Pop Music Quotes

“Popular culture is a place where pity is called compassion, flattery is called love, propaganda is called knowledge, tension is called peace, gossip is called news, and auto-tune is called singing.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“And I like Strauss and Mozart and all that, but the priceless gift that African Americans gave the world when they were still in slavery was a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like us at least a little bit. That specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is a gift called the blues. All pop music today-jazz, swing, be-bop, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Stones, rock and roll, hip hop and on and on- is derived from the blues.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“We could argue about what constitutes the creepiest line in pop music, but for me it's early Beatles- John Lennon, actually- singing 'I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man.”
― Stephen King, Joyland

“Hey!” I wave my index finger in his face, “No shitting on pop music. Everyone needs some light, fun, sexy pop music. It’s summer, and that right there, is the perfect summer song. It’s hot.”
“You’re right, it is hot,” he says, scanning my body with his eyes.”
― Hilaria Alexander, Prude

“80s music sounds so 80s now. But in the 80s, it just sounded like music.”
― Jeffrey Tucker

“Because I don't make the mistake that high-culture mongers do of assuming that because people like cheap art, their feelings are cheap, too,” the late filmmaker Dennis Potter once said, explaining why pop songs were so important in his work, from Pennies from Heaven to The Singing Detective to Lipstick on Your Collar, his paean to the 1950s, the time he shared with the Independent Group—and Potter was also defining a pop ethos, defining what I think is happening in Paolizzi's collage.
"When people say, 'Oh listen, they're playing our song,' they don't mean 'Our song, this little cheap, tinkling, syncopated piece of rubbish, is what we felt when we met.' What they're saying is, 'That song reminds us of that tremendous feeling we had when we met.' Some of the songs I use are great anyway, but the cheaper songs are still in the direct line of descent from David's Psalms. They're saying, 'Listen, the world isn't quite like this, the world is better than this, there is love in it,' 'There's you and me in it,' or 'The sun is shining in it.' So-called dumb people, simple people, uneducated people, have as authentic and profound depth of feeling as the most educated on earth. Anyone who says different is a fascist.”
― Greil Marcus, The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years

“Ich hatte mich immer darauf gefreut, alt zu werden, und das auch überall lauthals verkündet. Seit den Heldenanfängen hatte ich eine seltsame Sehnsucht nach dem Jenseits-Davon gehabt, mich auf Partys zielsicher neben Leute aus meiner Elterngeneration gesetzt und mein Alter auf Anfrage eher hoch- als runtergerechnet.
Womit ich nicht gerechnet hatte, war das Dazwischen, die uneindeutige, demütigend lange Zeit zwischen Fräuleinwunder und Lebenswerk. Denn das ist es, wofür der Pop keine Toleranz hat. Für Frauen, die ein kleines bisschen alt sind und nicht mehr ganz jung. So wie der Pop auch Frauen wie Beth Ditto und Lizzo feiert, als dickes Feigenblatt einer anorektischen Kultur, durchschnittliche mitteldünne Frauen mit runden Schultern und Hüften aber nicht mal mit der Zange angefasst.”
― Judith Holofernes, Die Träume anderer Leute

“Of course every girl wishes she could be one of those pop star babes who wave their hands in the air yelling about being survivors but when love sits on one side of you and loneliness on the other, it’s hard to stop the touching and the kissing.”
― Lisa O'Donnell, The Death of Bees

“It's so frustrating that everybody rags on eighties music, when there's a lot of terrific stuff out there," he said. "There's no irony to it. It's not afraid to just be happy or enthusiastic or earnest. Or to have melody. Sure, you can blame it for being naive, but isn't that refreshing next to the whiny navel-gazing that came after it?”
― Amanda DeWees, The Shadow and the Rose

“Zeb grinned. “You were the only person I know who’s done it on an occupied police car.”

I glared at him. “If you want to start trading stories, we can start trading stories. As a former member of the Richard Marx Fan Club, you don’t want to start this arms race.”

Zeb smiled meekly around a rib. Agreed.”

“Richard Marx?” Jolene asked.

“He went through an obnoxiously cheerful pop phase. Don’t ask.”
― Molly Harper, Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs

“From strange alter-egos, to the occult concept of androgyny, and of course including references to Aleister Crowley and his Thelema, David Bowie did decades ago what pop stars are doing now. “Bowie’s alter-ego named Ziggy Stardust was a representation of the “illuminated man” who has reached the highest level of initiation: androgyny. There was also a lot of one eye things going on. Drawing the Kabbalistic Tree of Life The difference between Bowie and today’s pop stars is that he was rather open regarding the occult influence in his act and music. In a 1995 interview, Bowie stated: “My overriding interest was in cabbala and Crowleyism. That whole dark and rather fearsome never-world of the wrong side of the brain.” In his 1971 song Quicksand, Bowie sang: “I’m closer to the Golden Dawn Immersed in Crowley’s uniform of imagery” (Golden Dawn is the name of a Secret Society that had Crowley as member). These are only some examples of the occult influence on Bowie’s work and an entire book could be written on the subject. Since the main antagonist of Labyrinth is a sorcerer who also happens to enjoy singing impromptu pop songs, David Bowie was a perfect fit for the role.”
― Vigilant Citizen, The Vigilant Citizen - Articles Compilation

“The way I see the whole spectrum of pop music is that it is slowly being laid to rest, in every conceivable way...So with the Smiths, I do really think it is true, I think this is really the end of the story. Ultimately, popular music will end. That must be obvious to almost everybody. And I think the ashes are all about us, if we could but notice them.”
― Morrissey

“It's funny, I've decided 'Hallelujah' is a kind of Rorschach test for people, because everyone has a different reaction to it and to what I'm doing. I just sang it, and whatever came out was just natural and spontaneous and maybe that's the best thing, because there's a kind of enigma, both in the meaning of the words and the way Leonard Cohen said them, that catches people's attention.”
― Renée Fleming, The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of "Hallelujah"

“I have a transgressive spirit, and Pop is transgression's best friend.”
― Nuno Roque

“Pop is not music. Pop is celebrity. Fabricated personas that are all style, no substance. Pop is a celebration of fakeness. Artifice is the only cultural currency left, now that the internet has erased all contextual borders.”
― David Yoon, Super Fake Love Song

“She's gone, she's gone.'" Paul sang the chorus of that Hall & Oates song. He sang without irony, for he was a twenty-first-century American who'd been taught to mourn his small and large losses by singing Top 40 hits.”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“Despite all the talk of diversity and division--of red and blue states, of black and white and brown people, of rich and poor, gay and straight--Paul believed that Americans were shockingly similar. How can we be so different, thought Paul, if we all know the lyrics to the same one thousand songs?”
― Sherman Alexie, War Dances

“Nirgendwo versammeln sich so viele rührende, hoffnungsvolle Menschen wie um einen Popstar in aufwendigen Kostümen.”
― Judith Holofernes, Die Träume anderer Leute

“Music contains zero alcohol, yet it gets people high.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Night of a Thousand Thoughts

“Though most cultural observers hadn't noticed it yet, everything was now in place for "Hallelujah" to sweep through the pop landscape. It was a song that had multiple strong, emotional connections with millions of listeners. Its mood was both fixed and malleable, universal and specific. It was familiar enough to resonate, obscure enough to remain cool. Though its most celebrated performer was gone forever, its mysterious creator had come back to the spotlight just in time.
After 2001, whether it signified an individual's solitude (human or monster or otherwise) or a population in mourning, "Hallelujah"—now far removed from Leonard Cohen's initial," rather joyous" intent—was established as the definitive representation of sadness for a new generation.”
― Alan Light, The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of "Hallelujah"

“...unlike Aretha, [Al Green's] only rival vocally, Al never sold himself short in the studio. Where the albums follow the vagaries of genius, the hits exploit Al's personal production line, every one a perfect soul record and a perfect pop record in whatever order suits your petty little values. Brashly feminine and seductively woman-friendly, he breaks free in a register that darts and floats and soars into falsetto with startling frequency and beguiling ease. He's so gorgeous, so sexy, so physically attractive that only masochists want to live without him.”
― Robert Christgau

“Take Tom Jones and mix him with Enrico Caruso, the Italian tenor-cum-castrato singer. Then add tons of pathetic love songs, faked sex appeal and musical kleptomania focusing on Western hits from the 1970s. Spice it up with a political flexibility rare even for Central European standards and a personal status close to that of the Pope. What do you get? Karel Gott, Czech pop music's most mega-super, long-lasting and brightest star.”
― Terje B. Englund, The Czechs in a Nutshell

“Logically, when Maestro Gott some years ago, after an especially cruel critic had compared him to "a zombie who causes acute depression to innocent radio listeners", decided to stop performing in protest, the situation was considered so grave that the Minister of Culture himself went to console the deeply insulted star.”
― Terje B. Englund, The Czechs in a Nutshell

“We heard that song three times now, i still don’t understand what they are really singing about though, probably something about being unimaginative.”
― Alain Bremond-Torrent, running is flying intermittently

“If you want to use your body as a tool for transformation then use it as a shield against the inequalities in society, rather than fondling your crotch like a coitus-crazed canine.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Heart Force One: Need No Gun to Defend Society

“The way Richie saw it, something had happened to mainstream music during the post-grunge phase of the ’90s and so far this year’s releases had been the most vapid of the lot, save for a few that maybe had some artistic expression if you listened hard enough (and excluding the Chili Peppers record, which ruled). Corporate major labels and MTV had joined forces in a union of evil to destroy all semblance of art from the world and churn the charred remains—not art anymore but products—through a dollar factory of unfettered capitalism, squeezing out the big bucks as quickly as possible before the whole crazy ride comes to a screaming, bloody end. Which it would. All of this would come to a tragic end; the whole western world had gone mad, taking mindless consumerism to dizzying new heights as most of the East scrambled to get in on the action. Meanwhile, people like him and Alabama slip through the cracks and no one in this apathetic hellhole gives a shit, too busy patching over the vacancies of their lives in desperate attempts to forget the dreams they abandoned when they sold out to the machine. Of course he and Alabama were junkies. Of course they were thieves. What choice did they have when you got right—right—down to it? Their fates had been sealed when society had set itself upon this dark path, and there would be many more Richies and Alabamas to come so long as it stayed the course.”
― Philip Elliott

“I'm Russian," Misha said with the faintest hint of a smile.. "We angst, Max."

"I see that. Well, I'm American. We force shit on other people if we think they need it. Like democracy. And pop music.”
― Avon Gale, Power Play

“...but somehow, it's part of why Stevie Nicks means so much to us. It's why we hear our own broken forevers in this music, why we hear our own emotional avalanches in her songs. When she rides the landslide, she rides it all the way down, and she takes us down with her.”
― Rob Sheffield, The Wild Heart of Stevie Nicks

“One of her best songs ever is 'Annabel Lee,' which she just released a few years ago on her underrated 2011 album In My Dreams. It's a six-minute sex-and-death trip with a lyric from one of her hot dead rock-and-roll boyfriends: Edgar Allan Poe. The key line is: 'The moon never beams without bringing me dreams.' Poe might have written that line in 1849, but he clearly always meant it for Stevie Nicks to sing.”
― Rob Sheffield, The Wild Heart of Stevie Nicks

“Asch took from his bankruptcy an important lesson: he decided that he never wanted to record another hit record. In early 1949, he commented to an unnamed writer from People’s Songs (the newsletter of left-wing folk music) that he had “focused too much time and money on popular jazz” and from this point forward he would focus on “good records,” which would be “sold to a small circle of people who will buy them.”
― Richard Carlin, Worlds of Sound: The Story of Smithsonian Folkways