Before, being a model, it was just a job, and I was making fun of it. But today, I take my career more seriously. The fact that a reader may buy an Armani item because she’d seen it on me in a magazine is very important to me. So much so that I intend to launch my own label.
At my second record label, they told me and other female artists that some of us were going on the chopping block. I was 19… and it was devastating.
I’m openly gay, and I’ve got a major label record deal in Nashville, and it happened when I was 42 years old. It’s not supposed to happen that way.
I remember telling the head of Warner Brothers that if they’d just make a video for ‘Ol’ Red’… and if it didn’t work, they could drop me from the label.
I think if you look back at some of the stuff that we broadly label as the crime ‘ouvre,’ there are certainly elements of the supernatural at work.
So long as TARP money is wrapped up in GM, the company will never shake its ‘Government Motors’ image. That label, as competitors and GM employees are keenly aware, is code for one thing: ‘GM is a failure.’
Roc was only supposed to be our distributor, but then they ended up recruiting me as the label’s artist. They said they really liked my album ‘Everything You Wanted.’
Somehow, it seems that the sadder a song is, the happier I feel. The release of emotions that many would label as ‘negative’ is actually a liberating process for me.
The label ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative,’ any – every time I hear that, I think of the great Gilbert and Sullivan song from ‘Iolanthe.’ It goes, ‘Every gal and every boy that’s born alive is either a little liberal or else a little conservative.’ What do those labels mean? It depends on whose ox is being gored.
I’ve been trying to do this music stuff and work it out for so long… I was like, ‘Let’s do it for ourselves.’ All these songs, we’ve travelled the world – no record label, nothing. We just did this for us, but the love is very appreciated.
When Alcatrazz played in Japan in early ’84, the record label offered me the opportunity to do a solo album while continuing to play in the band. I wanted the whole album to have vocals, but the record company didn’t want that. Initially, the album was released solely in Japan.
Putting out my album on my own label has been a great experience for me. It’s been very inspiring. It’s like a new start for me and having all this creative freedom is so liberating and exciting.
I don’t believe any artist who says, ‘I had to do that because DJs will tell me I can’t play that music. I will lose my job.’ Well, lose the job and create a new job. If your label won’t let you have the cover you want or sing the songs you want, then leave!
If had to label myself, I guess classical liberal would be best.
On everything I do I’m always taking someone’s money, whether it’s a movie studio or a record label. Somebody’s paying for it, and I’m always respectful of that. But I’m never going to compromise.
I can’t go back and label myself as an outcast because I was a pretty well-adjusted kid, but I can certainly relate to the feeling of being an outsider.
Temperamentally, I am suspicious of belonging to anything. When I ran for office, I debated seriously whether or not to run as an independent because I was not eager to be saddled with the Democratic Party, because any party label is committing.
You don’t even know are we going to have a career? Are we going to be able to sell records? Are we going to have a label?
The Broken Bow group is such a great family and seem like a group of tight-knit people. When I looked for a new label, I wanted to feel I could trust everybody. I wanted motivation to be at an all-time high.
I am lucky to say now that it is not frightening for me, living in L.A., to be gay. Even when I was in Texas, I wasn’t afraid. I was kind of out in high school. I just could never decide on what label. I am glad that I am public about it, and I think I should be.
Jesse James’s next tattoo should be a warning label: Danger. Loving this man could break you.
I’ve always wanted to push someone who’s not really known but has mad talent. I don’t know if I’m going to do a publishing company or a record label, but I’m interested in pushing artists in any sense.
You can’t allow yourself to get typecast as a recruiter, because that label sticks and carries. I fought it. I made myself learn the game and teach the game.
The last true punk band to get a major label contract was The Dickies.
Geddy Lee and I went to the same grade school. He moved away when we were still young, but I remember him like I do all my friends from back then. Then in 1982, Dave Thomas and I were approached to do a record as the McKenzie Brothers on Anthem Records, the same label that Rush was on.
I’ve been misconstrued because I speak in a certain way. I find it obnoxious how it defines you, somehow limits your ability to understand the human condition. You can’t be allowed near emotions; you play these curling-lipped, haughty characters. This awful label – ‘the posh Toby Stephens’ – I’m not posh!
Many artists would want a major label. But, if someone made you big, it doesn’t mean they’re no longer good enough when you get big. If you want to add, add. But don’t get rid of your original team.
Labels can be really helpful when we have the autonomy to label ourselves. But when other people label us without our permission, that’s when it becomes dangerous.
I would be a huge hypocrite if I didn’t tell you that at one time in my life I thought the way that you made music was you got on a major label and you got famous.
It’s important for women to have each other’s backs. I’d like my label to give women the resources they need to flourish.
Basically, the Internet is just the way now. It’s the end-all, be-all of self-promotion. It’s not like you got to burn CDs and pass them out or sell them. The Internet is a tool that reaches billions and billions of people. It’s like a no-brainer to tie it in with self-promotion, or even label promotion.
The will to label will always prevail over what’s being labeled, usually at the expense of either truth or understanding.
I certainly don’t like a label that suggests I believe that the military is the solution to most of the world’s problems.
I think it’s common to want to label things as all good or all bad and what I’m finding is that every situation, person, event, has good and bad in it.
I didn’t think it was fair to my music to label me as the daughter of somebody – I didn’t think it described me very well and I didn’t think it had anything to do with my music.
At first, I wanted to start my own label, but it was such a full-time job that it became too much.
Whether you’re replacing one appliance that’s seen better days, or many because you’re moving or renovating, you probably know to look for the Energy Star label. That’s good advice.
There’s definitely been a focus on the literary aspects of my music, and I always get a little cringey because I don’t feel like I’m particularly literary. There’s a sort of academic label that’s put on me that seems inaccurate.
I will never sign to a major record label again. If, by some mega fluke, a record of mine looked like it might break big, I’d try and do it via an indie or somehow license it. I’m not having my music owned by those corporate bastards again.
I’m a label that wants to sell. I believe in clothes.
The opportunity to record the song came when Phil Collins’ record label, Atlantic, was doing a tribute album to him and they asked all these different artists to do renditions of his songs.
You could be an 18-year-old girl in Tokyo wondering how you could ever break into fashion or beauty, so you follow your favourite designer or editor, see what their day comprises, where they go, who they meet, how they do it… If I were setting up my own label today, I would definitely do it through Instagram.
When you’re 17 and a record label says, ‘Hey, do pop,’ you listen.
If you want to put out a million CDs and sell them and get them played on the radio, and even videos, or whatever, if that still exists, that kind of muscle can only come from a label like Columbia.
I wouldn’t ever give myself the label bisexual, but bi-curious, yeah.
There has come into being a kind of a Shia belt from Tehran through Baghdad to Beirut. And this gives Iran the opportunity to reconstruct the ancient Persian Empire – this time under the Shia label.
Once you’re signed to a label you compromise.
I’ve toured the U.S. every single year and I’ve put a record out every single year whether it was on a major label or not; that doesn’t make any difference to me.
Putting out the things that I like best hasn’t been the easiest way to run a label, and it still isn’t because it requires finding an audience for each record.
If I could wear any label forever it would be Burberry. It covers a huge span of stuff. You can’t go wrong with a classic trench and a pair of jeans.
My purpose is to help people look at themselves and begin to shift their concepts. Remember, we are not our country, our race, or religion. We are eternal spirits. Seeing ourselves as spiritual beings without label is a way to transform the world and reach a sacred place for all of humanity.
As a label, you have to treat every group and every record as a unique entity. I think that that has been our success, rather than relying upon a fan base.
