Mat Kearney Quotes
-
There are people I love in Nashville and would not want to go a day without talking to, but I want to see the world.
-
When 'Young Love' came out, I was really excited, and it has been really special.
-
I started as a writer. I didn't play music until late in life.
-
I had the lyric 'Chip Don't Go' and a few words, and my wife came in and said that it sounded like a good song. I thought I'd finish writing it up and posting it to YouTube. I didn't realize it was going to take off like it did.
-
I enjoy changing; I think it's more fun to try something different than to just do what you did last time. As an artist, you just want to keep creating, keep finding a place that really inspires you that feels fresh and new, and keep it exciting.
-
My first album was hip-hop influenced, and my second was more of a singer-songwriter album.
-
When I barely got into college, the one thing I could do was write, so I became an English major.
-
I was an English major in college, so I really liked spoken word and poetry; it was what I did before I wrote music.
-
I am a micromanager, and I love being involved in every detail of my life, but in the big picture, you realize how little control you have. 'Air I Breathe' is about those moments of surrender where you get to something that is bigger than you, and you don't have answers for it.
-
There's something incredibly vulnerable about middle school for me. We're really impressionable during that period. The cement's still wet, so to speak, and a lot of things later in life are born during that season.
-
It's a job, and it's challenging. But I love music and creating. That's why I got into music.
-
I grew up in Oregon, so there was always a lot of that folksy, Bob Marley stuff. There was a mural of Bob Marley on a wall at my high school.
-
I've had moments in my career when I've made more money and had more success than at other times, but I've realized being happy has very little to do with any of that.
-
For my father, he didn't know what 'Grey's Anatomy' was. He didn't know who John Mayer was. But when I showed up on the 'Law & Order' TNT promo spot, he thought, 'Wow, my son has made it.'
-
The first year I moved to Nashville, I started playing these songwriter nights with people like Nickel Creek, Duncan Sheik, and even Ryan Adams... That was the first place I really started playing music, and I had to really step up my game. Really quick. Or get kicked off the stage.
-
When I set out to write, I want to write something that will rip your heart out and connect with you. Great songs connect beyond genre and style.
-
I read about two reviews early on when my first record came out, and it just freaked me out, good and bad, so I've never really kept up with that side of it.
-
I don't know how much I'm connected to the hip-hop scene, but I definitely lend from that urgency.
-
I think, in a lot of ways, hip-hop is interesting to me because it's like the modern-day folk music.
-
I can't help but do things my own way.
-
You write these songs which are really dear to you about your family or friends, loved ones, and then you get this call, and they say, 'It's perfect for two vampires making out in the back of a car.' It's some random TV show, and so I say, 'Oh, yeah, perfect - that's what I meant it for.'
-
Money definitely does not equal success in recording.
-
I thought my second record was good, but it didn't have that smash hit we did on the first one that somehow found its way onto tons of formats of radio stations.
-
When I was in college, I wanted to study film. My first passion was to be a cinematographer. So maybe there's something innate in my music where it partners well with images.