Brian McKnight

I think when my brother (Claude who founded vocal sextet Take Six) got his deal and I saw him on the Grammys that was when I said, ‘oh, you know what? If he can do it then maybe I can do too’ and that’s when I really focused on trying to make it in this business.

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.

I think I’d have to say my favorite IWC. They have been around for so long and the craftsmanship is top notch. A watch maker that has been in business over 100 years has to know what they are doing.

I went back and listened to the first three albums I made and tried to figure out what was special about them, why people keep going back to them. I think it was because I didn’t know what I was doing. I had no idea if they were going to play it on the radio or anything. All I did was write songs, so that’s what I got back to.

I’m not like a legend that – so I’m sort of in the middle in this sort of gray area where, you know, I’m creating music, and I’m not saying there isn’t an audience, because there is; because all of those people go out and spend $80 to $150 on a concert ticket.

You can’t listen to what people who aren’t musical have to say. When Anytime was released, I had bad reviews, and at first I was hurt. Your songs are like your children. You don’t want to hear, ‘Your kid is ugly.’ But I knew the record was good and it would sell.

Nothing else will ever capture the democratic process in sound as perfectly as Jazz.

For me, the main thing is spontaneity and taking chances.

You’ve got to be willing to put stuff on the line, otherwise it doesn’t have much meaning.

To this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for originality. There aren’t any.

In classical music, only two people are important, the composer and the conductor. Everybody else is a serf. In jazz, a thing of beauty is created collectively with everybody getting to express an idea. And that reflects what democratic society is – or should be.

Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? All the rest of you, if you

Jazz improvisation is the art of collective negotiated expression.

Something just grabs you about a song.

Just because I’m playing jazz I don’t forget about me. I play or write me the way I feel through jazz, or whatever. Music is, or was, a language of the emotions.

I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write to ultimately be at peace with himself.

The people who know nothing about music are the ones always talking about it.

You’re just as beautiful as you feel.

After you’ve done all the work and prepared as much as you can, what the hell, you might as well go out and have a good time.

I think pop music is one of the few things in the 20th century that have made giant strides in reverse.