Brian McKnight

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.

Most of the stuff I learned to play, I learned in high school. I had a band in high school, a jazz-fusion thing, and I was the keyboard player. I was interested in how the instruments worked and the theory behind playing with them.

I think the idea of a love song has changed. Most of the love songs we all loved as kids would be classified as funeral dirges now, you know, really super slow. I think nowadays the ballad has changed. It can have some up-tempo, some drums, some other things. ‘Forever’ would still be considered a ballad, I guess, but the tempo is probably more of a mid-tempo. The content is love song. I don’t know how to write anything else.

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 think social media has given everyone a voice. Social media makes everyone a celebrity on some level. I think that diminishes the power of an artist who bases their trade on their talent, that’s one of the downfalls. But the good thing is that you can connect with your fans all the time.

I’ve been a jazz artist playing pop and R&B my entire career.

To be a true artist you have to play the way you feel not the way others think you should feel.

If it ain’t fun, I want no part of it man. That’s the reason I play.

Jazz is a music that allows a person to express his deepest, most personal self.

Instrumental music can spread the international language.

Jazz is an art form that depends on its antecedents. There must be respect for the people that have gone before.

True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today.

Most people use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be soporific.

You can play a shoestring if you’re sincere.

Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission that goes far beyond just making music for the sake of music.

I hope my recordings of my own works won’t inhibit other people’s performances. The brutal fact is that one doesn’t always get the exact tempo one wants, although one improves with experience.

Don’t say Aretha is making a comeback, because I’ve never been away!

Music is the great arbiter of the world, the key to central harmony and a necessary requirement of human emotion.

It’s not exclusive, but inclusive, which is the whole spirit of jazz.

The English pianist Alan Clare was once intrigued with a workman who was carrying out some remodeling inside his house. Clare was playing some recordings, and he began to notice that the workman was whistling along with whatever music he put on – Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, it didn’t seem to matter. Even if he hadn’t heard it before, he had the natural musical ability to follow a melody closely and almost automatically. Clare decided to give him a real test and dug up his recording of Art Tatum doing Tea For Two, with the ground-breaking chord changes Tatum introduced into the tune. The workman never lost a beat nor did he lay out for a bar or two to figure out what was going on. He tracked Tatum flawlessly through all his changes, and when the record ended, he spoke for the first time. He glanced at Clare and with classic English understatement said, ‘Tricky f**ker, ain’t he?’

I was always exposed to music. Mom and dad would have the radio on constantly.