Rob Sheffield famous quotes

When we die, we will turn into songs, and we will hear each other and remember each other.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Music #Death #Song

The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with — nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they can add up to the story of a life.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Music #Jobs #Memories

If all music did was bring the past alive, that would be fine. You can hide away in music and let it recapture memories of things that used to be. But music is greedy and it wants more of your heart than that. It demands the future, your future. Music wants the rest of your life. So you can't rest easy. At any moment, a song can come out of nowhere to shake you up, jump-start your emotions, ruin your life.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Song #Memories #Heart

But bringing people together is what music has always done best.
-- Rob Sheffield

#People #Together #Done

Our lives were just beginning, our favorite moment was right now, our favorite songs were unwritten.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Song #Moments #Favorite Song

I get sentimental over the music of the ’90s. Deplorable, really. But I love it all. As far as I’m concerned the ’90s was the best era for music ever, even the stuff that I loathed at the time, even the stuff that gave me stomach cramps.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Stuff #Eras #Sentimental

When you stick a song on a tape, you set it free.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Music #Song #Sticks

There are all kinds of mix tapes. there is always a reason to make one.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Music #Tape #Kind

'Revenge' is a shameless soap in the style of Eighties shoulder-pad slap-offs like 'Dallas,' 'Dynasty' and 'Falcon Crest.' Yet there's no wink-wink camp.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Revenge #Style #Soap

Big Star invented a vision of bohemian rock & roll cool that had nothing to do with New York, Los Angeles or London, which made them completely out of style in the 1970s, but also made them an inspiration to generations of weird Southern kids.
-- Rob Sheffield

#New York #Stars #Inspiration

One of the billions of things I love about Beyonce: The harder she tries to come on crazy, the less crazy she sounds.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Crazy #Trying #Sound

Rebecca Black might sing like a robot, but that's just proof she has evolved beyond us. Her vocal is just a slightly exaggerated version of the robot glitch-twitch stutter that's been mainstream pop vocalese for the past 10 years or so.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Past #Years #Black

Our amour fou with 'The Sopranos' is headed for long-term parking, like so many of its most memorable characters. We'll never see a show like this again.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Memorable #Character #Long

On 'Idol,' Steven Tyler will be sitting at a table with two other judges, and part of his job will be keeping his yap zipped while they talk. This makes no sense at all, since Tyler has zero yap-zipping skills.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Zero #Jobs #Idols

Most of an award-show host's job is showing up and keeping a cool head and soldiering through it, whether it's the Oscars or the Hallmark Channel's 'Hero Dog Awards.'
-- Rob Sheffield

#Dog #Jobs #Hero

Like many other touchstones of twenty-first-century pop culture, 'The Sopranos' was hatched in the late Nineties, predicting a future that never arrived. It was designed for a decade that would be just like the Nineties, except more so, in an America that enjoyed seeing itself as smarter and braver and freer than ever before.
-- Rob Sheffield

#America #Would Be #Culture

Just as Bowie, Zeppelin, etc., became rock stars by remaking themselves in the image of the California girls, the Go-Gos became rock stars by pretending to be the Buzzcocks and the Sex Pistols. Jane Wiedlin always said her biggest influence was growing up in L.A. as a Bowie girl.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Girl #Sex #Stars

Julia Louis-Dreyfus is just perfect in 'Veep.' She gets to show off the spiky claws beneath her patrician finesse. The obvious way to play 'Veep' would be to make Louis-Dreyfus a folksy heroine, one with more common sense or populist heart than her enemies. But she isn't one.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Heart #Play #Common Sense

I'd shut the whole world down just to tell you
-- Rob Sheffield

#World

If the girls keep dancing, everybody's happy. If the girls don't dance, nobody's happy.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Girl #Dancing

A song nobody likes is a sad thing. But a love song nobody likes is hardly a thing at all.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Song #Likes

Love dies in many different ways, and it's natural for the grass to seem greener on the other side. But it's not a competition; there's plenty of pain to go around.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Pain #Competition #Different

Every moment of my life has a soundtrack, so I never know when some song is going to jump me by surprise and bring the memory alive.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Song #Memories #Alive

'American Horror' is the debasement of the suburban family, the way a lonely kid would have imagined it in the Seventies.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Lonely #Kids #Way

You know the Prince song where the girl's phone rings but she tells him, "whoever's calling couldn't be as cute as you?" I long to live out this moment in real life.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Cute #Girl #Song

The hungry feeling and the lonely feeling merged until it was hard to tell them apart.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Lonely #Feelings #Hungry

It’s the same with people who say, ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ Even people who say this must realize that the exact opposite is true. What doesn’t kill you maims you, cripples you, leaves you weak, makes you whiny and full of yourself at the same time. The more pain, the more pompous you get. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you incredibly annoying.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Pain #Loss #Opposites

One of Renee's friends asked her, "Does your boyfriend wear glasses?" She said, "No, he wears a Walkman.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Glasses #Your Boyfriend #Doe

It's always that one song that gets to you. You can hide, but the song comes to find you.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Song

The Word 'Repulse': I hate this word. I believe 'repel' is a perfectly good word, and 'repulsion' is the noun, as well as the title of an excellent Dinosaur Jr. song. A compulsion compels you; an impulse impels you. Nobody ever says 'compulse' or 'impulse' as a verb. So why would you ever say 'repulse'? This word haunts me in my sleep, like a silver dagger dancing before my eyes. Renee looked it up and I was wrong. But I still kind of think I'm right.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Song #Hate #Believe

Unlike me, Renee was not shy; she was a real people-pleaser. She worried way too much what people thought of her, wore her heart on her sleeve, expected too much from people, and got hurt too easily. She kept other people's secrets like a champ, but told her own too fast. She expected the world not to cheat her and was always surprised when it did.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Hurt #Real #Heart

It's kind of amazing how popular 'Grey's Anatomy' is. What other show can boast such an annoyingly sincere cast of doctors, sniveling through such perfunctory love triangles?
-- Rob Sheffield

#Doctors #Triangles #Love Triangle

Celebrity despicability is a precious thing.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Precious Things

You can't beat the beehive for glam punkette attitude.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Attitude #Beats #Glam

But MTV relishes its vestigial role as a star maker, so every year it puts all its clout into making the VMAs the biggest, splashiest, loudest show-biz extravaganza of the year, honoring all this music for existing, after a year of paying barely any attention to it.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Stars #Years #Mtv

One of the best moments of any Liars show is hearing the crowd squawk 'We're doomed! We're doomed!' on cue during 'We Fenced Other Houses with the Bones of Our Own.' Maybe not the most uplifting audience sing-along in the indie rock world, but one of the most reliably entertaining.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Uplifting #Liars #Rocks

Ronnie Spector's hair was taller and meaner and scarier than all four Shangri-La's combined, plus the drummer from the Honeycombs. You just know her rat-tail comb was a switchblade.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Hair #Tails #Four

'American Horror' goes for a very specific kind of Seventies suburban downer ambience - 'Flowers in the Attic' paperbacks, Black Sabbath album covers and late-night flicks like 'Let's Scare Jessica to Death.' It even has 'Go Ask Alice'-era urban legends.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Flower #Night #Black

Anyone watching '30 Rock' always knew Tina Fey was playing a fictionalized version of herself, a workaholic comedy writer who also plays one on TV. She's the boss; Liz Lemon just works here.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Rocks #Play #Boss

At an incredibly divisive point in pop history, Donna Summer managed to create an undeniable across-the-board experience of mass pleasure - after 'Bad Girls,' nobody ever tried claiming disco sucked again. It set the template for what Michael Jackson would do a few months later with 'Off The Wall.'
-- Rob Sheffield

#Girl #Summer #Wall

Baseball's Opening Day is full of time-honored traditions: the President throws out the first ball, the Cubs' starting pitcher walks away with a 54.00 ERA, the Royals get mathematically eliminated from the pennant race.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Baseball #Race #President

Thanks to the greatest invention of recent years, the MP3-playing alarm clock, I can now choose the song that wakes me up in the morning.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Song #Morning #Mp3

Thank you for the music, Sleater-Kinney. This gang of three was the best American punk rock band ever. Ever.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Thank You #Rocks #Three

Donna Summer would be remembered as a ground-breaking artist today even if she'd retired the day after she recorded 'I Feel Love' in 1977.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Summer #Artist #Today

'Drive,' that's the one. I love dozens of songs by R.E.M., but that's the one, even though it took me 7 or 8 years to start liking it.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Song #Years #Dozen

Every American wants a clean slate, but nobody wants to lose what they've got.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Want #Clean Slate

'I'll Tumble 4 Ya' has to be one of the most ridiculous hit singles that any international superstars have given the world.
-- Rob Sheffield

#World #Ridiculous #Superstar

I've built my whole life around loving music. I'm a writer for 'Rolling Stone,' so I am constantly searching for new bands and soaking up new sounds.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Band #Stones #Sound

It takes only one bad amp to turn your ears to oatmeal: That's how old hippies became Yanni fans.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Hippie #Oatmeal #Ears

Like most fans of 'So You Think You Can Dance,' I wouldn't know a pasodoble if it beat me with a rake.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Dance #Thinking #Rakes

Madonna was so flamboyant in terms of her look, her style, her public pronouncements, her religious taboo-smashing.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Religious #Style #Looks

We all get as miserable as Erika M. Andersen sometimes, but we rarely approach her musical-ideas-per-miserable-minute ratio.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Ideas #Musical #Ratios

One nice thing about growing up Catholic is it makes you open-minded about other people's religions, since ours is nuttier than yours.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Growing Up #Nice #People

Being a pop fan is a lot like Catholic devotion - lots of ritual, lots of ceremony... We touch the icon to enter the sacred space, genuflecting to reliquaries and ostentatoria that make something splendid of our most secret desires and agonies.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Agony #Icons #Space

Davy Jones was the grooviest of the Monkees, which makes him one of the grooviest pop stars who ever existed. He was the best dancer in the Monkees, the Cute One, the one with the coy English accent, the bowl-cut boy-child who shook those cherry-red maracas and always got the girl. He was also the guy who stole David Bowie's original name.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Cute #Girl #Stars

God bless America - what other civilization would give Patrick Dempsey another shot to rule as a sex symbol, twenty years after 'Meatballs III: Summer Job?' His reign as Dr. McDreamy on 'Grey's Anatomy' is proof that there's nothing we love more than giving Eighties celebs a heartwarming second stab at life.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Summer #Jobs #Sex

Hometown Aerosmith fans are different from other Aerosmith fans, and that mainly has to do with Joe Perry. It's tough to overstate his strange grip on the local psyche. Tyler is a star who belongs to the whole world, but Perry, that dude belongs to Boston.
-- Rob Sheffield

#Stars #Boston #Different