Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Great music is its own movie, already. And the challenge, as a music fan, is to keep the song as powerful as it wants to be, to not tamper with it and to somehow give it a home.
Money's really - you know, song writing, yes, there's money to be made and things like that. But really, when you talk about the real money, you talk about touring. No question.
By the time I got to record my first album, I was 26, I didn't need pen or paper - my memory had been trained just to listen to a song, think of the words, and lay them to tape.
I wrote the song For A Dancer for a friend of mine who died in a fire. He was in the sauna in a house that burned down, so he had no idea anything was going on. It was very sad.
Everyone knows about The Who, but I didn't. I knew the popular songs like "I Can See For Miles." So that was the first song I worked on because it was the catchiest and easiest.
Having room to run and having just the space to use your imagination and create stories out of everyday life, I think that had a lot to do with me wanting write. And write songs
As a singer, I just want to try to honor what the writers create - and as someone who's trying to write songs, I just hope I can stand in their company and not embarrass myself.
With writing music and writing songs and recording music and coming up with stuff, you need to kind of reengage that kind of inner child to come up with interesting perceptions.
I like having a song in my head that's never been heard and then going into a studio and recording it and hearing it exist in the world. It's a magical part. Filled with wonder.
With every song that I write, I compare it to the Beatles. The thing is, they only got there before me. If I'd been born at the same time as John Lennon, I'd have been up there.
There are things that I refuse to deal with except through my music... because I don't trust humanity that much, and I don't know if I trust me that much. But I trust the songs.
A good song should make you wanna tap your foot and get with your girl. A great song should destroy cops and set fire to the suburbs. I'm only interested in writing great songs.
Everything I do is about setting up for the next. I think that my confidence and belief in myself as well as the music and trusting my judgment of my songs really grew the most.
We'd record a song that people liked and wanted to hear on the radio, and the radio wouldn't play it because it was too long. Or they wanted to edit it, which we wouldn't allow.
I don't like lyrics that are just thrown together, that were obviously written as you went along, or the song was already written and the guy made up the lyrics in five minutes.
Some songs you get. Some songs you may not. And I think that's the beauty of art: to question and to ask, to understand the deeper meaning after two or three or four listenings.
The idea of taking a song, envisioning the overall sound in my head and then bringing the arrangement to life in the studio...well, that gives me satisfaction like nothing else.
You must not you worry about leaks or pieces [stolen] on your computer. You just make songs, you gotta make music, keep stuff out. You may not know rap, but that's how it works.
It's the way I enjoy making art - I like sitting down and making five beats; I enjoy that process. I can go two weeks without making a song and just making beats and I'll be OK.
For every Foo Fighters record, we've had two or three beautiful, acoustic-based songs, but they never usually make their way to the record, because we want to make rock records.
I started to write before I went to SUNY Purchase music conservatory. As an audition I submitted what I now think are really awful songs, but I guess they saw something in them.
Def Jam, they've shown nothing but love as far as supporting my records. We haven't missed yet, radio-wise, and every song that they've actually tried to support has been No. 1.
I spent 80% of my time working on this, and 20% of my time working on music. Why do you think the song 'Niggas in Paris' is called 'Niggas in Paris?' 'Cause niggas was in Paris!
In a way, the traditional album is no longer as important as it used to be. But at the same time, I don't want to be the kind of artist who just releases one song after another.
The roughest part for me when I'm writing a song is staring at a blank page. Where am I going from here? If you're a songwriter, you have to do that every time you start a song.
I don't want an angry song with no silver lining ending up on my album. Then I'd have to play, or feel obliged to play, that song every night in repetition as a mantra of anger.
I can play the guitar and the keys and the drums. I'm not brilliant at any of them. I can sing too. Some of my friends are proper musicians but I'm a song-writer. I write songs.
I love seeing young girls and their parents and grandparents at my concerts all loving the music from Grease when I perform those songs (and yes, I do perform a bunch of them!).
Your goal is to write that masterpiece. Yello's masterpiece was "Oh Yeah." Whatever I say about the song doesn't matter, because it has a huge impact on how we remember the era.
As much as heartbreak music might be therapeutic, we all want love and long for that feeling. So if a song can give you that feeling, even without being in love, that's amazing.
Lights are to drama what music is to the lyrics of a song. The greatest part of my success in the theatre I attribute to my feeling for colors, translated into effects of light.
When I first started writing the album, "Cry Baby" was a song that I really wanted to write because it represented all of these personal insecurities that I had for a long time.
I project love, music and love, and I pray for peace. A good song cuts straight to the heart; sometimes it doesn't need to be too many lines - of course, I do love a good story.
In America, they want you to accomplish these great feats, to pull off these David Copperfield-type stunts. You want me to be great, but you don't ever want me to say I'm great?
Just trying to get to know what director Bill Condon wanted. He's a great director and knows exactly what he wants. He knew every lyric to every song; knew where a handicap was.
Throughout my career, if I have done anything, I have paid attention to every note and every word I sing - if I respect the song. If I cannot project this to a listener, I fail.
One of the album's songs features Mary J. Blige, but I don't want to talk too much about it yet. I think you will hear the music that's been playing in my head when it comes out
I am very busy and don't have a lot of down time, but I write my best songs in those situations. I enjoy my life the most when I have a bunch of things going on at the same time.
My brother says that I was writing songs about fate while he was off playing soccer. Now I tell him he's 33 and being a professional while I'm playing soccer with my friends. Ha!
I sang those old gospel songs for my mother, and she said, is that you? And I said, yes, ma'am. And she came over and put her arms around me and said, God's got his hands on you.
It felt very natural to me to write a Christmas song, but at the same time I had to really put all sorts of pressure aside and just let the creativity flow and see what came out.
Sam Phillips asked me to go write a love song, or maybe a bitter weeper. So I wrote a song called, "Cry Cry Cry," went back in and recorded that for the other side of the record.
When we were making vinyl records we had a lot of time limitations for each record so songs were left off for a number of reasons. Now, with CDs, much more music can be included.
The songs that I sing and the songs that I write have always just been what I feel my voice does well, and what my inspirations have been and a kind of culmination of everything.
I start a lot more songs than I finish, because I realize when I get into them, they're no good. I don't throw them away, I just put them away, store them, get them out of sight.
I do get a bit of a sense, just from e-mails some people send me, just a little sense of how people in different countries seem to respond differently to certain lines in a song.
I always had a standard of, back when I was doing the country music I always told people I would never record a song that I wouldn't sit down and sing in front of my mom and dad.
We live in a very strange world where everything is so accessible; if you like one song someone did, you can see what they ate for breakfast or what kind of sunglasses they wore.
A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.
That I am your heart's secret fills me with song. I wish I could sing of you here in my cage. You are my heart's hidden poem. I reread you, memorize you every moment we're apart.