Brian McKnight

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.

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.

I went back and listened to the first three albums I made and tried to figure out what was special about them, why people keep going back to them. I think it was because I didn’t know what I was doing. I had no idea if they were going to play it on the radio or anything. All I did was write songs, so that’s what I got back to.

I listen to all kinds of songs. There’s something to be learned from every type of music and from the one making it, whether it’s pop or jazz or hip-hop.

I am a writer – that is what I am before being a performer or musician. I love waking up in the morning and then going to sleep that night with something that did not exist.

There’s only one thing that everyone in this world has in common: whether you want to love somebody and you want to be loved in return.

I’ll always write music. Whether I release a record, whether I let the public hear it or not, I’m always writing music.

I started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that’s just the way it came out.

Most of the soloists at Birdland had to wait for Parker’s next record in order to find out what to play next. What will they do now?

By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

Most of the stuff I learned to play, I learned in high school. I had a band in high school, a jazz-fusion thing, and I was the keyboard player. I was interested in how the instruments worked and the theory behind playing with them.

Music is emotional, and you may catch a musician in a very unemotional mood or you may not be in the same frame of mind as the musician. So a critic will often say a musician is slipping.

The people who know nothing about music are the ones always talking about it.

I like people who have worked long and hard, developing through introspection and dedication.

I felt a responsibility to present a viable alternative to the popular electric sound.

While many forms of music may use the dynamic of improvisation, Jazz exemplifies the unique characteristic of collective improvisation.

Jazz? has no boundaries.

There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.

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

The value of music is not dazzling yourself and others with technique.

The word “jazz” means to me no category, but when you get stuck into wanting to do something the way it was with the “jazz emblem” or logo chained around your neck, you play in a frozen moment in time and you keep fermenting the ‘fifties saying jazz should be this way or that. Well, if jazz to me means no category, then I’ve got the green light And if it sounds like.. sounds like.. sounds like, and keeps crossing over, it’s what I wanted to do in the first place. I like the way Stravinsky and those guys did things. They expressed something, if not themselves. In fact, some people talk about expression, but expression really doesn’t mean anything to me because there’s a lot of work which goes into building a drama and then it’s up to other people to offer “expression.” Expression is such a nebulous thing.