Tracy Chapman Quotes

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Tracy Chapman

Profession : Musician

Birth : March 30, 1964

Everyone is looking for connections between the songs. I don't usually approach a record as a concept. There's no overriding theme I'm trying to represent. It's all about the individual songs.

Tracy Chapman

I dressed up as a veterinarian for a Halloween costume party. I had the lab coat. I got a couple of stuffed animals for patients and put bandages on them.

Tracy Chapman

I end up writing about all kinds of things. I never make an attempt to write about anything in particular. I don't have a little list of topics to write about.

Tracy Chapman

I learn all these things about the record talking about it after it's finished.

Tracy Chapman

I often write either really early in the morning, or really late at night.

Tracy Chapman

I see some recurring themes: things that feel threaded together, some symbolic references, and songs about some of the big questions, like death. There are a lot of references to weather, too!

Tracy Chapman

Love's a recurring theme through my work.

Tracy Chapman

My older sister encouraged me from early on and bought me one of the first guitars I had. She listened to all of the crappy songs that I wrote when I was 8 years old and encouraged me to keep doing it.

Tracy Chapman

Some things remain fragments, just the lyrics and melodies or a line or two or a verse.

Tracy Chapman

The songs are not necessarily autobiographical. A lot of songs are a combination of influences. It might be some part of my life, or something I've felt, or something somebody's told me. It all comes together.

Tracy Chapman

We have more media than ever and more technology in our lives. It's supposed to help us communicate, but it has the opposite effect of isolating us.

Tracy Chapman

When you feel like you've had a good show, you go backstage and you talk to yourself about it, and if you have a bad show you talk to yourself about it.

Tracy Chapman

With other people, you're always swapping music. Somebody is always listening to something you've never heard. It's a great way to hear all sorts of new things.

Tracy Chapman

I'm a hopeful cynic.

Tracy Chapman

Growing up in Cleveland, I learned about singing from my mother, who had once sung professionally and who admired Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin.

Tracy Chapman

I picked up the guitar at 11, but even before then, I was writing songs on the organ.

Tracy Chapman

The way popular music is categorized and formatted cuts down on everyone's options. And although people don't talk about it, there are a lot of issues of race determining musical categories of what's rock, R&B, or even folk. It ends up restricting creativity.

Tracy Chapman

Maybe it's naive to say, but it almost seems like, in the past, people tried to sell you something you would actually need, like a hammer or a broom or a toothbrush. But now there's this notion that they can sell you anything. And all they have to do is convince you that you need it.

Tracy Chapman

As a child I always had a sense of social conditions and political situations. I think it had to do with the fact that my mother was always discussing things with my sister and me - also because I read a lot.

Tracy Chapman

I'm still thinking and hoping there's an opportunity for people to have better lives and that significant change can occur.

Tracy Chapman