Top 90 Motown Quotes

Once you’re a Motown artist, that’s your stigmatism, and I was there from the very first day.

I love funk and soul and Motown.

I’ve discovered that Motown and Broadway have a lot in common – a family of wonderfully talented, passionate, hardworking young people, fiercely competitive but also full of love and appreciation for the work, for each other and for the people in the audience.

My dad was a soul fan and a singer himself, and he loved vocal harmony, stuff like the Beach Boys and Motown like the Four Tops, which was a big influence on me.

We call ‘Ain’t No Mountain’ the golden egg that landed us at Motown.

I’ve purposely made my music to be challenging and different. There’s some electronics, R&B, blues, Motown, country, jazz and lots of soul.

When I first got to Motown, Smokey was already a fixture there. To me, he is one of the greatest songwriters and poets, so anything they ask me to do for Smokey is going to get a yes.

I love to sing old Motown songs to myself, or some Patti Smith Edith Piaf or Billie Holiday. That gets me in the mood for singing.

I just love how everyone with that Motown sound seemed to come from a two-block radius from the actual original location. The original location was a house, and then when they outgrew it, they bought the house next door and the house next door and the house next door until they had seven houses on the same lot.

I was never really that interested in the punk movement. I was a blues guy: I liked Motown, James Brown.

I grew up listening to oldies, like Motown. That’s from my mom.

The same reason why we’re doing music is the same reason why Motown did: to make the world a better place and to make people happy. The main message is, just have a good time.

My father loved music. He loved Motown and R&B, and my mother loved Journey and Fleetwood Mac, so they were always listening to it and playing it.

One of a handful of films made in Detroit, ‘8 Mile’ doesn’t feature the Motown renaissance that Mayor Coleman A. Young dreamed of in the 1970s. Instead, it’s the beaten-down city: 8 Mile refers to the line of demarcation between Detroit and suburban, mostly white Oakland County.

There were a lot of different styles in the house – Motown, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, jazz – and my dad played flamenco guitar. Soon I realized that bass was what was really grooving me.

I was in about in the 8th grade when I started recording R&B, so much of what was on was the Motown sound, and The Beatles had pretty much come over and taken America by storm.

I was in about in the 8th grade when I started recording R&B, so much of what was on was the Motown sound, and The Beatles had pretty much come over and taken America by storm.

My listening changed when I heard music from Stax, Atlantic, Motown because by that age I thought anything that my parents listened to must be square. So I had to find my own rock n’ roll, as it were, and I found it in black soul music.

People still look at Michael Jackson as being a Motown artist.

My mum used to listen to Motown. Diana Ross was my first singing teacher, really. I’d just sing along all the time.

The ‘Motown’ detour for me was almost like it wasn’t work. It was more fun than work, and that’s all it takes for me to not be very responsible to other things I should have been paying attention to.

Motown will always be a heavy-duty part of my life because those are my roots.

I think that there is such power with the live performance of it – so much of what ‘Motown’ is about is the live performance aspect, really. The power of our production is really the music and the performances.

Growing up, I liked all the stuff that everyone else was listening to, like Motown, but the biggest group of all was The Beatles.

I love to sing old Motown songs to myself, or some Patti Smith Edith Piaf or Billie Holiday. That gets me in the mood for singing.

When we did a lot of that Motown stuff there were four of us on the front line. When we started the evening we’d start from one end of the band and just go along. The lead singer would change all the time. That’s the first time that I actually managed to put it into a record.

Charles and I are from Augusta, Ga. – so we come from James Brown territory, soul music and Motown. And Charles has always had a lot of Southern rock in there as well.

I don’t ever balk at being considered a Motown person, because Motown is the greatest musical event that ever happened in the history of music.

I think it’s all about the music you listen to along the way. For me, my parents always played Motown music and The Beatles, so I was drawn to the soul.

When I was starting my journey as a young guitar player, I was listening to The Beatles, the Stones, and all the British invasion bands, Top 40, Motown, and all the great music of the ’60s. Then the alien ship landed, and life changed again forever… Jimi Hendrix.

I thought wasn’t nobody supposed to get gold records except those people on Motown, like Smokey Robinson and Diana Ross.

One of my idols is my dad. All his work in Motown, and just the way he conducted himself as a human being was always interesting to me, and it seemed like the successful way, and it is a successful way, and I always wanted to do that. He’s funny, and all that stuff.

Growing up, I was listening to a ton of Motown music, Otis Redding, Aretha, and then there was the Beatles and Led Zeppelin and Janis Joplin. These were all people that I felt as though they truly felt every single lyric they said, and they weren’t afraid of imperfection.

Once you’re a Motown artist, you’re always a Motown artist.

I loved Motown. I loved the musicality and the sound.

As a kid, looking at Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye, New Edition, the Temptations, Motown, people who I felt were huge artists, they made me wanna do something.

I went from elementary school to proper training, operatic training, and I went on to the Motown University and learned a lot of things from some wonderful people.

I grew up when the whole Motown thing was huge. The charts in those days were dominated by groups more than solo artists at one point.

I grew up listening to a lot of classic jazz, and stuff like The Beatles, and old Motown stuff, and a lot of classical music. I just loved all of that.

Growing up in Hitchin was comfortable and easy enough. My parents had some great records – and some not-so-great ones – and that’s where I got introduced to Motown and the Stones and Springsteen.

The biggest thing Motown did was change our social fabric: the way we interacted with each other as human beings.

I know that’s blasphemous when you are from Detroit, but I was never a fan of Motown stuff. I don’t care for the production much.

Motown wasn’t just pioneering a sound but a cultural dynamic.

Growing up, I never listened to English music. I was more into Motown, as well as early rock n’ roll like Chuck Berry and Little Richard.

I think there’s a void for some authentic soul music with an edge. I think there’s some people who grew up with Motown and Stevie Wonder that still can appreciate Future, Drake, and all these different things, too, but there shouldn’t be a void for those people, as well.

I listened to everything. To the early Motown groups – the Four Tops and the Temptations – to Johnny Mathis, Gloria Lynne – my sisters loved her. Sarah Vaughan. Everything.

Well, I had an after hours club in Vancouver and when any of the Motown acts would call.

I have very eclectic tastes. I love soul and Motown; I listen to some rap – Stormzy, Tinie Tempah, Drake. I also love classical music, American country and the folk tradition. I often start the day with gospel on my way to work. The only thing I have never got into is punk.

I honed in on a great time, the Motown era, the ’60s and ’70s. That type of music has always been a staple in my life.

I listened to a lot of Marvin Gaye and Motown records.

Marvin Gaye is an inspiration to me. He was one of the first Motown musicians that my mom and dad introduced me to, and I always thought it would be a good idea if I was ever an artist, and now I am, to make a record called ‘Marvin Gaye.’

I grew up listening to Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf and lots of blues, R&B and Motown.

All the best British groups were inspired by black American music. With The Beatles, it was Motown and the blues. With me, it was a mixture of British styles and the more sophisticated Seventies soul of Barry White and Marvin Gaye.

Even before coming into the industry, I was a big fan of Motown, the Jackson 5, Gladys Knight, the Temptations, Diana Ross and The Supremes.

My favorite period is when we lived in the land of the three-minute song. The Motown thing – I thought they were genius in knowing that’s as much as a listener can take.

My mom taught me every dance move I’ve ever known to the Motown hits.

We call ‘Ain’t No Mountain’ the golden egg that landed us at Motown.

I just love how everyone with that Motown sound seemed to come from a two-block radius from the actual original location. The original location was a house, and then when they outgrew it, they bought the house next door and the house next door and the house next door until they had seven houses on the same lot.