193 Quotes by Beck

I wish I had more confidence. I think that's probably my Achilles' heel. If I had more, I probably would have felt emboldened to make more interesting music earlier on, or really go for it in an artistic or songwriting sense.

I'm really fascinated by lingos and colloquialisms that are outmoded and have gone by the wayside. I love the way people spoke in the '30s, and the amazing slang of the mid-'60s and '70s.

If we look at the fact that record covers are essentially advertisements for the music, we acknowledge a function and purpose to draw in the prospective buyer.

If you look at an old piece of sheet music, there's all kinds of text on it, there are ads, there are proclamations of the greatest songs' success, there's artwork. So there is a tactile, physical experience of learning the song and the way it's notated.

In recording, you're trying to make something work sonically - getting the right inflection on the right guitar sound - and maybe a part that would be musically great doesn't sound as cool. On paper, though, it's all stripped back. The musical idea is the one that wins.

In the past it seemed like I was making fun of rap a little bit. But it was more me making fun of myself, since I'm not technically a rapper, whatever that means.

Most of my early records were not cohesive at all, just collections of demos recorded in different years. 'Odelay' was the first time I actually got to go in the studio and record a piece of music in a continuous linear fashion, although that was written over a year.

Sometimes I'll have an idea for a story or have a subject, and that will inspire lyrics, but most of the time, hopefully, they already exist somewhere else.

Studying music in a conservatory would be stifling for me, although I respect people who can do it. And by no means am I an expert at notating music or music theory - that's not really my world.