Growing up, I never listened to English music. I was more into Motown, as well as early rock n' roll like Chuck Berry and Little Richard.
Alex Winston
I think there's a void for some authentic soul music with an edge. I think there's some people who grew up with Motown and Stevie Wonder that still can appreciate Future, Drake, and all these different things, too, but there shouldn't be a void for those people, as well.
Anderson Paak
My father loved music. He loved Motown and R&B, and my mother loved Journey and Fleetwood Mac, so they were always listening to it and playing it.
Andra Day
Many of my friends were there at Motown. The studio was only a few blocks from where my dad's home was, where we lived.
Aretha Franklin
Motown was about music for all people - white and black, blue and green, cops and the robbers. I was reluctant to have our music alienate anyone.
Berry Gordy
I've discovered that Motown and Broadway have a lot in common - a family of wonderfully talented, passionate, hardworking young people, fiercely competitive but also full of love and appreciation for the work, for each other and for the people in the audience.
I was in about in the 8th grade when I started recording R&B, so much of what was on was the Motown sound, and The Beatles had pretty much come over and taken America by storm.
Betty Wright
Definitely just growing up in general influenced me; Detroit happened to be where I was. I feel like the city definitely has made an impact on my life and made me who I am. Detroit has an unmistakable soul - nobody can duplicate the soul we bring to the game. From Motown to J Dilla to Eminem to anything.
Big Sean
Sometimes you're inspired by an old-school song that you want to chop up and make a sample out of it. I find that with a lot of older Motown music.
Bishop Briggs
Growing up, I was listening to a ton of Motown music, Otis Redding, Aretha, and then there was the Beatles and Led Zeppelin and Janis Joplin. These were all people that I felt as though they truly felt every single lyric they said, and they weren't afraid of imperfection.
I think it's all about the music you listen to along the way. For me, my parents always played Motown music and The Beatles, so I was drawn to the soul.
I just love how everyone with that Motown sound seemed to come from a two-block radius from the actual original location. The original location was a house, and then when they outgrew it, they bought the house next door and the house next door and the house next door until they had seven houses on the same lot.
BJ the Chicago Kid
My music diet growing up was lots of sugar. Lots of retro-pop sugar. Motown, disco. A lot of English rock, like the Turtles, the Zombies, Bowie and stuff like that.
Borns
The biggest thing Motown did was change our social fabric: the way we interacted with each other as human beings.
Brandon Victor Dixon
I think that there is such power with the live performance of it - so much of what 'Motown' is about is the live performance aspect, really. The power of our production is really the music and the performances.
My introduction to Motown was through The Jackson Five and Michael Jackson. Michael's been my greatest creative inspiration, so that's how I really became familiar with Motown as a whole, and as I got older, I learned far more about the other groups.
Style and image - it's what Motown is about. They had a charm school led by Maxine Powell. There was literally an artists' development department.
Everyone you talk to in the world, whether they know it or not, because the catalog is so vast, a lot of times people have favorite songs that are Motown songs that they didn't even know were Motown songs.
Motown's policy was to build one act at a time or their favorites.
Brenda Holloway
I feel Motown really exploited me.
I listened to a lot of Marvin Gaye and Motown records.
Marvin Gaye is an inspiration to me. He was one of the first Motown musicians that my mom and dad introduced me to, and I always thought it would be a good idea if I was ever an artist, and now I am, to make a record called 'Marvin Gaye.'
I think my parents are the first influence on me music-wise. My dad was into Motown and soul, and my mom was into British '80s pop, like The Trashcan Sinatras. I grew up on that. It was great. They were the first people to really bring music into my life.
I knew I wanted to do music at eight years of age. I listened to a lot of Motown growing up, and it got to the point where I started mimicking people - Michael Jackson or whoever. People started to notice I could hold a tone. The bug was always there.
We are all big Motown fans.
Charles and I are from Augusta, Ga. - so we come from James Brown territory, soul music and Motown. And Charles has always had a lot of Southern rock in there as well.
I have very eclectic tastes. I love soul and Motown; I listen to some rap - Stormzy, Tinie Tempah, Drake. I also love classical music, American country and the folk tradition. I often start the day with gospel on my way to work. The only thing I have never got into is punk.
Every Motown act dressed classy, and we were clean-cut. Whenever you saw a Motown act, they were polished, and they knew how to treat people.
There were a lot of great acts at Motown, and some of them were hard to get along with.
When I first got to Motown, Smokey was already a fixture there. To me, he is one of the greatest songwriters and poets, so anything they ask me to do for Smokey is going to get a yes.
Growing up, I liked all the stuff that everyone else was listening to, like Motown, but the biggest group of all was The Beatles.
Growing up, I listened and was influenced by a lot of those around me. I have a big family, and my dad listened to '80s music, my mom listened to Motown, my brother listened to reggae, and my granddad was the one that got me into jazz and swing music.
One of a handful of films made in Detroit, '8 Mile' doesn't feature the Motown renaissance that Mayor Coleman A. Young dreamed of in the 1970s. Instead, it's the beaten-down city: 8 Mile refers to the line of demarcation between Detroit and suburban, mostly white Oakland County.
With my music, I don't have to stay in one lane. One day I'm in Motown, and the next day I'm in reggae.
I was never really that interested in the punk movement. I was a blues guy: I liked Motown, James Brown.
Even though I loved the Fifties doo-wop, you couldn't hold on to it. You had to change, or you was gon' be antique real quick, like the Ink Spots. And then we were at Motown and you had the Rolling Stones, simple rock & roll became the new thing.
Testify' went from a clean Motown song to straight psychedelic. Loud and feedback and people was loving it, because Motown was ending now.
And for some reason, when I'm sad, I do listen to Leonard Cohen, I do listen to Joni Mitchell. I do find myself going to the music that's actually reflecting my mood, as opposed to sticking on Motown, which might actually bring my mood up.
I think there is something to be said for churning things out. Motown churned out hits and there is nothing wrong with that.
When I was a kid in the mid-'60s, I was what's known as a moddie boy, a prototype skinhead. You all had your hair like a crew cut, cropped, with suits or Levis with red suspenders, sometimes Doc Martens. It was a thriving soul music, Motown and ska scene; we used to dance to Prince Buster and the Skatalites.
I'm obsessed with the sound of today, but I was raised on the Motown sound.
Before hip-hop existed, we were listening to soul songs from the '70s. I grew up with Motown, Elton John, and the Beatles. To me, that's good music.
My mom taught me every dance move I've ever known to the Motown hits.
My mom was a huge Adam and the Ants fan. My granddad listened to a lot of Motown and Elvis and Johnny Cash. So I was kind of well-rounded.
I made a good living for a teenager. And I had to learn all different kinds of music - jazz, swing, Motown, pop - and that inspired what kind of music I started to write.
There are certain things that we take for granted that simply would not have existed without the great migration. Motown, for example, would not have existed - it simply would not, because Berry Gordy, the founder of it, his parents had migrated from Georgia to Detroit where he founded Motown, and where did he get his talent?
I've purposely made my music to be challenging and different. There's some electronics, R&B, blues, Motown, country, jazz and lots of soul.
I know that's blasphemous when you are from Detroit, but I was never a fan of Motown stuff. I don't care for the production much.
I listen to a lot of oldies stuff. Some Motown, Michael Jackson, jazz, etc.
I grew up in one of those households where, growing up in Detroit, you gravitate towards music and cars because we were the capital for a long time. Especially during my childhood. We were the Motown sound. We were the Motor City.
