Even though my songs may sound very personal, to me most of them are fiction. It is a great way for me to be able to live a fantasy life as a writer because I get to be someone else, someplace else for three and a half minutes, just like the listener.

I think recordings have been a terrific advance because now, when you have a piece of music, particularly something that appears to the listener very complicated, there's really a push to the world to try to figure out what it was that he was hearing.

When I was speaking about communicating, I meant that the listener - we have to reach the listener; otherwise, of course, you're writing the piece, as I say, only for the satisfaction of seeing it on the paper for yourself, and then it ends right there.

I'm a good listener, and I take into consideration everything people tell me, but at the same time, I believe my eyes as well as the experience I had as a player. So players who underperform? There has to be a reason why... my job is for them to perform.

Country music has taken so many forms, and I've always contended that it does not matter if the casual listener falls in love with country music through Florida Georgia Line, Taylor Swift, Old Crow Medicine Show or whomever - just get in and start digging!

So when you tell a joke, you want to make someone laugh, or if you tell a story about someone who had a heart attack, it may be because you want the listener to exercise. Stories are tools to create social cohesion and to get humans to strategize together.

I guess I would definitely feel a bit of a void in what people are getting from music these days. And I think that the problem lies not so much on the listener. People kind of listen to what is presented to them, whether it be on the radio or at a local venue.

My mum, who died in 2011, was the most loving mother you could ask for. She was very compassionate, always a good listener, and her love was a constant throughout my life. She was very sympathetic, kind and understanding and I think these values can be underrated.

The danger of that - and there's a grave danger that I, myself, have to be very aware of - is that you become so involved and intrigued in the language that sometimes you lose track that that is only a means to an aesthetic experience that the listener has to get.

As the lone black host at two different all-sports stations, black callers and listeners dominated my show. Black advertisers did not. The show was financially supported primarily by white businesses, and the largest demographic for listener growth was white males.

Music is a physical expression that has a physical impact upon the listener. Sound travels in waves through the air. This is not abstract. This is scientific fact. And it makes physical contact with the eardrum... and with the heart... and with the rest of the body.

Listeners are kind of ambushed... if a poem just happens to be said when they're listening to the radio. The listener doesn't have time to deploy what I call their 'poetry deflector shields' that were installed in high school - there's little time to resist the poem.

A few things I've noticed about myself as a listener, and the music that I relate to and the music that's continued to mean something to me since I was a little kid or a teenager, is that they're songs that tell stories and songs that come from a place of experience.

The absolute key difference between television and radio is the ability of radio to communicate. With television you can watch the screen and your mind can be anywhere. On radio it requires a certain amount of discipline from the listener to follow what's being said.

Studying design has made me a much, much more astute observer of this aspect of business. And I'm working mightily to improve my empathic skills. I've dramatically improved my ability to read facial expressions - and I'm trying to be a better, more attentive listener.

Kanye's the best listener I've ever worked with. If I interrupt Kanye, every single time, he'll wait for me to finish before speaking. It's a running joke - sometimes I interrupt him just to see. And he always goes, 'No, no, finish. I want to hear what you have to say.'

I want my music to be accessible to every listener because I know that I really have something to say in terms of really, you know, removing thorns from people, thorns that really makes us unaware that we are bleeding with these thorns, like pain, grief, jealousy and so on.

I'm not sure it's a better music world of appreciation and performance. I think the listener is a different guy, and listening is something he does in passing, with other stuff going on. There's less care and understanding of the relationship between the song and the listener.

I think, when I started writing songs, my voice just became another tool. It wasn't something that I was going to try desperately to woo a listener. As long as I'm using my voice in a way that helps people understand what I'm trying to say, then I feel like I'm doing all right.

I know that everyone who listens to radio creates you in a visual image that they need you to have. Whatever that is, I thought, let them have it. Let me be who the listener needs me to be and let me not contradict that with the reality of my photograph and risk disappointing them.

PM Modi believes in detailed planning through extensive consultation. He is an example as a listener - no interruptions, no urgent phone calls, no distractions; he absorbs every input. He doesn't hesitate to say he needs more inputs, another round of briefing, or more time to mull over.

I love watching Billy Bob, just as a punter anyway. I like his work. But working with him is really easy and really straight-forward. He's immediately good. He doesn't have to work up to it. He doesn't make your life difficult. He listens. He's a very good listener, in terms of his acting.

I've been musically inclined since I picked up an instrument in the fourth grade. I just really appreciate music. I love to listen to it; I love to sing. I wouldn't consider myself, like, a natural singer. I just developed it over time, honestly, just listening. I'm a great listener to music.

I listen more to music when I'm on my computer. I'm into the latest YouTube thing. I'm a nanosecond kind of listener, but if I'm driving I would be listening to a Merle Haggard box set. It's a weird experience listening to 'Working Man Blues' by Merle Haggard and cruising around in a Porsche.

I suppose my job is to describe spaces that are honest to me. And the goal, I suppose, is that the listener can hear themselves in some way in that song and also, in some way, hear me. And so if the listener is able to identify with my honesty then I'm being the most helpful I can possibly be.

One quality of a good songwriter is to be vague. A vague notion, a vague image, but enough to give the listener the opportunity to make more out of what's being said than is there. That's the great thing about Bob Dylan's songs: We the listeners have made more out of them than he ever intended.

I think, as an artist, the overall goal is to teach and educate no matter what the song is about. Somewhere where a listener can get something out of it, something that can give them help to move forward, help them learn something, analyze something in a different way, or think about something.

As a writer, I find it very satisfying when a lyric suddenly ties together more neatly than you expected it to. But for the listener, hearing a good lyric is not generally as exciting as hearing a great beat or a great riff or a great melody or even a distinctive singing voice for the first time.

There's a very curious and - and almost sadistic lust for blood that overcomes the concert listener, and there's a waiting for it to happen: a waiting for the horn to fluff; a waiting for the strings to become ragged; a waiting for the conductor to forget the subdivide, you know? And it's dreadful!

When women reassert their relationship with the wildish nature, they are gifted with a permanent and internal watcher, a knower, a visionary, an oracle, an inspiratrice, an intuitive, a maker, a creator, an inventor, and a listener who guide, suggest, and urge vibrant life in the inner and outer world.

Flipping the dial through available radio stations there will blare out to any listener an array of broadcasts, 24/7, propagating Religious Right politics, along with what they deem to be 'old-time gospel preaching.' This is especially true of what comes over the airwaves in Bible Belt southern states.

King Princess is like an attitude. I take comfort in it as kind of a shield to exist in, where I can make cohesive art. And it's androgynous, which is intentional. It's important to me that my art exist in a kind of neutral space, genderless to some degree. And give the listener some imagery to hold on to.

Listener and reader input is every bit as important as anything any of us can say. We'd be like crazy people chattering in the middle of that empty field that Joe Biden thinks we should stand in to be safe from swine flu if it weren't for the calls, the letters, the blogs, and the reaction from our audience.

I don't want any of my records to sound like one style throughout. That's why I choose different grooves and songs: tunes that are sensitive and slow as well as pieces that are abstract and fast. The approach I want to take with my records is to give the listener a variety of grooves, concepts, and composers.

I've written in the middle of a conversation or the grocery store or at another band's concert or in the last moments before falling asleep. It's pretty unpredictable. I think it's always flowing, and sometimes I'm not listening. There's no formula for when I'm going to be able to be a good listener to myself.

The best thing I could say is you do have to be a really good listener. If I go to a family reunion, and there's 400 people there, everybody comes up and tells me their stories, right? And I think that when you're a good listener, and you can imagine how someone's talking, dialogue is your key friend, is it not?

I am no theologian. I am a layman. I am among those who are preached to, and who listen. It is not for me to preach. I should not willingly forego being a listener, a man who reads the Gospels and then listens to what others say that our Lord meant. But sometimes a listener speaks out, and listens to his own voice.

Everybody is an expert on one thing - that's what I learned in my high school journalism class - and that's, of course, his own life. And everybody deserves to live and have his story told. And if it doesn't seem like an interesting story, then that's the failure of the listener, or the journalist who retells it badly.

Overall, I think the main thing a musician would like to do is give to the listener the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe... That's what I would like to do. I think that's one of the greatest things you can do in life, and we all try to do that in some way. The musician's is through his music.

An aria in an opera - Handel's 'Ombra mai fu,' for example - gets along with an incredibly small number of words and ideas and a large amount of variation and repetition. That's the beauty of it. It's not taxing to the listener's intelligence because if you haven't heard it the first time round, it'll come around again.

That's who my mom is. She's a listener and a doer. She's a woman driven by compassion, by faith, by a fierce sense of justice and a heart full of love. So, this November, I'm voting for a woman who is my role model, as a mother, and as an advocate. A woman who has spent her entire life fighting for families and children.

My mother, a very eclectic listener, had the first Doors album and gave it to me when I expressed interest in the band. It was one of the first records I ever had. As the years passed, the babysitters who used to look after me would bring their Doors albums to the apartment, and that's how I got to hear their later work.

I wanted there to be something to fill the space and to catch the listener's ear, but I didn't want there to be any 'Virtual Self' songs that had a clearly defined vocal with lyrics and top line. If you do hear any lyrics, it's just your brain filling in the gap, because those moments are just various syllables combined.

If you really watch 'The Voice' and follow Adam, he's very ADD. He's kind of one place here, and then he's over here the next minute; he's kind of all over the place. When it comes down to being very serious, and especially when we were talking about the finale song, he's actually very serious, and he's a very good listener.

I think, to be a great conversationalist, you need to be interested in being in said conversation. Oddly enough, I think you need to be a great listener, and I do think I'm a good listener. I think that's my asset - I always listen to people when I talk to them, and that's a big thing you have to have in life and in podcasts.

You know, if Kelly Clarkson wants to do country albums because that's what inspires her, then let her do it. Look at Kanye West or Ludacris... they aren't rappin' and cussin' like they were on their first few albums, so what does that make them? It's all in the eye of the beholder and the listener. We all use our outlet to grow ourself.

I think the reason that swearing is both so offensive and so attractive is that it is a way to push people's emotional buttons, and especially their negative emotional buttons. Because words soak up emotional connotations and are processed involuntarily by the listener, you can't will yourself not to treat the word in terms of what it means.

Individual psychotherapy - that is, engaging a distressed fellow human in a disciplined conversation and human relationship - requires that the therapist have the proper temperament and philosophy of life for such work. By that I mean that the therapist must be patient, modest, and a perceptive listener, rather than a talker and advice-giver.

Share This Page