Brian McKnight Quotes
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 write about moments, and I don't make blanket statements about anything because no one has all the answers; nobody's come up with a foolproof way to do anything when it comes to emotions.
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.
People don't like when you point out to them and remind them that they're not very smart.
It doesn't matter the genre or type of art, if it's authentic there's an apparent beauty to it and as an artist, that's very inspiring.
I was a nerd academically. But I was also an athlete and a musician. I never wanted to be shut out of any situation. I think it was that more than anything.
It is great to have your own label; you can cultivate your own artists I've worked with pretty much everyone I wanted to.
He knows I rip him off every day. He's the godfather for me. Nobody can say they aren't influenced by what Stevie Wonder has done.
The guy comes up to the plate, there's always a chance where he can get a grand slam and everybody forgets about all the times he missed.
I was brought up to be a gentleman. That means you know how to walk, talk and dress the part.
When it's your chance to step up to the plate, just hit it out of the park, and everybody will forget about everything that came before.
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 hope at some point in my career when my name is mentioned, someone will say "Oh yeah he has a good song!" I'd be happy with that.
The hardest thing to do in this business is to still be around. When music changes, when labels' resources have dried up, it becomes harder and harder to continue to make a living at this.
By 17, I had a whole band that would go in and play. It was called Spontaneous Inventions, after a Bobby McFerrin album.
I've always been serious about music. After you've done it for so many years, you get back to the basics.
You know, most of my career I wrote about moments in time. All of us have felt one thing or another and it didn't last very long. Now I'm drawing from real experience. It's a huge difference.
I watch my contemporaries, and they love to live in the studio and I don't. I have a life. I treat it as a 9-to-5. I try to create something new every day, and then I get on with my life.
I kind of hate the fact that people are always trying to put you into a category. I hate walls, and I hate boundaries. I don't like that. I listen to everything.
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 wanted to put jazz on the record, all the loves of music that I had on the record, so I could show people I was ahead of my 19 years. It may have been over the heads of some people.
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 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.
Being a musician, you want to be able to do the hardest stuff there is. People would think it's classical, but in classical, it's all on the page and the difficulty is keeping up with the music.
For me able to do the records I want to do and not have to worry about this producer or that producer or that trend, I'm not really interested in that.
I think I've tried to stay true to my music since the beginning. It's kind of hard because of the access and technology but I just do what I do.
I am at my core a singer/songwriter a la James Taylor or a la Billy Joel. It's not that I don't want to work with people, but I do just love doing my own thing.
Lionel Richie told me forget about the critics. But if you come back with hit after hit, you don't have to worry about anything.
I used to play pianos in bars. You know in hotels, you'd see guys playing piano with a snifter? That was me, with a painted-on mustache. I was about 15.
I started as a writer and when I sent my demos out everyone wanted to know who was singing and if that person wanted a record deal.
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.
You'd hear Willie Nelson, then Earth, Wind & Fire, then Chicago, then Billy Joel on the same radio station. Nowadays, everything is compartmentalized.
I've worked with jazz artists, country artists, classical artists, pop artists. I never wanted there to be categories, because when I was a kid there weren't.
