A Quote by Mat McNerney

I loathe most crossover music. Yet I like to think when it comes to Code it's something different. — © Mat McNerney
I loathe most crossover music. Yet I like to think when it comes to Code it's something different.

Quote Author

Mat McNerney
Born: 1978
I think you have a crossover when you are known to a wider audience and a different market. I've been able to sell out stadiums all over the world by doing my music. I'm lucky to be in that list without having done an official crossover. Now, will you hear me doing a little bit of R&B? Sure.
There's a definite sense this morning on the part of the Kerry voters that perhaps this is code, 'moral values,' is code for something else. It's code for taking a different position about gays in America, an exclusionary position, a code about abortion, code about imposing Christianity over other faiths.
I think most good music has got some kind of crossover-potential. It feels nice to know that there are more people than those into dance-music that are listening to what I've made.
I'd like to see more crossover between white and black music. That's something I've been advocating for years.
Another one of my favourite sayings is, you can't handpick your audience. I feel like I'm making music for people who think like me about music, and that takes a lot of different forms. I could never generalise - but I think if I were to generalise, I'd think that you would say that most of my fans are music lovers who are looking for something outside of the mainstream: maybe a little bit hard to pin down, a little bit hard to categorise.
To me, a big crossover was what happened to me years ago, like bringing my music in Spanish to Europe, or Asia. To me, that's a crossover because Spanish is not a language that everybody talks.
In a way, to have whatever people talk about as "crossover success," I think it means you start making bad music. I mean, when I'm flipping through the channels and see the VMAs or something, I don't really see any music there.
My influences are jazz, blues, European classical music; they are rock music and pop music. So many kinds of music. World music from different countries like India and China. I think that would be a shame not to take advantage and do something... not unique, because I don't have this pretension.
I give myself different roles. I think in different ways on different days. Sometimes I think of it as cooking - different flavors and different ingredients. Sometimes I think of it like orchestrating a piece of music with all the different instruments.
What I write, if you have to label it, is crossover, and I think that much of the stuff that is called children's or YA is in fact crossover and is equally valid for anyone who likes to read fantasy.
It was a rather extraordinary conversation if you think about it -- both of us speaking in code. But not military code, not Intelligence or Resistance code -- just feminine code.
I find that the quest to be perfect and make perfect music is like a black whole. I realize that you can come with the intention to capture a vibe and use a formula, but you have to accept that most of the time its not going to be what you envisioned and you might manifest something better. I think that's been the hardest thing to wrap my head around that most ideas we go for ends up sounding different. I think art in general should be about enjoying the process and the experience. All that matters is if you feel the music and it captures the element your going for.
As far as doing TV, I do think there's a big audience out there that could enjoy classical music, but they don't know how to find it, and sometimes by doing different things... crossover things probably make up about 5% of what I do.
I think music is the greatest art form that exists, and I think people listen to music for different reasons, and it serves different purposes. Some of it is background music, and some of it is things that might affect a person's day, if not their life, or change an attitude. The best songs are the ones that make you feel something.
I don't know if it's possible to affect my ego any more. There's no room left. For me, I think I make music like the way I think it should be made, like what rock should sound like. It has nothing to do with the current marketplace. And so from that state of mind, it's gonna sound different from anything else out there. And when something sounds different, I think that can be inspiring to other musicians.
I don't think I'll ever want to do pop music. I think I'll only ever want to do classical crossover because it's something that I love, and pop just doesn't work for me.
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