Top 90 Record Deal Quotes

Words matter. These are the best Record Deal Quotes from famous people such as Sam Hunt, Musiq Soulchild, Courtney Act, Cole Swindell, Busta Rhymes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.

There's a system in place in Nashville, and for a long

There’s a system in place in Nashville, and for a long time, I was trapped in this idea that the only way to do it was to come to town, get a record deal, and do it the way they say. And that system works. But it caters to a specific kind of artist, and I didn’t necessarily fit that mold.
Sam Hunt
Even before I got the record deal, I never really used singing to get girls. I always felt weird about that.
Musiq Soulchild
Yeah, back in 2003, I went to ‘Australian Idol’ the first day as a boy, and I got knocked out. So I went back the next day in drag and made it into the Top 12 and got a record deal and toured around Australia.
Courtney Act
Before I ever had my record deal, I just had a publishing deal over at Sony ATV. I had that title, ‘Flatliner,’ and just the idea of a girl stopping everybody’s heart – just kind of a fun idea.
Cole Swindell
I started growing my hair in December ’89. I was seventeen. I signed my record deal and said I ain’t combing my hair no more. I don’t have too.
Busta Rhymes
When you get a record deal, you got to be pretty headstrong, know your direction.
Martie Maguire
I never sought out a record deal. It caught me with my pants down. I was just a musician doing my thing, I didn’t even send my records out.
Jamie Cullum
I started DJing, breakdancing and MCing in the ’70s and I got my record deal in 1979 with ‘Christmas Rap.’
Kurtis Blow
When I was 19 I had a record deal.
DJ Premier
I’ve always known, before I had a record deal, that the thing is to go out and put on the show. I’ve been doing that from day one.
Flo Rida
I was forced to be an artist and a CEO from the beginning, so I was forced to be like a businessman because when I was trying to get a record deal, it was so hard to get a record deal on my own that it was either give up or create my own company.
Jay-Z
Red House Painters were doing cover songs before our first record deal. I remember live shows where we did an AC/DC song; I think we did ‘Send In The Clowns’ by Judy Collins. We did ‘The Star Spangled Banner,’ which came out on our third record.
Mark Kozelek
I’ve had offers to sign a record deal, but the people I’ve talked to have wanted to package me and have me meet with songwriters who’ve written stuff for Whitney Houston, that sort of thing. That’s not at all my style.
Lukas Haas
I never thought in my wildest dreams I’d ever be offered a record deal, and to get a Christmas No. 1 would be huge for any performer, let alone an ex-footballer.
Chris Kamara
As I grew older, I actually was prepared to go into fine arts school and do a degree. That was what I was actually settled upon when I was offered a record deal.
P. J. Harvey
You expect certain things. You build up in your mind how it’s supposed to go down. When you get a record deal, you think you’re supposed to get X, Y, and Z. It doesn’t happen like that. You’re like ‘Oh, this isn’t as exciting as I thought it was going to be.’
Lupe Fiasco
I walked out of the Chinese restaurant with a fat check, a record deal, and a box of shrimp egg foo yung!
Solomon Burke
When I signed a record deal, I was always told by execs I needed to be like everybody else, that I had to show my midriff, things that would take away from who I want to be as an artist.
Jessica Simpson
Well, I tried to get a record deal in 1966 or ’67, and everyone thought I was too eclectic.
Carly Simon
I DJ’d for years. I DJ’d in high school, and I think my parents thought it was a passing thing. And then when I was in my second year of college, I was like, ‘Yeah, you guys don’t need to send me money anymore. My DJ gigs are good enough. I’m selling music; I think I’m gonna have a record deal. I can pay my tuition.’
Kaskade
There’s the conventional wisdom, of which I have none, where you get a record deal, you get a publicist, you get a campaign, and you do the tour, but none of that adds up to things like nuance and subtlety and dynamic.
Chris Robinson
‘Back 2 Da Basics’ was my way of saying I’m done and out of the streets and I’m going to get a record deal and be a rapper for real.
Yo Gotti
Every single day I wrote a song, I was hoping somebody like Luke Bryan, Jason Aldean or whoever would record the song. It’s tough to do because there are so many great songwriters in Nashville, and I was lucky enough to get some songs recorded before I got my record deal.
Cole Swindell
I made a CD in my dorm room and put it on the Internet, and my friends blew it up. Within a few months, I was doing shows across the country without a record deal, without a single, without anything.
Mike Posner
What I did to celebrate was I went home to my 535-square-foot apartment by myself and ate supper by myself. That was how I celebrated getting a record deal.
Josh Turner
It was a lot easier to write songs before I had a record deal, because the record labels and the industry doesn’t mean to put pressure on you, but they do. They don’t realize that they are, but you end up having a pressure there that you feel. At times I feel myself wanting to say, ‘Just let me do what I do.’
Ashton Shepherd
I’m not desperate to sign, like, a record deal. I’m very hungry, but I’m just not desperate for it.
Little Simz
It was actually really hard to get a record deal after ‘American Idol.’
Gabby Barrett
At the end of the day, you sign a record deal and you understand where it could go if you had the right song.
Tinie Tempah
I’ve been able to experience so many things since I’ve had my record deal.
Cole Swindell
I started out as a duo with Mis-Teeq’s Sabrina Washington, and we worked for four or five years before signing a record deal. I had no money, and I was taking part-time jobs just to earn the train fare to get to rehearsals.
Alesha Dixon
To drive though the streets of Manhattan to sign a reco

To drive though the streets of Manhattan to sign a record deal was like a movie. It was crazy – pretty hard to put into words.
James Bay
Yeah, well I’ve had a record deal for a long time so I’m kinda used to the cameras and the people, I’m used to dealing with peoples’ opinions.
Joe Budden
I got a record deal with Sony, and I really just put acting aside. But it’s a love.
Sophie B. Hawkins
In one week, I went from being a girl who owed a guy thousands of dollars – my manager Anthony was paying for my outfits, paying for my food; I was sleeping in his parents’ basement – to taking meetings with every major label in America. The next morning, I had a record deal and wrote him a cheque to pay back all that money.
Halsey
I had very modest expectations when I first moved to New York. I didn’t even expect to get a record deal.
Norah Jones
I had to get out of my record deal that I signed with my previous band and get a full solo record deal going so, with all of the paperwork that, that entails it did take a while.
Sebastian Bach
‘Nothing’s Real’ is about my first-ever panic attack, which I had about four months after getting my record deal.
Shura
I grew up making music in my mum’s basement, and I used to tell her I was going down there to work, and she’d say, ‘That’s not work. Go get a real job!’ It took me signing a record deal to change her opinion!
Mike Posner
I don’t have a record deal, I’m not looking for one, I don’t have a manager, I’m not promoting anything.
Limahl
I’m proud that I’ve even had a career, but ‘proud’ isn’t the first word I’d use. I feel lucky that I moved to Manchester when I was 12 because I don’t think I could have done this in Ireland. And I feel lucky that the government took care of me from the age of 16 to when I signed my first record deal at 19.
Roisin Murphy
I have to work really hard to get the record deal – I have to spend years at it to get good. I have to practice to be good at guitar.
Taylor Swift
Because I’m not in a record deal, I don’t have to operate in an album format.
Frank Ocean
When I got my record deal at Atlantic, at the time, ‘indie’ wasn’t a style of music: it was a kind of label. And I think, eventually, the bands that ended up on those labels began to be branded as ‘indie bands,’ and then it became a genre.
Kristian Bush
We thought the hardest thing in the world was to get a record deal, then the hardest was to get a No. 1 record, and then the hardest thing is to stay at the top. It’s a lot of work.
David Bryan
It’s a sense of pride, a sense of you set out to get a record deal, and we got that. We set out to get a No. 1 record, and then we got that. Then you say, ‘Wow, that was impossible and now even more impossible is to stay No. 1 and stay current and put out new records that people care about,’ and we really stuck to that.
David Bryan
I went to New York in 1974, to either try to get a record deal, get into the New York Art Student League, or be a dancer. So that was my plan. Some plan. And I had no money.
John Mellencamp
I put a song on Soundcloud, and Annie Mac made it record of the week, and a month later, I signed my record deal.
Mabel
What’s interesting is often people think life changes when you have a record deal and you do all kinds of stuff. Obviously your life changes, but nothing changes your life like getting married and having kids.
Jamie Cullum
I think, back in the day, when I was first starting to make music, all I wanted to do was to get a record deal.
G-Eazy
I keep in touch with these people who knew me long before I got a record deal.
Trisha Yearwood
When I lost my first record deal, my wife and kids and I lost – I wouldn’t say friends, but – we lost a lot people around us. They just vanished! They were nowhere to be found. I couldn’t get a break, and I couldn’t get people to even respond to my emails about songs, no matter how good something was.
Walker Hayes
I went to Nashville when I was 10. Tried to get a record deal. Everybody was like, ‘You’re 10. It’s not gonna happen. Come back later.’
Tiffany Darwish
I started singing when I was 18 and landed my first record deal with RCA when I was 26 after a lot of grafting singing in pubs and clubs.
Bonnie Tyler