Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My favorite period is when we lived in the land of the three-minute song. The Motown thing - I thought they were genius in knowing that's as much as a listener can take.
Breaking up monotony is key to life and it doesn't matter whether I'm stacking shelves or writing songs, if I was doing the same thing every day I just couldn't take it.
I don't want my reputation to take me over, I just want to be judged on my songs. I want people to come and see me because they want to, not because fashion dictates it.
I've never written songs about relationships. I've written songs about how I feel. The songs are more about me, than another person. That's the way I like to look at it.
You need to get outside of your comfort zone to write songs that are interesting, songs that are compelling, songs that are different from what other people are writing.
My favorite songs are my favorite songs because they just feel like a certain moment, or a certain photo, just a snapshot for whatever three or four minutes the song is.
I like making songs up. Whether or not they're great songs or good songs, whatever. It's something I've always done, and I definitely feel like I've gotten better at it.
It's great when you can write a meaningful song that touches people, but sometimes you just wanna have fun and sing a silly song that doesn't reflect on you as a person.
When you break into song, it's not about dialogue, it's not about how you would speak in a naturalistic sense-it's about expressing your inner torment or your inner joy.
You hear people sing songs about when they really can't stand anyone anymore or you hear people sing songs about when they really love someone and they really love them.
To me, the hook of the riff is what makes a great guitar recording. It's the backbone of the whole song. When you have a strong riff, it's the rocket fuel for the track.
It is a bird-flight of the soul, when the heart declares itself in song. The affections that clothe themselves with wings are passions that have been subdued to virtues.
"Cannonball Adderley said, 'First 20 minutes we'll jazz out, then the last hour it's gonna be songs that people paid to see.' Which is why he was driving a Rolls-Royce."
A song doesn't just come on. I've always had to tease it out, squeeze it out. 'No thesaurus can give you those words, no rhyming dictionary. They must happen out of you.
Most of the time a spark of beauty or truth will start a fire of a song but fires rarely produce goodness on their own ... you need to control them and put them to work.
I took temp jobs, recorded a demo in the evenings and eventually shopped a record deal. All I knew was that I wanted to write songs; thankfully, I also got to sing them.
I'd rather have quality over quantity. It's about perfecting each song and making sure it's what you want to do. And then even with what I share it's all very strategic.
As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I'd written? Yes. There's many of them!
Life is a song - sing it. Life is a game - play it. Life is a challenge - meet it. Life is a dream - realize it. Life is a sacrifice - offer it. Life is love - enjoy it.
A day to God is a thousand years, Men walk around with a thousand fears. The true joy of love brings a thousand tears, In the world of desire, there's a thousand snares.
I've written more songs for this record than I ever have in the past so I'm trying to give it a lot of special attention to be sure my ideas really get translated right.
I'm not a real good musician, but I can write [a song] pretty well. I experiment once in a while to see what I can do. I find out the best I can do is stay with ballads.
Any one thing can get in the way of you and your brain being comfortable and being inspired. It's the difference between a really big song and a song that never existed.
I tend to like simple music. And clever, succinct lyrics. Songs that don't try to be more than they need to to be effective, to stir up something emotionally within you.
Music is made by individuals. Some artists will be very politically overt in their songs, some will be more subtle. You have to be true to yourself, true to your nature.
What I really search for is something that I really love hearing, something that's my own private game: If I find a song I really like, I try to do a definitive version.
When I write a song, I see a tunnel, and then the chorus is an open space, or the bassline is doing this shape. I see songs as a more of a geometric, spacial experience.
Some songs, some nights won't do anything for you, but people enjoy them and that's the job. The magic is finding those places to stand in the song and gain perspective.
I know a tree feels it when the wind blows through it. It probably goes, 'Chhhhhh, this is wonderful.' And that's how I feel when I'm singing some songs. It's wonderful.
Whenever I heard the song of a bird and the answering call of its mate, I could visualize the notes in scale, all built up within my consciousness as a natural symphony.
I rather hate the whole digital world concerning music - nothing to touch, too many songs and no thread, no artwork etc., and no label to talk with and have support from.
I got to realizing that I wanted to record, I wanted to experiment. And doing those same old songs the same old way - I said, 'I think it's time for me to have some fun.'
I'm a creative person and I use painting, acting, writing, writing songs, or whatever, as tools to just get a point across, in order to communicate a story or an emotion.
I thought, I might not look my best, I've forgotten half the words to my songs and I'm suffering from post-traumatic stress, but I've just got to get out there and do it.
There's still a feeling that uncensored emotions make a good song. They don't. Pure emotion is just somebody screaming at you, or crying. It doesn't communicate anything.
It's a really fun hobby to set imagery to music, and finding the right songs for that. Your favorite song in the world might not work at all... for one reason or another.
When I'm sitting in the church alone, I can hear singing of the old people. I can hear their singing and I can hear their praying, and sometimes I hum one of their songs.
I don't kind of want to be known as a one-trick pony who just does the adult-alternative song once a year that makes it onto the radio and people sort of think it's nice.
'Faucet Failure' was my favorite because I just had fun with it, and it was just 10 minutes, and I didn't overthink anything, and I wanted to just have fun with the song.
When I record, it feels like I'm in a bubble. There's nothing else in my head right then. It's just that song, and I'm trying to really sound like what the song is about.
When people ask me why are you singing a drinking song if you don't drink anymore, because when I did drink I drank enough to sing drinking songs for the rest of my life!
We had our unhappy moments but they got channelled into the kind of sadness that was necessary for singing a song about going nowhere. So it worked out very well I think.
When you're given a song, it's my job to record the lyrics, story and emotion, and make everyone who is listening to the song believe that it was my words and experience.
Whenever you play a song, you're basically playing with a lot of zeros and ones. These are Western compositional models that other cultures have explored in so many ways.
Lust is about satisfaction. Love is about sacrificing, serving, surrendering, sharing, supporting, and even suffering for others. Most love songs are actually lust songs.
The [book of the bible] Song Of Songs is an amazing erotic love poem that the church has tried very hard not to notice. It is really beautiful, and musical in its poetry.
If you put all the songs together that I've written on band records, and put it up next to my solo record, there's definitely a different kind of feel than Billy's songs.
Really rather fascinating, you know,' he confided, and I recognized, with an internal sigh, the song of the scholar, as identifying a sound as the terr-whit! of a thrush.
I'm not one of these people who sits down and writes to say I'm gonna write a song about this or that, or a specific subject. The songs actually kind of write themselves.
Songwriting is actually a really great outlet. I kind of recommend it. You get to sum up whatever is going on in your life in a song, then perform it really passionately.