If you're making music, you must want to turn other people on to it, whether you're number one in the charts or number 60. I don't know, that's a commercial thing, but just the fact that other people like you... there's no point in making music, otherwise. Otherwise, you might as well make it in your bedroom and leave it there.
Interpretation
The essence of making music is to share it with others rather than just creating it for oneself.
In this quote, Paul Weller emphasizes the importance of connecting with an audience through music. He suggests that the value of music lies in its ability to resonate with others, highlighting that creating music solely for personal enjoyment is less meaningful. Music becomes truly valuable when it moves and engages listeners, regardless of commercial success on charts.
In practice
During a music festival speech to inspire upcoming artists.
I think, with age, you learn that it comes in bursts and you've got no control over it. I'm not one of those people who says, 'I've got to write a song every day.' I just store up ideas, and really I have to wait until it finds me; I know when I'm ready to write. It used to frustrate me, but it doesn't any more. It's just how it is.
When I'm dead, I wanna leave a body of work, like authors or great painters do. I don't wanna get ideas above my station, but why shouldn't this be comparable? Pop music was supposed to be a flash in the pan, but here we are 50 years later, and it means something to us, and it always will do. It's incredibly important.
I'd like to think I've left something in the world. Without in any way trying to be morbid, but life is very short, and I'd like to think I'd leave some body of work that would inspire other musicians long after I've gone.
It's quite liberating to get to a certain age, 'cos you're not chasing number one hits or trying to be an international superstar. I've done all that. I'm not out to prove much more to anyone but myself really, to be an artist and see if there is a new undiscovered music out there for me to make.
Playing live is what it's all about for me. It's cathartic, it's emotional, it's about communing with people. The way you feel after a gig is a such a powerful thing.
Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed.
Writers kid themselves-about themselves and other people. Take the talk about writing methods. Writing is just work-there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type with your toes-it is just work.
Art has nothing to do with clarity, does not dabble in the clear and does not make clear
The difficulty in the way of writing a children's play is that Barrie was born too soon. Many people must have felt the same about Shakespeare. We who came later have no chance. What fun to have been Adam, and to have had the whole world of plots and jokes and stories at one's disposal.
So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.
I have unbounded admiration for the nude. I worship it like a god.
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