreams when I was 17 watching Van Halen at a Donington Park rock festival and seeing Sammy Hagar later on when I was in the United States playing that I would end up with a band of guys I bought albums of.
Some days, I would find what seemed like entire family trees, torn from once-treasured albums and dumped in disorganized bins, selling 10 for a dollar. I wondered how people could give up pictures of their great-grandparents for complete strangers to paw through – or why complete strangers would want them.
As a musician, you want the music in as many hands as you can get it into. More importantly, I want people to get the music for the fairest price, and in the most convenient way. And that’s really turned into iTunes when you’re talking about selling albums.
Of course, we’re very excited if our songs and albums do well, but that’s not necessarily a goal that we set.
L.A. still ranks as one of my guilty pleasures, along with butter-pecan ice cream and Coldplay albums.
We got a little waylaid along the way. The whole problem started about 10 years ago with management and legal battles, then still trying to make albums while I was doing all of that.
The first five albums I did, I tried a little bit of everything. I was trying not to conform at all.
Sometimes I practice to Allan Holdsworth or John McLaughlin, but I don’t just practice to jazz and jazz-fusion albums. I’ll practice to TV theme music – one of my favorites is ‘M*A*S*H.’ I’ll just play along with anything on the TV.
As long as I’m still able to have a hit on the radio and sell a few albums and some tickets, I don’t see that it would be worth retiring.
I’ll always have songs with a farm connotation on my albums. It’s in the fabric of my music, and I plan to keep it that way.
In my dressing room, you’ll definitely find some Starbursts and Skittles. I have a lot of candles that remind me of home, and a humidifier for my voice. I also have some digital Kodak albums where I have pictures of my friends and family.
As far as the creative side of making great, great albums and really trying to go down in history? I don’t see that happening lately, you know what I mean? You have a lot of guys is talented, but at the same time, timeless music is more important to me.
If I go see a band, and they play, like, zero from any of their old albums, I’m very happy about that. I do not want to see the bands of my youth playing the songs of my youth. I hate that.
So many people I know are like, ‘Nobody listens to Mumford and Sons anymore.’ But you know what? I love Mumford and Sons. And I will listen to those albums, and I love ’em.
Composing for movies is not an easy job – its a different art altogether, and moreover, I don’t want to get involved in too many things at one time and want to concentrate on my shows and albums.
When you get to the 35-year mark in your career, you make albums for your fans to love you more, so they don’t forget about you.
Lyrically, I’ve always thought about albums as a record of a period of time.
The Queen is frequently on her own, walking the dogs, riding her horses, playing patience, completing a jigsaw, sorting her photograph albums, watching television, phoning friends, doing the Telegraph crossword. Is she neglected? Is she suffering? Or does she simply understand her man?
