A Quote by John Legend
I don't really marinate in anybody's album because I don't really want to sound like anybody else when I put my album out. So I'd rather not even be tempted to listen to a bunch of other stuff with any degree of emersion in it, cause I just don't want to sound like anything else, so I kinda focus on my own music.
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I don't think of my music in terms of a career. I just want to get it out there and do it. I'm not manipulating my sound to be like anybody or trying to write to sound like anybody else.
I got my own sound in Atlanta because I don't listen to anybody's music. When you listen to people's music, you start to say stuff they say as an artist because that's what you've been listening to. Me, I don't listen to anybody. I support, but I don't listen, because I don't want to run with someone style. I do my own thing.
Well, things hold up even if they sound dated. It can be very difficult to listen to 80s pop songs with really, really gigantic smashed drum sounds. You just want to turn that gated reverb down on the snare. It sounds wrong now. It sounds amateurish. And ugly. But at the time it sounded state-of-the-art. So yeah, I think it's important not to sound state-of-the-art in a way that anybody else is going to sound. Or you'll quickly sound like yesterday's state-of-the-art.
Fans don't know what they want. Fans are like, 'Oh, I want the stuff that you did in the last album because I really liked it, and if you don't do that, I'm not going to be your fan no more.' Or they'll be like, 'I didn't like that project. He doesn't sound like him on it,' or 'You're wack. You're mainstream now.'
I like to change and switch it up. I don't want to sound like anybody else or sound the same. I always have to reinvent myself.
Trying to make your own sound is hard. When I was producing for other artists, I could just produce and write songs as a normal songwriter, and almost make them generic. The artists themselves, whoever is singing that song, can put their own twist on it. When it came to my own material, I had to really dig deep, because I was just writing generic stuff. It sounded like everybody else, like Justin Timberlake, like Usher. I never wanted to sound like someone, that's when you know it's not going to work.
I'm not sure I'm going to be that type of artist but I do love cultural icons. Like Solange has been really great at that. Releasing her album end of last year and being really strong in their sound, bands like Little Dragon, artists like James Blake. You know their music when you hear them. They have a really particular sound and it's really cultural and people copy that sound. You hear it in other songs and you're like 'That's a James Blake tune'.
I never tried to sing like anybody else, fortunately I didn't sound like anybody else. It just happened.
Right now, when it comes to making an album, we really want to give our fans just Linkin Park. We don't want to water it down with anything else or confuse it with anything else. Meteora is just us and that's where our focus has been. So hopefully the fans can enjoy that.
I just don't really listen to music. I'm probably missing out, but I don't want to know what everybody else is doing. Nobody is strong enough to not be influenced. And I don't mean influenced by copying - I'd be influenced because I wouldn't want to do what someone else is doing. I want to be able to do whatever I feel like doing and not worry about anything.
I made that a point when I was creating my sound from the beginning, I didn't want to sound like anybody. Once I kind of found my own sound, I mastered it.
Everybody else goes out and plays a show as if it's their album, which is boring. I'd rather sit at home and listen to the album, because I hate to be in a smoke-filled, loud room - that's not enjoyable for me at all...I always look up to guys who can sit and do dinner music...they're singing in tune and playing somebody else's music, and I don't think I could do that...it's the shittiest job in the world.
People want to be the first with the record, they want to be the first to know which songs are on the record, all that kind of stuff. So I like to just stall them a bit. Personally, I love the idea of an album that's completely new, that no one's heard any free downloads, any pre-record releases, all that kind of stuff, and nothing's been played on the radio. Totally virgin, you know, a sealed record. That's my ideal, but it's very hard to get anybody else to agree to do that.
The people who go get an LL album want to hear LL. They don't want to hear LL trying to sound like DMX or whoever else is out there. That's not what they want to hear from me, because if they want to hear that they can go get the real thing.
What I like about being independent [in the music industry] is that anybody who does play the album on the radio and anybody who does choose to write in the media does so because they want to, because they like it or because they find something interesting there, not because they have to.
In the past, I've written my songs and then asked friends if they could record the vocals. I didn't want to use my own voice, because other people have much better voices. I was hearing the music with a voice that I don't have. It was a case of pulling whatever resources I had to get the sound I wanted, but that doesn't take anything away from the authorship. They are songs written by me that sound the way I want them to sound. Whether it's my voice or someone else's doesn't make a difference to the music.
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