I become more seasoned, it’s less interesting to try and compete in the pop market.
When I hear myself singing, I hear Iggy Pop and Jimi Hendrix. There’s a conversational thing going on. I suppose it depends on which The Pretenders song you’re listening to.
I started rapping because I wanted people to hear what I have to say, I want as many people to hear me as possible, and I do everything in my power to make that pop.
I came to California and got signed at a young age. And it’s not like you see in the movies, where you start rubbing shoulders with Timbaland and Pharrell, and you become a giant pop star.
New Age is a very small box. It was a term that was brought in by the music industry to classify music that is neither jazz, classical, pop or rock. They didn’t know what to call it or what to do with it. So they threw it all together under this one name.
I’ve done a lot of movies that don’t have any music in them, and I’ve always sort of had a kind of wary attitude about music because it can be so manipulative, and also because with pop music, I feel like everybody kind of has their own relationship to songs.
Now, if you’re Al Gore, you can afford $10 a pop for squiggly-pig-tailed fluorescent light bulbs. But if you’re mainstream America, two or three kids, mom and dad working outside the home, that’s not a very good deal.
I think Lady Gaga is great and is changing pop music and bringing back a certain rock ‘n’ roll spirit, swagger to the game.
When you’re a pop star, it’s a little conservative; you always have to stay in a box. You have fans that are five and fans that are 65; there are so many people wanting so many things.
I listen to all kinds of songs. There’s something to be learned from every type of music and from the one making it, whether it’s pop or jazz or hip-hop.
I love the excess of Christmas. The shopping season that begins in September, the bad pop star recordings of Christmas carols, the decorations that don’t know when to come down.
Part of me believes that the completed record is the final measure of a pop musician’s accomplishment, just as the completed film is the final measure of a film artist’s accomplishments.
I was raised on pop music.
It is strange, but nobody is shocked when pop singers make a fortune in the space of two years.
When I sang that song, I felt it was almost as if some force had moved into my body. Things like that have only happened to me singing jazz. It doesn’t happen when singing pop. I get so deeply into the music, it feels like I’ve become someone else.
If you are a pop band, don’t say you’re a metal band. Poison and Warrant were about as metal as the Backstreet Boys.
I subscribe to ‘National Geographic,’ ‘Scientific American,’ ‘Discover,’ and a slew of other magazines. And it is while reading articles for pleasure and interest that an interesting ‘What if?’ will pop into my head.
I would say, for me, flamenco is so pure, so raw. I love pop culture but sometimes I miss the root, the rawness.
I wasn’t into pop music, even at a really young age.
That’s one wonderful thing about country music – it shifts, ebbs, and flows stylistically, unlike pop music.
I had an indie pop phase, I had just about every phase you could think of.
I’ve never believed that pop music is escapist trash. There’s always a darkness in it, even amidst great pop music.
Traditionally nerd-based culture is now a big sector of pop culture.
It would have been easy for me to bring out a real cheesy pop song, but ‘Please Don’t Let Me Go’ isn’t your typical ‘X Factor’ single, and it’s a grower, not a shower.
I love Top 40 pop, don’t get me wrong; I just don’t think that there’s anyone in Top 40 pop that’s ‘real.’
I love love songs. But I love pop music as well: Girls Aloud, Kylie, the Spice Girls, East 17, Mika.
I don’t know how much more what I’ve done is any more important than what Ella Fitzgerald did. Ella crossed those lines, as did George Benson before me. There’ve been lots of people who brought a pop audience to jazz because they were able to link the two and give people easy access to the world of jazz.
My first album didn’t come out until I was 27, which in pop years is late, you know. But when it came time to arrange it, I became a kid in a toy shop. I had a harp and a saxophone quartet and a symphony orchestra. I went berserk for a time.
I just could not believe that 30 years later we’re still looking at people who are supposed to write little 2-minute pop that when they actually try to do something that’s a little bit more they regard it as pretentious.
My first modeling job was Gap, and my first time in front of the camera was for a Soda Pop Girls commercial – it’s one of those Bratz dolls, Barbie dolls… one of those.
My parents are actually very famous singers in Bulgaria. My dad was in a rock band, and my mom was in a pop group. They met, fell in love, and actually formed a group together to escape the country because it was Communist, and they couldn’t leave. They didn’t know any English but eventually found their way to America.
I urge younger artists to know that you don’t have to be anything you don’t want. You can do whatever’s comfortable for you. From the music I make, to the things I do in my life, I’m true to my R&B core. I have the capability to make pop records and crossover, but that’s not my aim.
I’ve never been one for doing remixes. Then I’ve gotta decide which version am I gonna be tonight: country Carrie or pop Carrie? I’d rather just make country music that anybody can get into no matter what they listen to.
Pop music is so structured, and I’m excited to try and challenge that in my own work.
I like the pop music, but I still want to have meaning in my music.
Pop music provides not just the soundtrack to our lives, as the cliche goes; it releases our emotions and helps us to articulate them. This is why music is so important to adolescents, who are struggling with questions of identity and self-expression.
iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don’t feel cool when I go there. I’m tired of seeing John Mayer’s face pop up.
Superheroes fill a gap in the pop culture psyche, similar to the role of Greek mythology. There isn’t really anything else that does the job in modern terms. For me, Batman is the one that can most clearly be taken seriously.
During the 2012 Olympics, I decided to put on some cheesy pop because I knew Ellen White liked it. The first song was ‘Reach for the Stars’ by S Club 7, and before I knew it, everyone was singing it – suddenly it was our song.
I’m personally looking for artists that are along the lines of today’s pop stars. Whether it be a Rihanna or a Justin Bieber or a Kanye West or a Beyonce or a Lady Gaga, I’m looking for talent that’s like that, that’s what I love.
Originally, I wanted a pop career and formed a girl-band ‘Genie Queen’ managed by Andy McClusky from ‘Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’, but it didn’t work out. My brother John is the talented singer and song-writer with ‘The Razz,’ while my other brother Sean is a footballer for Telford United.
I don’t watch TV dramas. I watch ESPN, HBO boxing, National Geographic Channel and I kind of like to get some DVDs, movies that I haven’t seen and I just pop them in.
I’m still looking for the rules of what is and isn’t pop music. I’m pop. I mean, of course I am. What isn’t pop? There should be a pop amnesty where everyone reclaims it.
I still want to make a pop record. I want to make a more sonically current pop record. I maybe want to make people move a little bit more.
I have a retro feel to my work, to my person, but I also have a futuristic view of what’s possible. We can have people in pop that have more diverse looks and attitudes.
I’d call my music rock but with pop hooks.
‘The X Factor’ seems to be more about building up personalities and people in tears. And it’s not a new idea. The pre-Beatles pop world was full of manufactured pop stars. The thing is that you can’t imagine any of the artists you look back at and admire ever going on ‘The X Factor.’
Pop culture is a reflection of social change, not a cause of social change.
Talent can pop up anywhere in the world, it’s not just one city block.
One of the things I think is important about ‘Watchmen’ is that it have resonance within cinematic pop culture as well as superhero culture.
Our pop scene is among the best in the world because there are 300 languages spoken on the streets of London, compared with 200 in New York. Our diversity is our strength.
I love ‘Guitar Hero,’ and I think it’s a part of pop culture.
I married somebody who likes the way I look. If I changed my hair every year, and I reinvented myself in time-honoured pop fashion, I think understandably the person I’m married to would grow slightly sick of me.
Truman Capote was a pop figure, but it wasn’t until he went on David Susskind’s show and had that extraordinary voice and manner that everyone could imitate, that he really took off as a figure.
There’s this way pop culture has been rammed down our throats that people think that if they were just in the right place at the right time, they’d be married to Heidi Klum.
I mean, come on, Beyonce’s the queen of pop music. She’s the queen. If you could run for queen… I would put her name in the suggestion box. She’s incredible.
If you respond to pop music as an older person, then it’s your game. But this business has a tremendously visual focus.
