“Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.”
– Brian Eno
“The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don’t set out to say anything very important.”
– Brian Eno
“We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces, which represent 30% of our musical experience.”
– Brian Eno
“I make a lot of pieces of music that I never release as CDs.”
– Brian Eno
“It’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.”
– Brian Eno
“I hate the rock music tradition. I can’t bear it!”
– Brian Eno
“Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You’re glad someone’s done it but you don’t necessarily want to listen to it.”
– Brian Eno
“I’d love it if American kids were listening to Muslim music.”
– Brian Eno
“Musicians are there in front of you, and the spectators sense their tension, which is not the case when you’re listening to a record. Your attention is more relaxed. The emotional aspect is more important in live music.”
– Brian Eno
“You can’t really imagine music without technology.”
– Brian Eno
“Agressive music can only shock you once. Afterwards its impact declines. It’s inevitable.”
– Brian Eno
“I don’t live in the past at all I’m always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind.”
– Brian Eno
“I had a lot of trouble with engineers, because their whole background is learning from a functional point of view, and then learning how to perform that function.”
– Brian Eno
“One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes you move to places you wouldn’t if you knew better.”
– Brian Eno
“When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it’s the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone’s talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false ‘intelligence’ and selected ‘leaks.’”
– Brian Eno
“The whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular.”
– Brian Eno
“When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That’s one of the great feelings – to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue.”
– Brian Eno
“I would like to see a future where artists think that they have a right to contemplate things like global warming.”
– Brian Eno
“Something I’ve realized lately, to my shock, is that I am an optimist, in that I think humans are almost infinitely capable of self-change and self-modification, and that we really can build the future that we want if we’re smart about it.”
– Brian Eno
“I’ve noticed a terrible thing, which is I will agree to anything if it’s far enough in the future.”
– Brian Eno
“I felt extremely uncomfortable as the focal point, in the spotlight. I really like the behind the scenes role, because all my freedom is there.”
– Brian Eno
“We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces, which represent 30% of our musical experience.”
– Brian Eno
“Sometimes you recognize that there is a category of human experience that has not been identified but everyone knows about it. That is when I find a term to describe it.”
– Brian Eno
“I’ve had quite a lot of luck with dreams. I’ve often awoken in the night with a phrase or even a whole song in my head.”
– Brian Eno
“Everybody is entertained to death.”
– Brian Eno
“The basis of computer work is predicated on the idea that only the brain makes decisions and only the index finger does the work.”
– Brian Eno
“I take sounds and change them into words.”
– Brian Eno
“It’s not the destination that matters. It’s the change of scene.”
– Brian Eno
“I think most artists would be happy to have bigger audiences rather than smaller ones. It doesn’t mean that they are going to change their work in order necessarily to get it, but they’re happy if they do get it.”
– Brian Eno
“At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.”
– Brian Eno