Pop Quotes

I want to make a pop album - something more upbeat than my stuff was in the '90s.

I just could not believe that 30 years later we're still looking at people who are supposed to write little 2-minute pop that when they actually try to do something that's a little bit more they regard it as pretentious.

Michael Jackson will always be my favorite pop musician; he was for years and years until his death, which was horrible to me. So I like pop culture. But to me, even if it's popular, there is a quality in the music you have to be able to appreciate.

I've never intended to be controversial, but it's very easy to be controversial in pop music because nobody ever is.

It's refreshing to hear something that's pop but doesn't sound like Britney Spears.

I grew up in Marcy Projects in Brooklyn, and my mom and pop had an extensive record collection, so Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and all of those sounds and souls of Motown filled the house.

More students have a better knowledge of pop culture than of the Constitution.

Marilyn Manson is a mockery of American pop culture.

I'm not really a country singer, although I did make a couple albums and love its simple, straight-from-the-heart approach, but I have always sung a lot of jazz, show tunes, pop tunes, gospel and blues.

I have no aspirations of world domination through the pop charts. None at all.

In the early days I had a very black-and-white view of everything. I think that's kind of natural for anyone who's just embraced Islam - or any religion - as a convert. It was important for me to duck out of the fast and furious life I'd been living as a pop star. I was in a different mood.

Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen and I was three.

I consider the Stooges to be pop music.

A lot of pop people out there are cool, but they overdo it.

You have to stay updated on trends, social things and pop culture, you need to stay with the times and keep evolving.

I, of course, wanted to play real jazz. When we played pop tunes, and naturally we had to, I wanted those pops to kick! Not loud and fast, understand, but smoothly and with a definite punch.

It's a tough life being a pop star. You know, at the end of the day when you've paid all the bills and put the kids through college and that, you know, there's only enough left for a small island off the South Pacific.

Ideally, I would love to mix singing and acting, but you can only be a pop star for so many years. I mean, at 30 it's a little bit sad, right?

I don't think HBO would want to do anything in conjunction with Sub Pop but I never asked either.

I think the pop chart today is entirely market-driven. And it has nothing to do with public taste. And it has nothing to do with moving music forward. It's simply a market chart.

I've never intended to be controversial, but it's very easy to be controversial in pop music because nobody ever is.

I didn't know anything about Opus Die except from pop culture, like Dan Brown novels, which I knew wasn't really knowing anything about Opus Die.

I was a black singer with a white voice, a perfect pop voice.

In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.

I think every once in a while country has lost its way, but found its way back. It's always going to drift away from the traditional side, but then find a way to return. There's room for all kinds of influences be it pop, blues, gospel or whatever. But I will always say that I think we need more traditional country music coming down the pike.

That was very close to getting killed. Usually at pop festivals we have people jumping on stage.

I still tune in to the radio and listen to pop music and enjoy it as much as I ever have.

Pop music has progressed.

If you were a pretty boy pop singer, it would wreck you, growing older.

Nirvana was pop. You can have distorted guitars and people say it's alternative, but you can't break out of pop music's constructs and still get extensive radio play and media coverage.