People always want to talk about who I was, but I’ve always been singing, always been experimenting with pop music.
If I hung one of my paintings next to someone else’s, I knew mine would kind of pop off the wall.
Like any creative human being, I would like a bit more control so that it would be a little easier for me when the director says, ‘One tear, right now,’ that one tear would pop out.
I hang out with models, the biggest pop stars and, you know, really and honestly, I hate saying this, but none of them are achieving those body shapes by being healthy.
The fact that New York continues in the face of all of the chaos, of the crime, of the madness, you just think that it would just pop and vanish, just explode.
My goal was always to be part of pop culture and relevant to young people, to interact with the people they hold in high esteem.
I try to write three jokes every day. I don’t sit down and write them, it’s just things that pop into my head. Then I’ll go watch it fail onstage that night.
It’s so funny when you’re actually directing because things start popping that you don’t expect to pop, and something that you think is going to pop, maybe doesn’t quite have the impetus that you thought it might.
I would say our sound is soul pop.
I’m not good at happy, lightweight kind of music. I’m not really good at pop music. ‘Cars’ is probably the only true pop song I ever wrote. I wish I could write more, but I’m not very good at it.
Teen fandom is so potent. Any choice they make in pop culture forces the rest of the world to take notice.
But I’d play on everything from pop records to a lot of the glam stuff to rock stuff to classical stuff. I used to get called to do all those things, it was great.
I don’t own an ABBA album, and I never had the urge to go and buy one. If you’re just talking about well crafted pop songs, they were fantastic.
I listen to all those kinds of music, from classic soul to hip-hop to Brazilian music to, you know, jazz to indie to alternative. So whatever. I listen to all if it. Classic rock and classic pop, all of that.
The period right before punk rock where people like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop were really strong.
For my group of friends is Lady Gaga eye-opening? No. She’s a less dangerous version of what was so cool about pop culture in the ’80s. Back then it was so gay and so punk in so many ways.
Anyone that thinks ‘pop’ is a dirty word is living in the ’90s.
Being a pop fan is a lot like Catholic devotion – lots of ritual, lots of ceremony… We touch the icon to enter the sacred space, genuflecting to reliquaries and ostentatoria that make something splendid of our most secret desires and agonies.
Music was my first love, and at Marlborough we put bands together and sang the pop songs of the day. Although I couldn’t read or write music – I still can’t – I taught myself to play the guitar and piano by listening to songs and working out the chords.
I listen to a mixture of old jazz, contemporary, pop, some world beat stuff and various odds and ends.
I think I’ve committed the one really bad English crime, which is I’ve risen above my station. I was supposed to be a pop star, and suddenly I’m claiming that I’m an artist of some kind.
I explored rock culture and what the guitar can do though people like Jimmy Page and John McLaughlin, and the music moves away from pop.
When you are a hero you are always running to save someone, sweating, worried and guilty. When you are a villain you are just lurking in the shadows waiting for the hero to pass by. Then you pop them in the head and go home… piece of cake.
Then I went through a whole bunch of crap with my lousy movies and pop records. I had people behind me kind of steering me in that direction, but it wasn’t really my bag.
If you write songs and if you write music that’s very sincere and very honest, it’s pop music, but it is pop music with a lot of honesty and a lot of heart.
I have always wanted my children’s dads to be involved in their lives. Not just the day-to-day aspect, but the emotional shifts that they go through, when little things pop up – they need to be included, absolutely, and for the children to feel that they are.
You go to Main Street, and Wal-Mart is coming to town and kicking out all the mom and pop stores. All the people that were in the mom and pop stores are now working for Wal-Mart.
You can get really left of centre influences in mainstream pop. Michael Jackson and Prince are some of the most progressive artists ever if you actually dissect their songs there’s some crazy stuff going on.
I hate being called a pop star. I hate that.
Every actor I know wants to be a pop star.
Pop music is aspirin and the blues are vitamins.
I wasn’t really terribly familiar with the Beatles when I met George. They were just emerging. They certainly weren’t as big as they became later on. I just knew them as a pop group, and that’s all. I was keener on George as a man and a person, as opposed to someone in a band.
The best pop music is the songs that a group of people can dance to, but you can also listen to in your bed and cry. That’s something obviously that The Beatles started and… so having that darkness there opens another door.
I’m like a painter who has had his different periods: jazz, soul, pop, psychedelia, varietes.
I love music, that it changes so much, but I also want to keep a bit of the country roots to make it country. I don’t want to go too far away from it, or I would do pop music.
I must say, I don’t feel very qualified to be a pop star. I feel very awkward at times in the role.
The concept of Shwopping is so clever, I think. The idea is that every time someone goes shopping, they can take an unwanted item of clothing and pop it in the recycling bin in their M&S store for Oxfam.
Actually, if I could deliberately sit down and write a pop hit, all my songs would be pop hits! Let’s put it this way. I play what I like to hear. And sometimes I like to hear something poppy, and sometimes I don’t.
From a very early age, I was in tune with pop radio, and most of this listening was done driving. We had an old ’67 or ’65 Buick LeSabre, and whenever we would drive around, I would actually stick my head right against the speakers in the back and sing along to the music.
Music is for people. The word ‘pop’ is simply short for popular. It means that people like it. I’m just a normal jerk who happens to make music. As long as my brain and fingers work, I’m cool.
Your email inbox is a bit like a Las Vegas roulette machine. You know, you just check it and check it, and every once in a while there’s some juicy little tidbit of reward, like the three quarters that pop down on a one-armed bandit. And that keeps you coming back for more.
When I was very young I wanted to be a professional horseback rider. Then I wanted to be a pop singer. Then I wanted to be a psychiatrist. Then I wanted to be a movie director.
Nothing wrong with pop!
People who love R&B will love my music, people who love rock will love my music. It’s soulful, it’s pop. It’s a sound that relates to everyone.
Certain people want to see me solely as a pop act, but there are many different sides to Christina Aguilera besides the pop girl.
I have the most eclectic audience – I’ve got gay, I’ve got straight, black, white, rich, poor, young, old, in 45 countries. And they don’t all come because I’m the Sinatra kid, though that’s a big part of it. My biggest successes have come from pop songs that I write myself.
Pop culture’s gotten much more disposable.
I really dig The Byrds. I think they are the most underrated – in their original form – pop group.
On rare occasions, Dad used to reminisce about when he met Eisenhower and how Churchill would pop in, in the late hours of the evening or night, carrying a cigar, when he’d obviously had a good dinner.
Pop culture, it’s crazy. There’s all this violence in video games. In ‘Call of Duty,’ people are literally just blowing other people up. Hey, let’s protect your country from your couch while eating your sandwich.
Marilyn Manson is a mockery of American pop culture.
Our music is weird. It’s not pop. I don’t know why so many people buy our records.
I don’t think HBO would want to do anything in conjunction with Sub Pop but I never asked either.
Being in a rock n’ roll and pop world, it’s very easy to act like a kid.
Early in my life, without any supporting evidence, I fretted over what I believed was my fate: accidentally becoming an international pop star. The pages of my diary were filled with hypothetical ethical dilemmas.
I mean, gosh, my first tours I ever did were with the Ramones and Iggy Pop and Love & Rockets.
When I was a kid, my pop used to take me to the double feature. He would take me – I had two brothers – and we used to go in the early ’80s and check out these grindhouse movies – a double feature, sometimes a triple feature.
I’m always writing something. I’ve got so much stuff, I don’t know what to do with it. Some of it will be Strokes, some of it will be I don’t know what – stuff for pop singers. TV themes. I’ve got a jar stuffed with songs, all these ideas that are just me humming into a recording device.
In the second grade, I would just get bored and a joke would pop into my head and I would have to say it. It was almost like I had some brilliant novel in my head that I had to get down, and I would interrupt class all the time and get in trouble.
