Everybody wants to be a rapper - even country musicians.
Ad-Rock
I grew up in Nashville, born and raised. I'm a country girl, and I love country music. I had a dream I was going to be the first black female country music star, but then that wasn't the case.
Adrienne C. Moore
It's hard for a liberal to go on between Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, because it's like doing country music after hip-hop. I mean, just, the audience doesn't go from one to the other.
Al Franken
I've always stood up for country music.
Alan Jackson
The song 'Take This Job and Shove It' spent 18 weeks on the country charts in 1977. 1970s country music fans had a clearer understanding of the ennui of wage-slavery than modern elites.
Alex Pareene
I think that, in my research anyway, country music seems to be grounded in people staying true to their roots, being homegrown and being honest storytellers.
Alex Roe
I've definitely grown a new respect for Country music and have more of an understanding of what this music means to fans and what the relationship between the fans and the artist is.
I love country music, but I also love gangster rap.
Anderson East
I've heard that the true love of country music is alive and well. That gives me so much hope and so much happiness.
Ashley McBryde
I do know where I'm from, and I'm proud to be an Arkansan and to represent country music.
Country music is - can be - a loving industry.
You don't change country music; it changes you.
I love country music so much. I love all kinds of music. But when it comes down to it, I'm from East Tennessee, and country melodies and country songs have always just sliced me in the heart.
Ashley Monroe
Baseball fans! Good lord! I feel like sports fans get mad at you easier than country music fans. It scares me. I'm glad that country fans don't get mad every time I mess up.
Musically, I actually grew up listening to country music as a kid, like George Strait, Alan Jackson... all those guys. So it was kind of weird crossing over from that to pop and R&B, but you know, I love Michael Jackson, Ne-Yo, Usher, R. Kelly, Drake, Boyz II Men.
Austin Mahone
For me there are two types of country: There's the shoot-yourself-in-the-head country, and then there's really good country music.
Avicii
I didn't want kabobs, Afghan music, and rules that required girls to be carefully monitored. I wanted mac and cheese, country music, and independence.
Azita Ghanizada
When I had my television show, 'Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters,' it was my high hope to convert people to country music. It is wonderful and contagious!
Barbara Mandrell
I love sad songs. They say so much. I love country music but even the happy songs sound really sad.
Beth Ditto
Country music belongs to America.
Bill Monroe
I grew up listening to 1980s country music, mostly. Early '90s. That time period was my favorite.
I probably have the crappiest tattoo - not only in country music - but maybe the world.
Country music has to evolve in order to survive.
In country music, one of the ways we may have gone wrong in the past is trying to be politically correct all the time.
I've spent a lifetime in love with country music.
God-dang-it, country music is my heart.
My favorite songs to sing have always been songs about regret. I don't know why that is, but to me, that's country music.
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'.
I worked in every format - pop, hip-hop, and alternative. I did a national sports show. When I finally got to decide what I wanted to do, country, to me, is the most authentic. I grew up on country music my whole life.
I felt like it was the space that I could be the most authentic of anywhere because of how I grew up. Even though some of the songs and some of the texture wasn't what I like, I felt like country music was more authentic, in general, than anywhere else.
I do think that inside of country music now there's a very silent majority, and I represent that silent majority.
I grew up in Mountain Pine, Arkansas. You get no more country than where I grew up. But I also grew up in the Napster / iTunes / Spotify/ iHeart Radio era, and so I see that everything is influenced by everything else, and that's what country music is now.
Country music listeners really like genuineness, and I hope that's what we portray, and I think that's what we do.
I've never shied away from country. 'Karma Chameleon' verges on country. Reggae and country are very closely linked. If you go to Jamaica, you hear a lot of country music. There's a correlation.
I try to write like the writers I admire - I rip them off in form. It comes from George Strait and Merle Haggard records, and country music in general is really good at that, the twisted phrase... So I'm always looking for that angle in my own work.
Country music has become the music that best represents the reality of American life.
It's a very smart, progressive bunch, these people that make country music. They're not country hicks sitting behind a desk with a big cigar giving out record deals and driving round in Cadillacs with cattle horns on the front grille: it's a bunch of really wonderful, open-minded, great people down on Music Row that make this music.
I'm a country musician. I know how to play jazz, and I can play rock. But I've had to fight my entire career to get a little respect from people who don't understand where I come from.
Country music's always had the best musicians in any format of music, and I always gravitated toward that, stuff that was musically interesting.
We're trying to do the thing you don't expect out of country music. Which is to say, 'Go see the world.'
That's why we do this. In country music, we do this for this very reason... to impact people lyrically, to be a part of their lives.
I tend to support and get behind issues instead of candidates, because of the whole 'Super Bowl' generalization of our world - You're on this side, I'm on that side; you're a Republican, I'm a Democrat; you're country music, I'm rock music.
The word matters in country music, and it always has. And everybody had lived those words in country songs.
I always give a lot of credit to Ronnie Dunn for making me fall in love with country music.
Country music isn't about being better than the guy next to you - it's just making sure that you keep working hard enough to deserve the position that you get in.
I tried to mix country music into my sets in L.A., and I noticed that was when people checked out. And I was like, 'That doesn't make sense. The genre that I love the most is the one that doesn't work.'
While I don't feel like I'm an evangelist, country music is about to give me a platform, and so keeping it topically acceptable for everybody, I hope that sets some sort of example.
I've had some terrible jobs, but working in a kitchen at Cracker Barrel is probably the worst I've ever had. I was a grill cook - awful! It wasn't the smell, it was the people. The music, too. We had to be 'country fresh,' so they played this terrible country music eight hours during the shift. It was a bleak existence - a very dark time.
I love Broadway. And, I listen to country music, which I think a lot of people find surprising.
Country Music is great music because it really comes from real life experiences. It is such a great haven for reality.
