However, there’s no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums.
Stevie Wonder’s ‘Songs in the Key of Life’ was on constant shuffle throughout my childhood. I remember my dad playing some stellar Max Roach albums as well.
It took me three albums to get the confidence and to find out what I could do that made me different from other people. And the first record, really, was a process of trying.
All these non-singing, non-dancing, wish-I-had-me-some-clothes fools who tell me my albums suck. Why should I pay any attention to them?
If you go back to all my albums, they’re all confessional.
I just really want to make albums – and however I can, I will.
We don’t pump out albums eight months apart from each other.
I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.
I’m super inspired by Master P and early moguls. They were doing everything. I wanna do that, too. Twenty-six albums in one year. It’s possible. Very possible.
I’ve been asking myself: ‘Why put together these things – CDs, albums?’ The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it’s artistically viable. It’s not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it’s not obvious or even conscious on the artists’ part.
I started running to different albums, and I was starting with the short albums and moving on to the longer albums. I was interested in how they built up, in tempo and intensity. it made me interested in albums again, too.
Wherever I went, crowds appeared again, and I started making solo albums for the first time in my career.
The drama teacher that I had in high school, back in Texas, was the only teacher who didn’t kick me out of his class. He turned me on to ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.’ I had picked up Dylan with ‘Bringing It All Back Home,’ and he turned me on to the first couple of albums, which I hadn’t heard.
We make sure we have total artistic control with our albums. We were working with Interscope Records, and they had a hard time with us having all the control. So when we signed with Warner Bros., we told them we would be working hands-on with our producer, and they were cool with it.
For years, Jazz At The Philharmonic albums were the only ones of their kind.
On ‘Kaputt,’ singer-songwriter Dan Bejar reevaluates his band’s sound and drifts away from the David Bowie comparisons that have plagued even his best albums.
We got pretty techno on ‘Eliminator’ and ‘Afterburner,’ which I enjoyed. I think they’re good albums, but we wanted to start using the techno element a little more sparingly.
I never did albums fully at DFA; I always would go someplace else so I wasn’t making a record in my office, basically.
We’ve made bad albums in the past, and people have bought them. I don’t know. I don’t care. I’m just grateful for it.
A lot of music influences me in other ways than this, but I’ve always taken a lot of influence from Stevie Wonder, Frank Ocean, and Jeff Rosenstock for the Rex music. They were also the first three artists that released albums where I enjoyed every song.
I wanted to produce Nancy LaMott’s albums, so I created my own record company.
My goal is to drop 10 projects in 2013. All albums. I gotta do it. I know the 10 projects I want to drop.
I’ve been sequencing all of my albums, from any Gang Starr stuff to Jeru to Group Home, all of it. I pay a lot of attention to that and really always have. I’ve even helped sequence friend’s projects.
Good short-story collections, like good record albums, are almost always hit-and-miss affairs – successful if they include three or four great tracks, wildly successful if they have five. And that’s as it should be.
I could find faults with all my albums because that’s just a part of being an artist – it’s hard being a human being, isn’t it?
Our albums just tend to be collections of songs really, because we all write in the group, all four of us.
The fact I even get an opportunity to make one album is crazy. But if all goes to plan, I’ll get to make five albums. That’d be nice.
The first nine albums there was never a Synthesiser, never any Orchestra. There was never any other player except us on the albums.
Albums tend to dictate what they need. Every time I have made an album it sort of feels like it is decided for me how that album is going to sound; it is not really a cerebral decision where you sit down and decide that you are going to make an album that sounds like ‘this.’
Don’t get me wrong, I love my first two albums a lot.
When I was young, my dad always let me listen to comedy albums.
I kind of like the idea of creating my own literature within my albums. I definitely thought about that when I started writing songs.
I’d done three solo albums in a row, and that’s quite narcissistic.
Taylor was named after James Taylor and claims that she knows all the James Taylor songs, and I’m a huge fan of James Taylor and know all his songs, too. My dad told me that if I ever met Taylor Swift, I had to tell her that I know every James Taylor song. We started naming albums, and we were both shouting them out.
I don’t like to listen to my older albums. They frighten me. I can’t explain it. It’s so subjective. It’s so personal. I cannot listen to my first album, ever. Never, never, never.
When I first got married to my husband, he had boxes full of photos of my two stepsons, ages 5 and 8 at the time, and I put them together in some little albums and wrote notes about how happy I was that they were a part of my life.
Family photo albums are so powerful in that they make kids feel valued, cherished and respected.
More recently, I used guitar synthesizer extensively on the two albums I did with Robert Fripp.
In the end, I’m lucky enough to travel the world and make albums and not have to worry about not having a job.
I love what I’m doing most of the time, but it’s hard work. People only see your albums in the charts. They see us at award shows and after-show parties. They don’t know about your doubts, the hard work that goes in.
I’ve had two platinum albums. I have worked with thousands of people. But the most rewarding feeling is to see people on Twitter say, ‘Do you see what Dawn and them are doing? They are number one.’ It’s the most rewarding feeling because of all the tears, all the bad stuff, and the people that said I couldn’t do it.
My solo albums have given me confidence in myself and a broader understanding of what I had to offer.
I just wanted to release an album of piano music for music’s sake. I’m not expecting to sell millions of albums. It’s was just nice to be able to sit down at an acoustic piano and make some music.
Lately, I’ve been listening to some jazz albums. I love the new Pat Metheny album. John Coltrane. I still like good metal, though!
I’m sad for younger bands that don’t have a home that they know they can go to, like the twenty-five labels that used to be around that they know they can hang their hat and know that they’ll give ’em three, four, five albums to develop.
George Winston piano albums have been my go-to since junior high.
I told God, ‘I don’t want a man. I don’t want more gold albums. The only thing I want is the love, friendship, and presence of my mother.’ And God gave it to me.
I’ve been away writing songs and recording and doing albums that are much more obscure.
The best slide solo I ever played was on… what’s her name? That girl singer who used to be with that all-girl band? … Belinda Carlisle of the Go-Go’s! That’s who it was. I played on one of her albums.
There’s just no great rock albums anymore. There’s a lot of rock music out there, but it’s very bland and disposable.
Tame Impala has two lives. One is the album, which is like a producer, and the other life is like a band: more of a live incarnation where we’re basically a covers band for the albums that I produce.
I enjoy albums, not a song here and there. The recordings I like have been a soundtrack to a universe.
My desire was never to put out albums; it was to do musical theatre!
I could never be a control freak. If Wu-Tang is a dictatorship, how does every Wu-Tang member have their own contract, their own career, and have put out more albums without me than they’ve done with me?
When you do rap albums, you got to train yourself. You got to constantly be in character.
I want nice songs. I don’t want to worry about where I have to place songs on a playlist. I’m looking to make genuine, great songs and put them together into albums.
I don’t know of too many double Christmas albums, so it is something that’s new, and hopefully will be fun, and there’s plenty of stuff out there to cut.
I’ve seen composers work on 30 films at one go. So, eight or even 10 albums in a year is no big deal.
‘Manu’ is one of the best albums. The climax song will be a trump card for all break-up songs. Everybody will talk about the language of the lyrics.
The issue I had with the Lightspeed albums was that usually the main purpose with them was to fulfil really dorky musical goals, like, ‘I wonder if I can do that,’ and it was all very personal. It was more that once I’d finished the goal of what the song was, I was kind of done. It was like ticking boxes.
I don’t like albums; I like projects. I want to tell a story – I don’t want to limit myself to 10 songs or four songs or whatever. I just tell a story and I want you to feel something. If it took me one song or if it took me four, call it however you want. So I call them projects.
