Music Industry Quotes – Insightful Reflections on Music Business

"What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do."

Bob Dylan

"You have to go through difficult experiences — not around them."

Liza Minnelli

"When you’re happy, you enjoy the music, but when you’re sad, you understand the lyrics."

Frank Ocean

"America was conceived in violence. Americans are attracted to violence. They attach themselves to processed violence, out of cans. They’re TV – hypnotized. TV is the invisible protective shield against bare reality. Twentieth-century culture’s disease is the inability to feel their reality. People cluster to TV, soap operas, movie, theatre, pop idols, and they have wild emotion over symbols. But in reality of their own lives, they’re emotionally dead."

Jim Morrison

"When you're watching television, you're watching the news, you're being pumped full of fear. there's floods. There's AIDS. There's murder. Cut to commercial. Buy the Acura. Buy Colgate. If you have bad breath, they're not going to talk to you. If you have pimples, that girl isn't going to fuck you. It's just a campaign of fear and consumption. That's what I think it's based on. This whole idea of 'keep everyone afraid and they'll consume"

Marilyn Manson

"Music is the most powerful form of magic."

Marilyn Manson

"Hopefully, I’ll be remembered as the person who brought an end to Christianity."

Marilyn Manson

"And I command you to kneel, Before the God of thunder and rock and roll, the spell you're under will slowly rob you of your virgin soul"

Kiss

"Christianity will go," he said. "It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now."

John Lennon

"But it’s no good getting hung up about them because the main thing is to get the kids. You know, this is the Catholic trick — they nail you when you’re young and brainwash you, and then they’ve got you for the rest of your life. In actual fact, do this sort of thing — but brainwash people with the truth"

George Harrison

"He felt that rock & roll was “the devil’s music”
“Rock & roll has been really bringing me down lately. It’s in great danger of becoming an immobile, sterile fascist that constantly spews its propaganda on every arm of the media. It rules and dictates a level of thought and clarity of intelligence that you’ll never raise above.

You don’t have a fucking chance to hear Beethoven on any radio station anymore. You’ve got to listen to the O’Jays. I mean, disco music is great. I used disco to get my first Number One single [“Fame”] but it’s an escapist’s way out. It’s musical soma. Rock & roll too — it will occupy and destroy you that way. It lets in lower elements and shadows that I don’t think are necessary. Rock has always been the devil’s music. You can’t convince me that it isn’t.”"

David Bowie

"Never before has there been an art form that was so exclusively aimed at children. The music business is unique in that it is almost exclusively aimed at children."

Dr. Alan Bloom

"I believe rock 'n roll is dangerous, it could very well bring about a very evil feeling in the west...it's got to go the other way now, and that's where I see it heading, bringing about the dark era... I feel that we are only heralding something even darker than ourselves. Rock 'n' roll lets in lower elements and shadows that I don't think are necessary. Rock has always been the Devil's music, you can't convince me that it isn't."

David Bowie

""Is Ringo Starr the best drummer in the world?" "He's not even the best drummer in the Beatles""

John Lennon

"There is probably no other human cultural activity which is so all-pervasive and reaches into, and shapes—and often controls—so much of human behavior."

Alan P. Merriam

"A driving drum rhythm in excess of three to four beats per second will put the brain into a state of stress, regardless if the listener likes or dislikes the music. And when the brain is in this stressful state, it will release opioids1 a group of natural hormones that function like morphine to help return itself to normal equilibrium and sense of well-being. These natural opioids, if experienced often enough, can be addicting, creating in the listener the continual desire for that 'high' somewhat like the high runners experience."

Dr. Daniel und Bernadette Skubilc

"Music is a two-edged sword. It's really a powerful drug. Music can poison you, lift your spirits or make you sick without knowing why. Whereas mellow tones can relax you, in contrast, loud, grinding music can cause blood pressure to rise, leading to headaches and an anxious feeling."

Dr. Adam Knieste

"Music directly affects the passions or states of the soul—gentleness, anger, courage, temperance, and their opposites ... When one listens to music that imitates a certain passion, he becomes imbued with the same passion. If over a long time he habitually listens to the kind of music that arouses ignoble passions, his whole character will be shaped to that ignoble form. In short, if one listens to the wrong kind of music—he will become the wrong kind of person."

Donald Jay Grout