Top 167 Motown Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

I'd heard a lot of Motown and Stax when I was a kid, but the more well-known end of it. On Jam tours, we had a DJ called Ady Croasdell who ran a '60s club. He turned me on to underground stuff and what people call northern soul. It just blew my mind.

Rock and roll came in and changed my life and changed the whole music scene forever, and then I grew to love R&B and Motown and all black music, gospel music. But I never dismiss any form of music. I listen to everything.

Ali Woodson was one of the few Iconic Soul-Singers left from the Motown Era that could STILL sell out a crowd, light up a party, & make the women scream! Ali & I have loved, fought, flew & cruised these United States together. His raspy but golden tones will be missed but his music, acting & friendship will last in my heart 4-ever.

I think there's a void for some authentic soul music with an edge. I think there's some people who grew up with Motown and Stevie Wonder that still can appreciate Future, Drake, and all these different things, too, but there shouldn't be a void for those people, as well.

One of my idols is my dad. All his work in Motown, and just the way he conducted himself as a human being was always interesting to me, and it seemed like the successful way, and it is a successful way, and I always wanted to do that. He's funny, and all that stuff.

I've bought clothes based on record covers. Particularly from the formative music that turned me onto it in the first place when I was a kid, with the Beatles and the Small Faces. A lot of those Sixties soul artists were in really sharp sharkskin or mohair suits, and Motown artists looked amazing.

I knew I wanted to do music at eight years of age. I listened to a lot of Motown growing up, and it got to the point where I started mimicking people - Michael Jackson or whoever. People started to notice I could hold a tone. The bug was always there.

Growing up, I listened and was influenced by a lot of those around me. I have a big family, and my dad listened to '80s music, my mom listened to Motown, my brother listened to reggae, and my granddad was the one that got me into jazz and swing music.

I think my parents are the first influence on me music-wise. My dad was into Motown and soul, and my mom was into British '80s pop, like The Trashcan Sinatras. I grew up on that. It was great. They were the first people to really bring music into my life.

There's no love in my songs. There's just a lot of resentment. Just bad attitude. But that's intentional, that's what I like. I love the whole idea of Motown. Their idea was to sing how down on their luck they were, but the song implied hope that it would get better. I liked that idea, and I wanted to go even further with it.

I'm not really up on what's new. I'm still listening to Run DMC twenty-five years later. In the same way that the baby-boomers in America were forcing '60s music and Motown down our throats, now people of my generation are forcing Tears For Fears and old Hip Hop upon others.

There's no reason - not yet, anyway - to believe [Bob] Dylan himself endorses such an attitude; or that he would think of himself as a more profound and worthy recipient than, for instance, any of the brilliant Motown or girl-group lyricists who are more likely to be awarded a Nobel prize for chemistry than for literature. Whether there is more truth and humanity in his best lyrics than in Abba's, or less, is unquantifiable, and it would be meretricious to attempt such a calculation in contesting an argument he has been dragged into.

I think that there is such power with the live performance of it - so much of what 'Motown' is about is the live performance aspect, really. The power of our production is really the music and the performances.

That culture, of looking at catchy music as a negative thing, is weird. It has nothing to do with me, or the music I was into growing up. The Stones and the Beatles only tried to write hits. Every Motown song, every Credence Clearwater song - they were trying to write hits.

The Great Migration changed American history not just for the migrants but for all of us. It made possible American cultural milestones like the Harlem Renaissance, Chicago blues, and Motown, just to name a few.

I grew up around music. My father was a professional musician. We used to have a trailer house that we travelled in. I've always loved music. Started out loving to sing to the standards and songs of the early 50s, then that interest shifted to rock and roll, Motown, folk.

When I was growing up, my dad would always be playing Motown around the house. He loved Stevie Wonder and the Supremes and got me into Dionne Warwick. It was the best music I'd ever heard. It was just that extremely deep, human, thought-out stream of ideas. You can always hear something new when you listen to that music.

I grew up in one of those households where, growing up in Detroit, you gravitate towards music and cars because we were the capital for a long time. Especially during my childhood. We were the Motown sound. We were the Motor City.

When I joined, I was one of the first artists to sign on to the Motown West label when they opened their first studio in California. At the studio, you'd run into Stevie Wonder, you'd run into Marvin Gaye…it was very special.

My music diet growing up was lots of sugar. Lots of retro-pop sugar. Motown, disco. A lot of English rock, like the Turtles, the Zombies, Bowie and stuff like that.

The Beatles were huge. And the first thing they said when you interviewed them, 'Oh yeah, we grew up on Motown.'..They were the first white act to admit they grew up listening to black music.

Marvin Gaye is an inspiration to me. He was one of the first Motown musicians that my mom and dad introduced me to, and I always thought it would be a good idea if I was ever an artist, and now I am, to make a record called 'Marvin Gaye.'

Music has always been in my family, but it was mainly keyboards. I learned to play classical piano, but when I first heard the amazing bass guitar of James Jamerson, who played on all the big Motown hits of the '60s and '70s, I knew bass guitar was my instrument.

Definitely just growing up in general influenced me; Detroit happened to be where I was. I feel like the city definitely has made an impact on my life and made me who I am. Detroit has an unmistakable soul - nobody can duplicate the soul we bring to the game. From Motown to J Dilla to Eminem to anything.

For me, the highlight was meeting all the Motown acts, as I adore black soul music. I met Stevie Wonder who I love, and Diana Ross And The Supremes. I also met The Carpenters. I was actually there in the studio when they recorded We've Only Just Begun.

The influence is really all over the place. Detroit, definitely because of Motown and Stooges. When you come from a place like Detroit, you're really proud of what you have there.

My musical influence is really from my father. He was a DJ in college. My parents met at New York University. So he listened to, you know, Motown, and he listened to Bob Dylan. He listened to Grateful Dead and Rolling Stones, but he also listened to reggae music. And he collected vinyl.

Even though I loved the Fifties doo-wop, you couldn't hold on to it. You had to change, or you was gon' be antique real quick, like the Ink Spots. And then we were at Motown and you had the Rolling Stones, simple rock & roll became the new thing.

My tastes range all over the place, from vocal standards to Motown to 70s funk & soul to 80s pop to film scores to artists like R.E.M., Ben Folds, Prince, Annie Lennox, the Police, Elvis Costello, Cat Stevens, the Ditty Bops, local bands that friends of mine are in, and the list goes on... I have no single favorite genre or artist.

When I was a kid in the mid-'60s, I was what's known as a moddie boy, a prototype skinhead. You all had your hair like a crew cut, cropped, with suits or Levis with red suspenders, sometimes Doc Martens. It was a thriving soul music, Motown and ska scene; we used to dance to Prince Buster and the Skatalites.

When we did a lot of that Motown stuff there were four of us on the front line. When we started the evening we'd start from one end of the band and just go along. The lead singer would change all the time. That's the first time that I actually managed to put it into a record.

One of a handful of films made in Detroit, '8 Mile' doesn't feature the Motown renaissance that Mayor Coleman A. Young dreamed of in the 1970s. Instead, it's the beaten-down city: 8 Mile refers to the line of demarcation between Detroit and suburban, mostly white Oakland County.

We came from the '60s era, when we started and made so many hits. The song value from the '60s was so darn good, you've got The Beatles, The Beach Boys, all of Motown, and plenty of other people, too... amazing records, amazing songs.

Those original, black, spirited, defiant, rebellious musical masters. Chuck Berry was one of the first masters of Les Paul's new electric guitar; he pretty much laid down the gauntlet, and I don't think anybody's ever beat him since. Way before the British Invasion, I was tuned into the black guys that created the British Invasion. Without Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Lightnin' Hopkins, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and the Motown hits, there would be no Beatles.

When I was starting my journey as a young guitar player, I was listening to The Beatles, the Stones, and all the British invasion bands, Top 40, Motown, and all the great music of the '60s. Then the alien ship landed, and life changed again forever... Jimi Hendrix.

I grew up listening to a lot of that stuff, Motown and Stooges. But also early rock-and-roll like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis Presley. I feel like as I grew older, I've been working with different musicians, people that have are constantly showing me different things.

The same reason why we're doing music is the same reason why Motown did: to make the world a better place and to make people happy. The main message is, just have a good time.

I have very eclectic tastes. I love soul and Motown; I listen to some rap - Stormzy, Tinie Tempah, Drake. I also love classical music, American country and the folk tradition. I often start the day with gospel on my way to work. The only thing I have never got into is punk.

I stumbled into soul music at a very young age. It had something that really spoke to me. Nowadays it's not only American gospel or soul music, it's whenever somebody decides to do music in a way that's honest and passionate. I got into the Motown songs. It had to do with where I come from - we don't really have that where I come from, the sense of mystery and the pain. Sweden has been a wealthy and happy country for some time now. I think I got really drawn to that.

My main influences are pop and folk music - Bob Lind, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, the Motown collection, The Zombies, Elliott Smith, and a ton of 70's AM radio hits. I love powerpop too.

And for some reason, when I'm sad, I do listen to Leonard Cohen, I do listen to Joni Mitchell. I do find myself going to the music that's actually reflecting my mood, as opposed to sticking on Motown, which might actually bring my mood up.

Growing up, I was listening to a ton of Motown music, Otis Redding, Aretha, and then there was the Beatles and Led Zeppelin and Janis Joplin. These were all people that I felt as though they truly felt every single lyric they said, and they weren't afraid of imperfection.

You certainly don't hear any country music on pop radio today. But for a while you did, and it was a lovely thing to have all the different genres of music cohabitating the Top 40 - the folk sound, The Beatles, the British sound, the Motown sounds, that kind of light country - it was a welcome relief after a few hard rock records. Everyone was sharing the airwaves, and I think it was a beautiful time for American music.

I grew up not far from where Motown was founded, maybe 300 miles from Detroit and I've always liked - I used to like the way they made records. I still do, I just haven't had a chance to hear as much. They used to entertain me.

I stand humbled on bended knee but, of course, the response to that would be 'Duh!' And to be given that incredible honor means that I represent the piss and vinegar, the energy, the defiance, the musicality of the Funk Brothers and Motown and Mitch Ryder and Bob Seger, Brownsville Station and Grand Funk Railroad and Eminem and Jack White and Kid Rock - are you kidding me?

My listening changed when I heard music from Stax, Atlantic, Motown because by that age I thought anything that my parents listened to must be square. So I had to find my own rock n' roll, as it were, and I found it in black soul music.

I just love how everyone with that Motown sound seemed to come from a two-block radius from the actual original location. The original location was a house, and then when they outgrew it, they bought the house next door and the house next door and the house next door until they had seven houses on the same lot.