A Quote by James Blake

My mum especially listens to music in a way that is incredibly feelings-based. There's virtually no snobbery about what sounds are in it, she just wants to hear a song and that is quite refreshing.
I have to give credit to my mum for my music taste. She's white and Welsh but she listens to dancehall, reggae, Reggaeton.'
Music is very transporting. I'll hear a song for the first time and I rarely listen to the lyrics. I picture that song playing as a soundtrack to a movie, or even just in the background of someone's life. This all sounds weird, but I have an active imagination, and music opens the floodgates of that area of my brain.
My mum was my inspiration. As cliche as that sounds, she was the reason that we started. She chose cycling to lose weight. I was only eight at the time, so I just followed what my mum did.
When I was eight, my mum found me humming to myself and scribbling on a scrap of paper. When she asked me what I was doing, I got shy. I was writing a Christmas song, and I had never shared my music with anyone before. Reluctantly, I sang it for her... and she loved it. Of course she did - she's my mum.
Tinashe doing 'I Wanna Get Better' - it's a really personal song, and it was hard for me to imagine anyone else doing it, but stylistically her and I are so incredibly different that I was fascinated to hear what she'd do with it, and I completely loved it. It just felt like the different expression of a song that, to me, was so stamped in one way.
There are choirs singing in your head. If you listen, you will hear the music. It is the song of angels. Pay no attention to the sounds of the world. They are just noises, and even when added up all together they have no value, make no sense. Strain to hear the song of angels. Listen to the melody within your soul.
What's really cool about 'This is Me' is that our friends loved the song. Older punk rock fans don't know 'The Greatest Showman,' haven't seen the movie. And they hear that song and they're like, 'This just sounds like an awesome New Found Glory song. This is a really good song.'
It's difficult for me to describe my own music; every song is an experience that I set to music. There's no lyrics, no singer, just instruments, but I'm sure you can feel what the song is talking about just by listen to it. I can't describe a feeling, my songs are feelings.
If you meet a girl who says: 'Darling, what do you mean? Of course I wear suspenders. I've worn them all my life. I think tights are for old people,' then know this: she's desperate to have kids, she wants you and her to live in the same house as her mum, she never wants to go out and she just wants to lie on your chest for the next 15 years.
People say we're similar with Lady Gaga, that we both mix all these things in the pot and spit them out differently, but she spits it out exactly the same! None of her music's reflective of how weird she wants to be or thinks she is. She models herself on Grace Jones and Madonna, but the music sounds like 20-year-old Ibiza music, you know? She's not progressive, but she's a good mimic.
Music exists when rhythmic, melodic or harmonic order is deliberately created, and consciously listened to, and it is only language-using, self-conscious creatures ... who are capable of organizing sounds in this way, either when uttering them or when perceiving them. We can hear music in the song of the nightingale, but it is music that no nightingale has heard.
I'll play about with different sounds in the studio with no concept of music at all. I'll just build up a song in layers and when it sounds all right and gives me a vibe, that's enough, and I'll add vocals and move on.
Now I will do nothing but listen to accrue what I hear into this song. To let sounds contribute toward it. I hear the sound I love. The sound of the human voice. I hear all sounds running together.
We just met for the first time and David Byrne was like, "Hey, you want to sing on this song?" and I was like, "Yes, I do want to sing on that song." He's the most legendary dude but I wasn't thinking about how he was a legend when rehearsing. I was just thinking, "Wow, this guy really knows what he wants in his music." And that ended up being the vibe, like "Oh, you wanna try that?" "Yeah, that sounds great!"
There's definitely a couple of people I'll play stuff to when it's nearly finished just to see what they think; Mark, our producer, his wife is Australian and just listens to the radio - she's awesome - and, I guess, is quite a casual music listener.
I think my mum was really very ahead of her time. She wore very little makeup. She really explored the way that she wore clothes in a very honest way. She wore a lot of vintage stuff and mixed it with bespoke men's tailoring and things like that. That was a huge influence on me, seeing a woman in the spotlight carry herself in that kind of way. But mostly, for me, it was just that she was an incredibly honest and sort of natural person.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!