Brian McKnight

I’m creating music – it doesn’t matter if anyone else likes it.

Stevie didn’t use the technology to drive the song. He used it to enhance. I use the tools to further my work, I don’t use my work to further the tools.

I just want people to take a step back, take a deep breath and actually look at something with a different perspective. But most people will never do that.

A fine timepiece is part of dressing like a gentleman. When I first made a little money, I bought my first watch which was a Rolex Daytona. It was just one of those things that said I was successful.

I think the one thing that I’ve learned is that you cannot predict what’s going to happen. You can’t sit back and try to figure out what people want or leave it up to them to decide. When we all started in this business we would dictate to the audience what was great and they picked up on that based on the fact that we believed that it was great. But that’s all changed. What’s happened in the last ten years or so because is that the technology now means that everyone with a computer can make music and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

Music used to be essential and meaningful, but now it’s disposable.

You must surrender whatever preconceptions you have about music if you’re really interested in it.

The qualities in music I consider most important are beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination and sincerity.

If it wasn’t for hustlers, gangsters and gamblers there’d be no Jazz. Wasn’t middle-class who said Let’s go hear Bird tonight.

I don’t consider myself a musician who has achieved perfection and can’t develop any further.

Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.

The minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.

Hot can be cool and cool can be hot and each can be both. But hot or cool man, Jazz is Jazz.

They told me to play what I felt. Hey, I’m a Jazz musician, that’s what I do.

Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.

So much of Jazz doesn’t have an audience other than music students or musicians.

Actually, I think the more Ben [Taylor] sings, the less like James he sounds.

Let your life be your music and let your music be your life.

Jazz music is a language of the emotions.

When you know the lyrics to a tune, you have some kind of insight as to it’s composition. If you don’t understand what it’s about, you’re depriving yourself of being really able to communicate this poem.

I never stop being amazed by all the different ways of playing the guitar and making it deliver a message.