As many music fans have likely heard by now, country superstar Toby Keith passed away in his sleep on Monday (February 5) after a long debilitating battle with cancer. He was 62-years-old. Keith was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2022. Now, his big, deep voice and his radiant personality will be missed.
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And while there is a lot of celebration of the artist’s songs out this week, we thought it would be worth diving into what Keith said outside of his many tunes and albums. Indeed, here below are the best 20 Toby Keith quotes.
1. “I write all year long, and at the end of the year I pull these forty or fifty things out and say, ‘Which of these things do I want to record?'”
2. “I’m influenced by all kinds of music. I have a very diverse iPod. You never know if I’ve got it on shuffle. You never know what you are going to hear next. I like all genres.”
3. “It’s like pulling teeth to get me to do photo shoots. And I don’t mind doing interviews if they’re by phone, but I hate to go sit down and have to meet somebody somewhere, you know what I mean.”
4. “Here’s the thing. Just because you’re pro-troops doesn’t mean you’re pro-war. And just because you’re anti-war doesn’t mean you’re anti-troops. Just because you don’t support the war people think you are anti-troops and you are a bad guy.”
5. “I always vote for the guy I think can get it done. And it ain’t nobody’s business who I vote for, but I voted for Clinton twice. And that just blows people’s minds when they hear that.”
6. “Writing songs and looking for ideas is like blinking my eyes. It’s an involuntary muscle. I do it without thought.”
7. “There’s a band of studio session—hot players—that play on my albums… They’re an eclectic bunch of misfits that I’ve worked with for years and years.
8. “When you’ve got an extra gear in your head where that’s all you do, you’ve constantly got a little radar up. … And when something hits that strikes that beeper, hits that radar, it’s like my song skills kick right in and go, ‘Oh, OK, there’s a song in that.’ And then I start trying to figure it out.”
9. “I’m into hip-hop, rap, country, blues, gospel, old school, new school… whatever… pop. If it’s really good, I like it. I don’t have to be told what to listen to. If I like it and it’s good, I’ll listen to it.”
10. “I write all year, and at the end of the year I put an album out. And if sucks, it sucks, and if it’s good, it’s good. I just let it lay where it lays. It doesn’t stop from doing another one next year.”
11. “Don’t compromise even if it hurts to be yourself.”
12. “My mom taught us the Serenity Prayer at a young age.”
13. “In the years that I’ve seen concerts, when I’ve paid to see somebody I want to see, there would be a certain amount of songs I’d want to hear. So whether it’s stuff I want to play every night or not – or stuff I’ve been playing for years or stuff you get tired of playing—you have to play what people pay for and make it fair for them.”
14. “Everybody should have their own thing, and if he don’t want to be a role model, that should be up to him. In the right situations, I can try to help and be a role model, but I’m still gonna speak my mind, and if that affects the role-model deal, then too bad.”
15. “Well, I couldn’t do the day-to-day stuff of being a politician or anything, but I just think everybody should have an opinion and everybody should vote, and that’s what we’re built on.”
16. “I play golf with my shirttail out. I own a golf course because it’s very, very close to my house, and I don’t want to drive 45 minutes to the north side of Oklahoma City to play golf every day. I have race horses ’cause I love horses and it’s my hobby.”
17. “Writing is not work. In fact, there’s nothing better. Writing is something that if the music business went completely away tomorrow—radio stations quit existing and music quit being popular and it was old hat—I would still write songs.”
18. “We try to buy as much American-made shirts as we can and stuff to sell. It’s very difficult to cover every base as much as our country has been saturated with foreign products.”
19. “I’ve always said I can’t tell sometimes that people even have an album out until I see them nominated for a Grammy. I think country gets dumped on across the board by the Grammys.”
20. “If I hear a conversation and somebody says something intriguing, my first thought is, ‘Is that a song?’ I write all year long, and at the end of the year I pull these forty or fifty things out and say which of these things do I want to record.”
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