A Quote by Tim McGraw

I'm coming up on 40 next year, and after making so many records and doing music for so long, I'm looking for a change and a different perspective. And every now and then, I think I have something I want to say.
Music changes every year, but some people are great at riding waves and then they're doing something different next year.
When you get guys coming up to you in clubs or restaurants or somewhere, and they say how much they've enjoyed your playing on records, then that pays off dividends every day; every time they say it, you think, 'I'm glad I did that.'
It was part of a financial situation. I could only afford records in thrift stores. Then you could find wonderful things, but now everything is a collectible. I like the recycling idea --using the stuff that people don't want anymore, and make new music out of it. There was an element of looking back and listening to your parents' records and doing something with that stuff. Sort of acknowledging the past while rejecting it at the same time.
It is a fact that everyone's got a limited run in music - but who's to say how long that run lasts? I used to think that there would be no way I'd still be in music when I was 40. I used to think anyone who was 40 was an old man, and they probably shouldn't be doing it anymore.
My perspective is so much different now, being 41. The main difference between now and then is just realizing that your time will come to an end - and that it might not be far away. You see your face change, see the gray hairs sprouting up. When you're 24, you worry about the day you'll turn 40.
There are records I'll listen to one time and zero in on what's happening, and then I'll listen again to something I didn't notice the first time. The art of making records is something like this: you want to provide a multiplicity of experience in a single object, which is to say you want layers so that people can revisit and have something revealed to them that wasn't apparent the first time. We often will listen to the same music over and over again, and that tells you something, too.
What's the level of compromise for making that kind of money? How far do I have to sell my soul? What's the price of that? And I don't know if I want to make those kind of compromises any more. I think I'm a different person. I think I've matured to a great extent. I think that I want different things now. That it's not about the celebrity status that you receive because you're doing the next hot movie. It's about doing good work.
Music, even if I ended up doing something different or do end up doing something different in the long run, it's just something that is life blood. If I'm not participating in some way, I feel like I'm wasting my time.
It's really about taking something inherently negative, and starting with the word loser, starting with something that's negative, and changing it into something that's positive, redefining it, but doing it in a certain way, how - like I would say when I look out at the world and you see it's dark and it's just overbearing and every day is depressed, depressed, depressed. What it took was to change my perspective a little bit. Not to change the world, to change my perspective.
There's a lot for us to achieve and a lot more music to explore. I'm not saying we want to start doing experimental prog or something, where it turns into elevator music after a few records, but I don't think we've even scratched the surface.
I think people like listening to what I call trippy music but maybe next year it will be something else. I still have gangster tracks and real-life stories and situations in my music. I’ve been blessed because over 20 year, I never stopped doing what I was doing. It’s pretty much the same thing and I’ve never really changed anything up.
I think we make too many records. One record a year is crazy to me. But some people have to sell tickets. The label has to meet their quarterly number: 'We need a record a year.' All of a sudden, the tail's wagging the dog. It's not the music; it's everything else making the music. That's just backwards. It's wrong.
Now, you see, if you understand what I'm saying, with your intelligence, and then take the next step and say "But I understood it now, but I didn't feel it." Then, next I raise the question: Why do you want to feel it? You say: "I want something more", because that's again that spiritual greed. And you could only say that because you didn't understand it.
I can say the one good thing is for every year where I grow up, I am kinder to myself, and I would say to the younger version of me, 'I love my body, and I have learnt to stop looking in the mirror at the things I want to change.'
One thing I'm hearing a lot is from teachers who have felt that there's something wrong with the extreme group learning, but felt like they couldn't say that out loud. And apparently the discussion is now opening up. I think change is going to be a long time coming.
They [ Factory Records] are always looking for the next group, the next big thing, to bring the record sales in and for them to promote and everything, but Factory just sign who they want to, put records by who they want to out, package it how they want to, how they like doing it. It's just run like that.
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