A Quote by John Legend

I just want my music to measure up to. Part of it's just thinking about my place in history and how this music is going to be perceived, if it's listened to 30, 40 years from now.
I didn't have musical upbringing. I never listened to music growing up, thinking "I want to make my own music". I just listened to music for pleasure.
When I'm playing music I'm usually not thinking of surfing, just because I'm usually thinking about the chords and the lyrics, and sometimes that messes me up 'cause you'll start thinking, "Wait, how am I doing this?" But when I'm surfing, I'm usually thinking about music - whether it's an idea for a new song, or just singing a song in my head.
What I really appreciate about the music that I grew up to is that I feel like I can put it on now and still hear something new. It's still relevant. That's how I want my music to be perceived. It's what I strive for.
I'm just thinking about the vision for how I want my music to go and what I want it to say. I'm always creating in a way, even if it's just thinking about it.
Hillary [Clinton], I'd just ask you this. You've been doing this for 30 years. Why are you just thinking about these solutions right now? For 30 years, you've been doing it, and now you're just starting to think of solutions.
I think we have to change our thinking and the music industry has to shift and look at how people are acquiring their music now. They want it differently. They're getting it in a different way and you just have to adjust.
When we were doing music, that's how we did-we just did it for the music. We weren't thinking about money, we weren't thinking about fame. Music was our passion.
I was lucky enough to grow up in a house where we listened to all kinds of music. We listened to Haitian, hip hop, soul, classical jazz, gospel and Cuban music, to name a few. When you have access to that as a child, it just opens up your world.
You don't want a team going around the league just thinking they can beat you by 30, 40 points every time that you play them.
I was thinking a lot about music, about how music is mixed and how everything is happening at the same time; it just amounts to how the sound is lowered or raised. I was trying to get that with writing.
Music as background to me becomes like a mosquito, an insect. In the studio we have big speakers, and to me that's the way music should be listened to. When I listen to music, I want to just listen to music.
Forget about surviving 40 years in the music business. Just surviving 27 years of Nicole Richie has been a struggle-and-a-half, I want to tell you. I stand here as a survivor, I want you to know, for all the parents out there.
I'm not thinking about what needs to be on the radio. I'm not thinking about anything other than - I'm just going to let this music come out of me and not have any sort of preconceived notion of what I should do. I'm just going to do it.
I don't want to do a gimmick. It's a bummer that that's how it is. I would say, personally speaking, consuming music now is harder than it was before. It's like being stuck in a slot machine. There's just so much noise. It's just constant noise. It's harder to clear your head and give the time to music that a lot of it really deserves. It's really crazy how different your relationship to an album or music becomes, even if it's digital, if you spend the $7 to $10 on it. It forms this relationship where you're not just going to throw it away.
I write my music with the idea that it will appeal to all of those people, and I want them to go in with all the history that's within all of us - all the things that they've listened to in the backs of their minds, whether it's country music or minimal techno, or classical music or whatever. I want them to bring that excitement, that love, or that hate, or whatever it might be, to my music. I feel that my music draws on so many different things.
Well, a few years ago I think I could have given you a more enthusiastic answer about that but in the last few years, for the first time in my life, I really haven't listened to much music. I used to work with music on and now I don't.
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