Pop Quotations

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.

Those scenes on the beach on 'Lost' were so much fun. When it was a whole group scene, you'd just pop in with a line here and a line there, and there was a little activity, and you essentially spend the day with your friends on the beach. What an amazing working environment.

Lauryn Hill's always been a hero of mine. And Bruno Mars, Janelle Monae and Adele, those are the current artists I would reference in terms of who's been able to do really amazing pop records with really cool, organic throwback elements of soul in there as well.

During workouts, I listen to Pandora, and I like the '90s pop stations. 'The Backstreet Boys' is fun!

I do like pop music. It's that certain thing that it gives you: the adrenaline rush, that instant gratification.

The relationship between East and West needs to be and can be fixed via pop culture.

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'd get 3-4 cheap home runs every year. You know, little 'wood shots' down either line. They would be pop flies in any other park. But, goodness me, they didn't count the number of long outs!

Growing up, I thought I was going to be Madonna. I wanted to be a pop star. I wanted to dance and sing.

It's a tough life being a pop star. You know, at the end of the day when you've paid all the bills and put the kids through college and that, you know, there's only enough left for a small island off the South Pacific.

I don't know why I keep saying this, and I don't know why I keep using their names... And I'm not dogging them. I'm not slandering them. I'm not saying they are bad musicians. But how can Taylor Swift or Justin Timberlake win for R&B and funk? They are pop singers.

I was signed to a record label when I was younger. I was in a group, and I just wasn't - personally, I wasn't ready to get out there. I don't know. It was a pop group. Not like the Spice Girls, but when you don't have any control over anything, it's disheartening.

I remember Tim telling me that he had an idea for a musical and he said to me that he was hoping that ABBA would be writing the music, which I thought was a pretty wild idea because they were obviously known very much as pop writers.

I get a lot of fan mail addressed to Bilbo and sometimes Sir Bilbo - it's hardly ever addressed to Ian Holm, in fact. My business manager drafts the replies, and then I pop in to the office and sign them, 'Bilbo!'

My beauty tricks revolve around eyes. For the early morning shoots, I pop eye pads in the freezer the night before, and when I take them out in the morning they are already cold and active and are great under my eyes. I keep my eye pads right next to my red velvet Ben & Jerry's in the freezer.

There's a certain type of indie fan who would balk at the prospect of there being value in pop music, but I think that's foolish. They're not really listening.

Gospel was the root of everything in my house, so there's a touch of that in everything that I do. If soul counts as a genre, I would also say that's the common thread throughout everything I do. There's rock and soul influence, too. The pop element comes at the very end and making the song catchy so people will remember it.

I have a pretty expanded view of what art is. I include pop music and even some sports.

Owning equities is an essential part of anyone's portfolio. You just can't ignore it over time. It's going to add the real pop to anyone's overall performance.

Once the subject matter of rock n' roll changed from cars and pop love songs to songs about really true love and the blues and death and mortality, this light bulb went off in my head and I went, 'Oh, that's what they're doing. That's kind of - that's art.'

I loved everything about show business, meeting the stars, the whole ambience. I was living every young kid's dream. I was told a pop singer's life was three years, but I was still making money seven years later.

Too pop for punk, too 'old school' for the New Wave, Mumps were a '70s era New York rock band, out of time.

I've always had an interest in the fashion side of pop culture.

If you're in pop music, you've got to deal with the changing of the guard every few years. By the time the '70s arrived, I was well aware of the cyclical nature of the game. Pop music is a creature of the moment; it thrives on the mood of its time. Either you hook into that or you're not going to be part of it.

Sometimes you want something really serious that makes you feel emotional and makes you think, and sometimes you do just want a pop song. What I love about Taylor Swift is that she offers both.

In that sense, I became politicized because the people in the coal mining villages who were involved in the struggle knew why they were there. But they couldn't understand why some pop star from London would want to be there.

Folk music is music that everyday people can play, and it inspired a lot of people to make their own music. That trailed into making your own pop music, and that's why garage bands started springing up everywhere.

Pop just didn't have enough substance for me. All this nyah-nyah-nyah, you know, 'Paper Tiger' and 'Hold the Ladder, James' and 'Crimson and Clover.' That wasn't music!

The greatest moments are those when you see the result pop up in a graph or in your statistics analysis - that moment you realise you know something no one else does and you get the pleasure of thinking about how to tell them.

For a lot of pop performers, fame and celebrity is part of the job. But for singer-songwriters, no one really cares.

I have long believed that celebrity, the way we worship and package and sell our pop stars, is what filled the need for gods that was once filled by the pictures in stained glass. Hollywood is post-Christian Venice - in other words, a pantheon of saints without the hassle and heartache of religion.

I saw the first 'House Party' - not the other 10. I love pop culture references. If you saw 'Moneyball', watch it again, looking for all the Clash posters.

I'm a fan of the power nap. About twice a week, I'll stretch out on a little couch in my office for 20 minutes. I don't need a wake-up call; I pop right up, feeling refreshed.

The music we made then was so amateurish, compared to the rest of mainstream pop or rock and roll. But what differentiated us from what everybody else was doing in the business was the fact that you could tell that these people came from different reference areas.

I don't think geometric art is... I don't like to call it that. I don't think it's any more pure than pop art or anything else. It doesn't have anything to do with purity.

When I was growing up, Brandy was TV star, reality star, a pop star, a Cover girl, Grammy winner, had her own Brandy doll, and was the first African American to play Disney princess Cinderella. Most importantly, she is a survivor. Many only judge and remember a person's most recent failure.

My week is full-tilt boogie. I wake up every morning, and the singular thought in my head is that maybe today is the day that I'm going to find an artist who is so amazing, an artist who will change pop culture. I'm in hot pursuit, always.

I find my characters and stories in many varied places; sometimes they pop out of newspaper articles, obscure historical texts, lively dinner party conversations and some even crawl out of the dusty remote recesses of my imagination.

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.

What music I listen to day to day changes very, very much. I can go from bluegrass to heavy metal, to blues, to classical and big band and then go to pop and rap.

I don't feel like a pop star. I like being able to live my life the same as my mates. I don't get recognised much.

I feel that Jane's is really a vibe and a time. It wasn't like we were the Beatles. We didn't have crafty pop songs where it sort of didn't matter who played them because they're just really great songs.

It's different for every song. But for 'Say Something,' I think it was Chad who had an idea on guitar, and I had an idea on piano for different songs, and we just married them together. We bounce things off each other constantly and kind of massage all these ideas into a three and a half minute pop song.

I was the kid at six who was like, 'I want to be in a jazz club.' I was never the pop kid, ever. I mean that's not true, I had a couple years where I wanted to be Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, but aside from that, no.

I like to think of myself as the people's pop star a little bit. I respect Lady Gaga so much, and I love what she does, but she has this kind of mysterious, out-of-reach thing. I'm just not that - as much as I'd love to have that sort of mystique, I think I'm kind of an open book.

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.

I like pop music. I also like the sound of a dying refrigerator. I can listen to that for an hour and a half if I'm in the mood.

I'm not a folk or jazz singer, more a hard-edged pop singer - with some rock, and song hooks.

I was the best guy, you know, all through Little League and Pop Warner and that kind of stuff. But when I went to high school, I was undersized. I didn't grow. I was behind the whole puberty cycle. I didn't like high school.

Anyone who watches a lot of television, or listens to pop music, is familiar with a certain vision of America. If not exactly colorblind, this America is one in which different races easily interact, in which a white person might have an Asian boss, Hispanic stepson, or African-American frenemy.

As a kid, I dreamed of being a pop star, a glamorous woman and traveling the world. And I've done that all my life.

I think pop music is in such an exciting place right now, and I do kind of credit that to Lorde with 'Royals.' I think that song changed everything in the pop scene. All of the sudden, alternative pop music became pop music.

I am a Justin Bieber fan, but I am also so fascinated by how weird pop music can be and how manipulated it can be, so I enjoy thinking about that side of it too. I feel bad for him. I could never imagine growing up that way.

I try to listen to over a hundred different songs a day. I listen to every single thing. If you're just listening to pop music, you're just gonna make pop music. I listen to Adele, Yo Yo Ma, Gucci Mane.

My mom was a folk singer and Celtic harpist. My dad was in a barbershop quartet and my great grandma was an opera singer. As I grew up, I discovered pop music and Top 40 radio, but it was in the '90s, so music was very different then - it was really lyrical.

It sounds kind of farfetched, yet I can't tell you how many people have had this syndrome... the 'Old Hag Syndrome.' Apparently, there's this little old lady who comes into your room at night, sits on your chest and tries to suffocate you. You can Google her - she'll pop up. She's out there.

I like pop music. Earnestly. Most of the greatest technicians, mix engineers, and players are working in pop music.

These were all middle-class kids from literary backgrounds, joining this sort of train going by, this pop train, jumping on. Whereas the rest of the rock scene, you'll find that there's mostly working-class people.

I'd been listening to some old '70s disco, soul stuff, and I thought, 'Let's go into the studio and do something different. Let's do something that's super unashamedly pop and fun and danceable.' 'Trouble' is what we did. It's something that wrote itself.

I love England and I love English culture, particularly English pop culture.

I started with the book 'Boardwalk Empire' and then immersed myself in the history of Atlantic City, World War I, the temperance movement, Prohibition, pop culture. I even read the news and magazines of the period just to soak in it. That was before I even started thinking of the story.

Gone are the days of discovering a new musical artist on a listening station at Tower Records; the days of going to the Mom and Pop video store on a Friday night with the kids and simply browsing for a good movie is all but gone, too. Browsing culture afforded the opportunity for discovery. It was an act of fun regardless of a consumerist outcome.

The one thing I'm really the most confident in as an artist is my songwriting ability and ear for pop music. I'm really excited to show that off. It was a side that I wasn't able to show on 'American Idol.'

I worked with Ismail Merchant on 'The Mystic Masseur,' I did 'Sakina's Restaurant,' I've done plays, I've been on Broadway, I've done movies, I've done TV... but nothing has had the pop culture penetrative impact as 'The Daily Show' has. It's the nature of the beast.

Pop Art looks out into the world. It doesn't look like a painting of something, it looks like the thing itself.

I'm always looking to rock out. But it isn't really about rocking out versus being mellow, in terms of your personal satisfaction. In the end, you just want to be good. When you look at something that's really good, it might be Iggy Pop or it might be Leonard Cohen. Whatever it is, you want it to be really good.

The Toothbrush mustache was first introduced in Germany by Americans, who turned up with it at the end of the 19th century the way Americans would turn up with ducktails in the 1950s. It was a bit of modern efficiency, an answer to the ornate mustaches of Europe - pop effluvia that fell into the grip of a bad, bad man.

I just went to your typical public schools, and my dad would take us to the movies every week, or he'd buy scalped tickets to San Antonio Spurs games. I remember I was four or five years old and my parents, who were very young, took us to see The Police in Austin, and Iggy Pop opened.

The supporting thing can be harder to pop in and out of. The hardest thing is the people who have to come in and play, say, the bartender for a day - that's a lot harder than playing the lead role. You have to pop in and get it right. It's a lot of pressure to just pop in there and fit in and find your footing really fast.

We didn't gel with Poison and the Bon Jovi. Bon Jovi was the best of the pop metal bands, but we never fit in with the hair metal stuff. We were never as hip as the Chili Peppers. We were in the middle.

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 have a great body, I really do. But I want to be taken seriously as an artist, and wearing anything that shows it off will be a distraction from the music. That's how my signature uniform, my tuxedo, came about. It's classic and timeless. You'll see me in black, white, and a pop of color on my lips. That pop adds a little magic.

There will never be another 'American Idol,' which produced so many credible superstars over the years. It was a phenomenon in pop culture. It changed music.

I'm not saying that hip-hop needs gay rappers or anything, but they need to stop being so close-minded because that will just cause the genre to fail. Look at pop. Pop doesn't discriminate against people. Look at Lady Gaga, y'know what I mean?

I played Woodstock in '69, and it really changed my life. Without a doubt, it was the single event that really changed the way I felt about music. Up to that point, I hadn't really thought of myself as more serious musician, and I didn't really have that much interest in pop music.

I really like the pop culture materials of everyday life, but used in some way that elevates them to something you notice and care about.

The power of pop culture stories should not be underestimated, and there is an enormous potential for inspirational stories that can have a positive, transformative effect on our lives.

I'm a pop princess at heart. Pop is about distilling what you want to say and making it easy. And the way I write isn't about making things easy. It's a weird juxtaposition.

If you say, 'I listen to pop,' you picture this kind of perfect, colorful, polished song. I want to have that, but when you open it, you see this gritty dark - kind of like dancing your tears away. Disguise the sadness in a pop beat.

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.

The experiences of promoting my first album were really something; there is so much illusion in my environment (touring and pop music) that I wanted to clear away.

There's a famous artist, Ron English, in New York, that just, or Andy Warhol for that matter, that did pop art that terrorized society. And that's, for the last like 10, 15 years, that's all I wanted to do, is terrorize society and make them look into a mirror and see what the hell we have wrought.

I love pop music. I love drum and bass, Calvin Harris, all these electronic things, but it's nice to have something organic as well.

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.

A rock star is expected to act like a mess, sound like a mess and look like a mess. People don't expect you to show up on time and be a professional. But when you're a pop star, you have to do all that, look perfect and be a role model.

For a long time I wasn't happy, but that had nothing to do with Beyonce. That had to do with me trying to get my life in order and make better decisions for myself. I'm seeing all these wonderful things happen for her, and I am happy for her. But I want a path. I want things to pop off for me, too.

Of course, we wore silly outfits, the pictures were corny, and some people still focus on that. But ABBA wasn't a big intellectual thing. We were a pop group.

You look at what One Direction has done and just say, 'That is just lucky;' it is not. It is happening because they are talented boys, good looking lads; and yes, their songs might not be the typical songs that lots of radios want to play, but they are great songs, pop records, that are massive across the world selling in huge numbers.

My song 'Play It Again' is a perfect example of my music because the verses go so hard, and they're so urban; and then this pop hook comes out of nowhere and socks you in the face and makes you want to dance.

I was a pop freak. I love music. Of course, I knew soul because I grew up in it. Writing it and everything. I love soul. But I love a tune that has some meat in it. Something I could hang my hat on. Because music is universal. Therefore, I felt no boundaries.

Rock n' roll as a genre is different from pop and hip hop: it is about bands, and that for me suggests brotherhood, family, friendship and community.

Pop concerts create an audience for Pops concerts, not an audience for classical symphonic concerts.

I grew up listening to so much different pop and stuff other than just aggressive music.

It's one thing when other African-Americans try to threaten my race card, but when people outside of my ethnicity have the audacity to question how 'down' I am because of the bleak, stereotypical picture pop culture has painted for me as a black woman? Unacceptable.

I've always enjoyed feeling a connection to the avant-garde, such as Dada and surrealism and pop art. The only thing the artist can do is be honest with themselves and make the art they want to make. That's what I've always done.

Because I'm no longer a pop star 24 hours a day, I'm no longer bogged down by the stupid stuff that used to cripple me. I don't bruise easily any more.

When I was really little, I was on a Pop Warner squad. I did it for a year. My dad was a Pop Warner football coach. I did it because my best friend was also on this cheer squad, and of course I looked up to my sister who was a cheerleader, so I wanted to cheer.

Pop music has been exhausted. The innocence has been exhausted. I think we've lost the ability to be blown away by music.

Barriers have been broken: rappers are singing, and singers are rapping. You might catch a rapper on a rock song, a pop artist on a hip-hop song - there are so many different things that are going on today. That is the same way in which we live our lives; we're all over the place. I like to try different things.

I don't really have a favorite pop artist - I just listen to some pop songs here and there. Mostly, though, it's Beyonce and show tunes.