Elvis Costello (Declan Patrick MacManus) Quotes
Why can't a man stand alone? Must he be burdened by all that he's taught to consider his own? His skin and his station, his kin and his crown, his flag and his nation They just weigh him down.
Quotes to Explore
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These are the sort of things that push you on in music - the curiosity, a passion for new ideas.
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I've worked hard, every single day since I left school. I think I have a Protestant work ethic.
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I found with this record I had to really be strong-willed, because in the past I've tended to tinker and add a thing or take a thing away, and nearly always been wrong.
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There are many critics who have an idealised version of where my strengths lie.
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Well, T Bone's had a remarkable career as a producer since the time that we first worked together. He was dividing his time between recording and producing when we first met, and touring. We toured together and we were great friends.
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It's what I do. I don't deserve any awards for this, it's just music. It's just writing songs. You sit down, you write a song, you record it. You tour and play the songs live, dress them up a bit differently, or dress them down.
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I think when I was younger I was not very good at writing love songs that didn't have a twist.
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And obviously, when I started out, I had a little bit more curiosity than some, and went seeking out the original artists, or in some cases searching up country music.
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I get very frustrated by this term 'genre exercise.' I mean, what exactly is that? Genre is not really relevant when you are writing a song; hopefully you are doing it to explore something, to create something, and I don't agree that any of my albums are genre exercises.
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Sometimes I almost feel just like a human being.
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Very similar experience happened last year when we released this album, North. It was on Deutsche Grammophon, it was very, very honest. It was the most honest record I've ever written.
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I believe that music is connected by human passions and curiosities rather than by marketing strategies.
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My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant.
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I've been lucky to listen to lots of different types of music.
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The Internet is overrated. It's much smaller an innovation than people think it is. I don't think it's changed the way anybody makes music.
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Well, I've had a lot of different experiences in music over the years. And not everything you do can satisfy everybody's idealised version of you.
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When the media attention switches away from this story onto the next thing that happens in the world, the circumstances will still be there.
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Obviously I got known for some other songs early on, and some of those were rock'n'roll songs. Some of them were melodic pop songs. And I've done lots of different things, as you know, but every so often I get drawn back.
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There was not a lot of rock n' roll in the house. Our parents didn't think it was very groovy, and I tend to agree with them. If you grew up with Charlie Parker, Bill Haley wasn't very hip.
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People become so deeply attached to the sound of one period that they blow a fuse when you move on. I've heard people complain bitterly about recordings they haven't even heard.
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Really the only thing holding a lot of records together is the personality of the singer, and the will to write all of these different things.
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It's a petty thing, but I wouldn't join the Scouts when I was a kid, 'cause you had to swear allegiance to the queen. I'm just not a royalist. I think it's idiotic, a hereditary principle.
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'Content' is a word that has never sat well with me. Like 'maturity'. They are two words I've never liked. I think they imply some sort of decay. A settling.
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We're all just animals. That's all we are, and everything else is just an elaborate justification of our instincts. That's where music comes from. And romantic poetry. And bad novels.