Steven Wilson Quotes

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Steven Wilson

Profession : Musician

Birth : November 3, 1967

There was a time when pop music and rock music were really reaching for the stars and were not ashamed to be experimental. You think of a song like 'Shout' by Tears for Fears. That's a massive global No. 1 hit, and yet the subject matter is very dark.

Steven Wilson

I wanted people to say that our music sounds like Porcupine Tree, not that it sounds like King Crimson.

Steven Wilson

You will hear ambient in our music. You will hear trip-hop.

Steven Wilson

I never wanted us to be an exercise in nostalgia, living in the shadow of other artists.

Steven Wilson

It's one thing to fail with something you utterly believe in, but to fail with something you don't believe in? You just feel so sordid.

Steven Wilson

Certainly for some time, people used to think of my solo career as somehow a side project to Porcupine Tree. No. If anything, the opposite would now have to be the case.

Steven Wilson

If you want to be an entertainer, then go be an entertainer and give people what they want. If you want to be an artist, then you have to be true to yourself, and you have to be prepared to confront expectations - and you have to be prepared to disappoint your fans, too.

Steven Wilson

I get really frustrated - actually, it almost makes me angry - when I see, sometimes, magazines will publish a musician's playlist. They'll go and they'll ask, I don't know, somebody from Aerosmith or whoever, Coldplay, to list their five favourite albums. And it's always the same stuff!

Steven Wilson

Ultimately, I don't think you can be a character who's completely alien or divorced from your own personality. It's probably true of every writer - it's probably true of every filmmaker, every songwriter - that, ultimately, every character you create is a facet of yourself.

Steven Wilson

One of the beauties about going solo was being able to start from scratch and say, 'What do I really want? What kind of band do I really want? What kind of live show do I really want to stage?' Without any of the baggage of being something with history.

Steven Wilson

When you're in a band, you're all in it together. You're always available. You're always available for the albums; you're always available for the tours. There's no question of that.

Steven Wilson

If I want to do an orchestral record, if I want to do an acoustic record, if I want to do a death-metal record, if I want to do a jazz record - I can move in whichever direction I want, and no one is going to get upset about that. Except maybe my manager and my record company.

Steven Wilson

I am a great believer that you should record more than you need and then use the absolute best.

Steven Wilson

I loved disco music, and I still count Donna Summer as one of my favorites of all time.

Steven Wilson

We live in the physical world, the age of the Internet, and it's very easy to disappear from view and isolate ourselves from the rest of world and become invisible.

Steven Wilson

Porcupine Tree is a band, and it's not up to me where the band goes - it's between the manager, our agent, and the band as a whole.

Steven Wilson

It's a cliche that music rises above it all, and it's a cliche for a reason - it's very often true.

Steven Wilson

You forget, living outside of a country, that the actions of the government are not the actions of the people.

Steven Wilson

Being English, we're polite and reserved, we don't express our opinions; we're very private people.

Steven Wilson

If you want to be an entertainer and just keep your audience happy, that's one thing. But to be an artist, I think, means ultimately primarily pleasing yourself, and in that respect, you constantly have this sense of confronting the expectations of your audience.

Steven Wilson