Soul Music Quotes

‘Sometimes with pop music, you have to see it to love it. With soul music, it’s sparse. There’s nothing that’s pretentious or planned. It’s just so gutsy.’ – Adele

‘Soul music is timeless.’ – Alicia Keys

‘Soul music is soul music. It can be wrapped up in a neo soul package; it can be called hip-hop soul. But soul is soul, and it’s been around; it will never go away.’ – Maxwell

‘Good soul music should make you feel something in your heart, in your body, and in your spirit. That’s what I try to do both in the studio and on stage.’ – Goapele

‘Soul music is about longevity and reaching and touching people on a human level – and that’s never going to get lost.’ – Jill Scott

‘The most ironic thing is my grandfather has his masters in music composition; he was a jazz composer. My dad was a musician, too. He played more, like, soul music.’ – Travis Scott

‘Music is a part of someone’s soul. Music is a feeling for me. And if that soul is evil, then I don’t want anything to do with it.’ – Yungblud

‘Soul music is pain – you can hear the slaves, the beatin’ and the hurtin’.’ – Link Wray

‘My listening changed when I heard music from Stax, Atlantic, Motown because by that age I thought anything that my parents listened to must be square. So I had to find my own rock n’ roll, as it were, and I found it in black soul music.’ – Robert Palmer

‘I stumbled into soul music at a very young age. It had something that really spoke to me.’ – Erik Hassle

‘I consider what I do soul music. It’s music that is concerned with the soul.’ – Lecrae

‘I like listening to old soul music. I like Sam Cooke. When I was growing up, the first things I was listening to was Whitney Houston and Cher. They were really big inspirations for me.’ – Rebecca Ferguson

‘I am in love with old school funk and soul music. That’s what I grew up listening to, and I want to bring that style back with my music. I love artists like Stevie Wonder, Donna Summer, Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Earth, Wind, & Fire, Bruno Mars, Justin Timberlake, and more!’ – Raini Rodriguez

‘Charles and I are from Augusta, Ga.’ – Dave Haywood

‘For a long time, soul music was maybe one of my favorite kinds of music.’ – Devendra Banhart

‘I’m sitting at home every time there’s a Grammy. It’s like, ‘What is Sharon doing tonight?’ I’m sitting home watching it. But it’s OK. But if you go to Europe, there are a lot of young, independent labels that’s doing soul music. You might call them retro because they’re young and they’re trying to imitate somebody. But I ain’t retro.’ – Sharon Jones

‘Soul music is true to its name. It’s music that connects to your soul, your spirit. When music resonates with people’s spirit like that, when people can emotionally connect with something or it helps to heal them, transform them, that never goes out of style. People will always need something to relate to.’ – Andra Day

‘Soul lyrics, soul music came at about the same time as the civil rights movement, and it’s very possible that one influenced the other.’ – Ahmet Ertegun

‘Soul music as we’ve always known it hasn’t changed. There are different players now with different attitudes, but there is nothing new being done musically.’ – Don Cornelius

‘I think there’s a void for some authentic soul music with an edge. I think there’s some people who grew up with Motown and Stevie Wonder that still can appreciate Future, Drake, and all these different things, too, but there shouldn’t be a void for those people, as well.’ – Anderson Paak

‘I’m from the punk generation, but I make romantic, soft soul music. I like the bizarre disconnect of that but, clearly, some people don’t.’ – Mick Hucknall

‘R&B is the one thing that has influenced every kind of music. Every artist that there is, from those that are sung the most to Adele – you know, she was so influenced by so many R&B artists and soul music – it’s clear in her writing that that’s where it comes from.’ – Babyface

‘I grew up listening to a lot of soul music, and a lot of folk music.’ – Katey Sagal

‘I discovered the same thing Gram Parsons did, that soul music and country music are practically identical. Based off of the same chord structures, and the songs are of heartache and loss. The main connection is they both came up in church.’ – Justin Townes Earle

‘There’s always a spattering of people who see Hanson who were influenced by classic ’60’s and ’70’s rock and roll. In a lot of ways, we’re sort of the anatomy of a ’70’s rock band if you examine what we do: white guys who grew up listening to soul music from the ’50’s and ’60’s.’ – Taylor Hanson

‘There’s a constantly applicable nature to soul music, whereas sometimes pop music can be a periodical.’ – John Mayer

‘When I was a kid, I was following black soul music.’ – Robert Plant

‘I listen to crazy, robust rock music where they sing their faces off, and soul music, which can be similar.’ – Adam Lambert

‘I love singing. It makes me feel good. It’s like a release, especially when I’m singing soul music.’ – Michael Kiwanuka

‘Salsa, classic rock, soul music, jazz… all of that was a part of my education in making hip-hop music.’ – Aloe Blacc

‘I make soul music for hip-hop heads. It’s music I’d want to sample if I were a rapper.’ – Mayer Hawthorne

‘I’ve never had a very quiet voice. I tried in choir to make it smaller, and it just didn’t work out. And I listened to a lot of soul music when I was growing up on my own accord. But I was mostly into Mama Cass and Gladys Knight, and they all had big voices too; just different than mine.’ – Beth Ditto

‘When I was a kid in the mid-’60s, I was what’s known as a moddie boy, a prototype skinhead. You all had your hair like a crew cut, cropped, with suits or Levis with red suspenders, sometimes Doc Martens. It was a thriving soul music, Motown and ska scene; we used to dance to Prince Buster and the Skatalites.’ – Graham Parker

‘I started to work up in my old bedroom, playing, writing songs, and it somehow came to me that I could introduce soul music. Nobody seemed to be doing that.’ – Graham Parker

‘I was introduced to soul music at a very young age – my mom was a soul singer.’ – Elliott Yamin

‘I enjoy listening to contemporary rock on the college stations while I’m taking long walks, love gospel and soul music, am fascinated by hip-hop and rap as the new kind of urban ‘beat’ poetry and, come to think of it, find something interesting about just any kind of music.’ – Oscar Hijuelos

‘It wasn’t until my late teens that I really got into soul music and then I was like ‘Ooh, this is good!’ You’d always here it at old family parties, like, Gladys Knight and I’d always love it but I didn’t really get to know it and respect it until I was a bit older.’ – Rebecca Ferguson

‘I grew in the inner city, listening to Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway, James Brown, The Commodores – lots of soul music.’ – Stefon Harris

‘Absolutely, I grew up listening to soul music. People like Stevie, Aretha, Ray Charles, Michael and Prince. My parents’ record collection was all I had when I was a little kid. If it wasn’t that, it was something else in their collection.’ – Jesse McCartney

‘I’ve always been a firm believer that soul music never dies. The artists we still listen to today, years after their music was first heard are mostly soul artists; Donny Hathaway, Marvin Gaye, Chaka Khan. We still sing along to all of them with our hearts.’ – Jill Scott

‘I started to write a lot of ballads that were sultry and had a Norah Jones-for-country kind of feel. I wanted to bring elements of old soul music and old country music.’ – Laura Bell Bundy

‘People keep putting limitations on themselves and creating this reality that soul music is dead. That’s only in their reality. It’s not true. To me, Adele is R&B. Bruno Mars is R&B. It’s just good songwriting and songs. That is going to last.’ – Ester Dean

‘I think that American music, for me, it’s a synthesis of a lot of different things. But for me growing up in North Carolina, the stuff that I was listening to, the things that I was hearing, it was all about black music, about soul music.’ – James Taylor

‘I’m really maturing into soul music. It’s not my attempt or karaoke try. I feel like I really embody the music now that I am 36.’ – Maxwell

‘I grew up on soul music. I was a dancing little creep.’ – Kim Basinger

‘The ’70s and ’80s were just the period during which the best soul music was created and the best records were done.’ – Don Cornelius

‘The only thing I wanted to accomplish was to finally get recognized by the music industry. If you know the awards, answer me this question: Do you see an award for soul music? No. They have R&B, funk, hip-hop and all sorts of contemporary things.’ – Sharon Jones

‘If you can’t prove it in words, it ain’t gospel. Soul music is just an expression of the mind, but your spirit has to be made alive – that’s the real part, the part that God speaks to.’ – Andrae Crouch

‘Guys like me and Ray Charles, when we was coming up through our days, country music and soul music was just a very thin line between the two.’ – Percy Sledge

‘People have this perception of soul music of somebody shouting.’ – Leon Bridges

‘I don’t live in this soul music bubble. I love Young Thug, Drake, Kendrick Lamar. I even heard that Kendrick was a fan of my music. Hopefully there’s a door open for us to do music together. He’s one of my favorite artists. I love Jazmine Sullivan, Lianne la Havas, Usher, Ginuwine. It goes further than classic soul.’ – Leon Bridges

‘A lot of R&B cats are doing a lot of auto-tune. Tyrese went back to the basics. I love classic soul music and Ginuwine. Ginuwine and Usher laid the foundation back in the ’90s. There’s no one doing that anymore.’ – Leon Bridges

‘When I first got into the music scene, I was inspired by different songwriters. I like to dress from the ’50s and ’60s. I like to paint a picture of that era through my music and clothes. I am inspired by a whole a lot of things, from doo-wop to gospel and soul music.’ – Leon Bridges

‘I grew up listening to a lot of soul music, which has probably informed the way that I sing on my tracks.’ – Erik Hassle

‘My mom had a produce business in in Oxnard, and we used to take these long trips to talk to farmers and different distributors. She’d take us with her after picking us up from school, and she’d be blasting all this old soul music and R&B. I knew all those O’Jays songs before I knew Snoop or Dre or Tupac.’ – Anderson Paak

‘Somebody told me once it takes an Americana song five minutes to say what a country song says in three – so I try to write country songs. But really, all good music is just soul music.’ – Sturgill Simpson

‘I got into the soul music, but I wanted to rock. I was a rocker.’ – Clarence Clemons

‘I don’t know if it’s because I grew up in Beverly or my friends, but I listened to a lot of alternative rock music. I loved Incubus, Weezer and Jimmy Eat World. It almost felt segregated because I loved all of those acts over here, but then I also loved R&B and soul music I grew up with.’ – Jamila Woods

‘On my block, we grew up like family. Summer times, man, psshh, we in the back in the alley or in the front on the block. Somebody has some music playing, and nine times out of ten, it’s soul music. We got whatever we drinking that day, we got some food, we probably even grilling. It’s just a good time.’ – BJ the Chicago Kid

‘Jazz scares me. I’ve witnessed so many incredible singers and jazz musicians. Pop and soul music have always been the things that I felt like I could do.’ – Sam Smith

‘We’re Midwestern guys who grew up listening to soul music.’ – Isaac Hanson

‘I want to speak in the tradition of rhythm and blues and soul music, but also push how it’s dressed and how it’s delivered to the audience. And hopefully that gets embraced by as many people as possible, but the goal isn’t necessarily to speak to everyone. The goal is to get it out as exact as it is in my head.’ – Kelela

‘Really, what I’m trying to do is make soul music, but I don’t even think of it as a genre. It’s more of a feeling.’ – Kaytranada

‘I always loved soul music. My dad was a very religious guy, and we would listen to a lot of gospel and soul music. My college girlfriend introduced me to musicals. She listened to them, so that was the first time I heard ‘Dream Girls.” – Norbert Leo Butz

‘To me, the Ennio Morricone kind of sound is a derivative of soul music.’ – Adrian Younge

‘When someone is themselves through their music, it’s soul music. James Taylor is soul music to me ’cause it’s just him talking about him. It doesn’t have anything to do with black or growing up in the church; it’s where it comes from. It’s just soul music.’ – India Arie

‘I have a wide range of influences – I mean, first of all, I am a big, big fan of old soul music. Then, there’s people like Donny Hathaway, Elton John… a diverse array of music.’ – Brandon Victor Dixon

‘The biggest inspiration I had was to take norteno soul music and fuse it with Mexican music. It was my great big idea to do that.’ – Ry Cooder

‘You can’t get a better education in what it is to write songs until you listen to American soul music.’ – Roisin Murphy

‘I love soul music.’ – Jessie Reyez

‘When I was little, I was listening to the Beatles, Bob Marley, Janis Joplin, and stuff. I had a big soul music culture, and not so much a French one.’ – Jain

‘I don’t know exactly what genre to put it in, I just know that I grew up listening to a lot of soul music – Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Prince, and Whitney Houston. I was inspired by all these great big voices, and I try to do music that’s timeless.’ – Snoh Aalegra

‘The one thing about Essex is that there’s a lot of people there that are into their soul music. And I’m talking ’80s and ’70s soul music, that was a big part of my childhood, there was Al Green, Luther Vandross, Stevie Wonder, people like that.’ – Jonas Blue

‘To me, soul music is anything that is made from the heart, and therefore moves the listener; it’s not overly self-aware, and leaves room for the listener to make their own conclusions.’ – Sunny Ozell

‘We got really excited by Motown and early ’60s soul music that was fun sounding.’ – Ryan Ross

‘They love soul music in the U.K.’ – Lari White

‘I always really loved soul music but all my friends were into the new romantic scene. I’d go to new romantic clubs and then go home and listen to soul music. I was sort of ashamed of listening to disco and soul music!’ – Lisa Stansfield

‘If you are a soul singer, you are a soul singer. If you are a heavy metal singer, then you are a heavy metal singer. What’s color got to do with it? I don’t go around thinking, ‘I sing soul music and I’m white.’ I just sing the way I feel.’ – Lisa Stansfield

‘You don’t hear that much about me being a white and singing soul music in England, but I get the feeling that in America it’s really a big thing. It’s like, ‘God, look at the color of her skin.” – Lisa Stansfield

‘I started with soul music and icons like Aretha Franklin and Etta James and then moved to R&B and artists such as Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill. Electronic music came later on, when I was in high school and I was really influenced by artists like Skrillex and Major Lazer.’ – Netta Barzilai

‘The Lifted Crew, I think that they’re a great band that plays great soul music. They may have studied a lot of soul, but really, their heart and soul is in hip-hop.’ – Big Daddy Kane

‘My dad hates reggae. He’s from St. Kitts, which is a really British island, with Victorian values. He doesn’t have a strong Caribbean accent. He didn’t play Caribbean music in the house. He was really into soul music, collecting soul 45s.’ – Corinne Bailey Rae

‘I remember standing outside a youth club and listening to some soul music, and hearing the basslines. This was before I’d started playing an instrument. I just stood outside and listened to the bass – it was incredible stuff.’ – Cliff Williams