A Quote by Utada Hikaru

No one told me I had to make something that would sell, but I personally want everyone to like my music. — © Utada Hikaru
No one told me I had to make something that would sell, but I personally want everyone to like my music.
Most companies that are successful listen to people and see what they want and they make that. So when I used to make songs, I'd make mixtapes. The public would tell me what they like and then I would make songs based on what they like. That's how I knew 'Ridin' Dirty' was going to be big - they told me they liked this kind of music.
A lot of people make music to sell music. I don't just sell music. I am essentially, I guess the word I want to use is, it's like an energetic transaction.
Coaches would have me in the gym do 1,000 kicks for a practice. I would do them until everyone was gone, until I had done all my kicks. People asked me why I would do it - that's stupid. But my coach told me to do something like that, and I knew it would benefit me, and I would do it.
I want to make music that I like; not something that I have to make because I think it's going to sell.
As an emerging photojournalist in the early 70s, my focus was on trying to create stories for magazines to the exclusion of almost everything else. I wish someone had told me then that the most personally important pictures you’ll ever make are those about you and your life. I’m glad I had the chance to work for some great magazines, but I really miss those little everyday images, the ones that take place in and around your own life, which will never make the news. Don’t sell yourself short: photograph your own life, not just everyone else’s.
Music, and art for that matter, to me is not about true meaning to anyone else but yourself. If I told you the meaning of it all from my point of view it would erase the intimacy of art. I feel like art is up for interpretation, so if I told you my meaning, how could you truly relate it to anything that “you” personally are going through?? That is the beauty of art and music in particular
I'm not a big fan of the WWE coming over into our sport and everyone making a show of themselves. It's not that, it doesn't bother me, its good for some guys, but that's just me, its not my personality, I told myself a long time ago I'm not gonna sell myself out, I'm not gonna sell my soul to be something I'm not.
My ideals told me that men and women could both go out to work and be truly equal. My children told me something more complicated, something I really didn't want to hear. Their need for me was like the need for water or light: it had a devastating simplicity to it.
At a young age, I really wanted to make music and make my own sort of thing. I'm sure if it wasn't music, it would have been writing, or it would have been maybe painting. I just always had the drive to try and make something with my hands and to just pull something out of myself and shape it and see it in front of me, if that makes any sense.
I don't have to, like, try to come out with pop music because I feel that that's gonna make me sell a lot more. I mean, I make the music I love to make and that's it.
There were a lot of times in the Cleveland and Chicago organizations when I did something, they wanted to make sure the camera was there. I really didn't want that. This isn't something my parents told me to do. Or something my family told me to do. Or do things for publicity. I do this on my own. I do this from my heart.
I know in my soul when something feels like a sell out and I think for me, I knew that if I did the Jane's Addiction reunion thing, that I would feel like a sell out. That's how it would feel to me.
I would make my job a work of art. I would like whatever it is that I'm doing - everyone's experience of me, everyone's interaction with me, everyone's discussion, conversation, relationship with me - [to be] an event within which they get to see who they are. I would make of my life a work of art.
It'd be negligent to say that I don't want to be at the top of the charts. Of course I do, it's proof that your song is being heard. But I think it's more about the work for me and being proud of what I'm doing in music than what people think about my music. I want to like my music before you like it. I don't want to sell anything that I don't really like. I don't want to sell myself short just to get to the top of the charts. It doesn't feel that great. Feeling proud of your work feels greater than being at the top of the charts.
I had been to São Paulo the year before and became pretty well acquainted with the music of composer Antonio Carlos Jobim, I had already started playing that music, and the audience response had been pretty good because those songs are so melodic. I knew it would be something that would be appealing; I wasn't thinking that it would make the top of the pop charts or anything like that.
Around 2010, I kind of looked up and said, I'm 40 years old. You know, I chose music. I don't have a husband. I don't have any kids. Like, I chose music. So, I had to make a decision. Like, do I want to do something else, or do I want to go from journeyman to master? And I realized, I want to be a really good musician.
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