Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I actually admire the Indian artiste 'Lost Stories.' He made a remix of my song 'Faded.' That is really good and cool because it actually represented Indian music. I just loved the song; it so unique.
Oh sure, the songs have all totally evolved. I mean, when you're playing the same songs night in night out, they take on a life of their own. I can't even remember what I wrote some of them about now!
I would just be vibing with whatever I liked the most. And then there were a couple songs that I started on my own. I would have a melody or an idea and I would take it to the studio to go through it.
People showed me this way of dealing with music, writing songs, thinking about music and shows and our community and the fact that it doesn't have to be about being popular or fashion or making money.
My favorite thing to do as a kid was pretend I was in the opening credits of a sitcom. As the theme song would play, I'd look up at the imaginary camera and smile as my name would flash on the screen.
Usually now a song starts just in my head with a melody or a lyric idea coming first.Then typically I'll go to a guitar, unless it's a instrumental then I'll usually build it on a keyboard instrument.
I'm not somebody that has an encyclopedic knowledge of ballads and could sit around a fire and sing songs for three hours. I basically only know the songs that I've taken on and reworked and recorded.
Me, I was still in the pygmy hippo in a skirt, singing lusty songs about Solomon's private life and a giant stone back and forth through the air as I climbed out of the quarry at the edge of the site.
I appreciate the additional additives and preservatives that help sell a project, but I'm sticking to what works best for me. I gotta sell the album live on stage and make people believe in the songs.
I love "Frosty the Snowman." My family and I like to go on a sleigh ride with a two-horse sleigh in Aspen, so we all scream different songs at the top of our lungs. I hope it doesn't scare the horses.
I've always believed that there's an amazing number of things you can do through a rock'n'roll song and that you can do serious writing in a rock song if you can somehow do it without losing the beat.
But the greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out. You want the listener to find the song on their own. If you give too much away, it takes away from the imagination.
I have loved flowers that fade,Within whose magic tentsRich hues have marriage madeWith sweet unmemoried scents:A honeymoon delight,A joy of love at sight,That ages in an hourMy song be like a flower!
I was working for Alan Lomax in the Library of Congress folk song archive, and starting to realize what a wealth of different kinds of music there was in this country that you never heard on the radio.
Along with some of the worst music of Bob Dylan's career ("Self-Portrait," 1970), this period produced some gems - including many songs recorded with The Band in '67 but not released until years later.
When I look at great singers like Sinatra, Bennett and (Tom) Jones, I see great performers that can really move an audience. I really consider myself a troubadour privately and a song-plugger publicly.
At one time musical theater, particularly in the '40s and '50s, was a big source of pop songs. That's how musical theater started, really - it was just a way of linking several pop songs for the stage.
There [are] times when I put out an album, and I don't hear my songs really on the radio a lot, and it's like, Dang, I ain't inside that world. But I'm still moving some people or touching some people.
What's really fun is seeing mothers bringing their daughters to the shows. And the best part is the mothers know they don't have to worry about sexual innuendo in the songs. The shows are family shows.
In the largest sense, every work of art is protest... A lullaby is a propaganda song and any three-year-old knows it... A hymn is a controversial song - sing one in the wrong church: you'll find out...
Roy Blount, who is the funniest person I know, journeys deep into the dark heart of humor and brings back a wonderfully insightful, superbly crafted song of the soul that had me laughing and crying too
My songs form a kind of biography or diary of my life as they are about people I have loved and people I only knew in my heart, places I have seen only for a moment and places I have lived all my life.
I'm naturally a personable person. I feel like figuring out ways to have my personality shine through outside of just a three minute song helped. I have layers, there are many different sides to Torae.
My songs are the reflection of how I think and how I feel in that moment. But I'm conscious of the fact that artists have a responsibility before the masses and they have to take care with their words.
To have a song work for the movie, it can't just be written apart and shoved in. It's got to come out of the action. It's got to talk about the characters, not the story: it has to augment that action.
My favorite performance would definitely be "Toxic," which was my blind audition song. It was the start of it all and it was a song I had been covering before the show, so it was very dear to my heart.
I like to work with people who have a sense of putting a song over, and can sing in tune, and with passion. With technology you can polish a turd, but there's still no button you can press for passion.
I got really hooked on this riff in the middle of this song called 'Minor Miracles' by my friend Eric Johnson from Fruit Bats. I got the tracks for that from him, and that turned into 'Here in Spirit.'
The whole basis of the music is that people have these emotional attachments to these songs - whether they love it or hate it. Being able to manipulate that is a really easy way to connect with people.
I think there are things in my story that have helped my creativity. Your father being killed, for instance, is one of the best things that could happen to a kid if he's going to write poetry or songs.
I spent many years trying to write a lot like Ben Folds or John Lennon or Rivers Cuomo. I think that's healthy when you're learning to write and seeing how chords fit together and how songs take shape.
That folk music led to learning to play, and making things up led to what turns out to be the most lucrative part of the music business - writing, because you get paid every time that song gets played.
The narrative songs were well-written, like an article in The New Yorker. They're nice and pat. They're more like I'm just showing I can do that when I write a song like that. It's not my true calling.
Very talented people make some very bad songs so that people with a fourth grade reading level can sing along. Sure, corporate worship is good- but for me, I get very bored in Church trying to worship.
I think the way I write is kind of naturally rhythmic. If there's anything of my own in my writing, I think that's my own thing. Like when I start a song, I almost hear the rhythm more than the melody.
Any musician with a slight level of self-awareness can be taught to write a 'good' song. A great song is completely original. It feels as if the performer is the only person who could bring it to life.
There would be brilliant songs, but, as [Bob] Dylan admitted on the recent Martin Scorsese documentary about him (No Direction Home), the specific muse that inspired "It's Alright Ma" would not return.
Music is for making people happy, lyrics tell them who they are. Everybody is free to interpret the music, as they want. The lyrics of my songs are about different things, but it's all about my issues.
And sometimes you just have to trust that there will be more, sometimes you go through dry spells and you have to assure yourself "no no, it's gonna be fine. There's gonna be more songs, it's all good.
I like to write pop songs and the stuff I write is fairly poppy, so I thought maybe my lot in life was to write pop songs for people. It never felt right writing songs for other people to sing, though.
I don't keep up with a lot of trends. I've never been a fashion horse. I'm so busy writing my songs, trying to maintain my business, and all the new things that come along. I stay working all the time.
Quite often when I record a song, writing it and making a demo is the big thing and, after that, I think, how do I actually translate this into real life? A lot of the time I think I can't be bothered.
This next song is about when you get your heart broken and you try your best to glue it back together and you wake up one morning and you're so happy because you realize, Oh my God, the tape's holding!
My band is the best band in the world, period. So, I insist on every song being better than it is on the record. So by the end of the tour, we have to be playing the song better than how it's recorded.
I was 16 when we made the first song. We've been touring for half a decade together and we've had quite a bit of time spent learning our craft. You improve as a song writer and as a musician over time.
I'm so sick of my own music that I don't know if I can edit another video, which involves hundreds of hours of listening to your own song again and again and again. It becomes so grating after a while.
Cowriting is very personal. A great song is an honest song, so you have to be able to open up to the person in the room. It's like a blind date. I know in the first five minutes if it's gonna be weird.
Daniel Levitin takes the most sophisticated ideas that exist about the brain and mind, applies them to the most emotionally direct art we have, our songs, and makes beautiful music of the two together.
This music has been around since before the beard on Moses. I happed to do it very well and I happen to have a lot of groovy songs that I know people are going to dig. I know more about it than you do.
My older sister encouraged me from early on and bought me one of the first guitars I had. She listened to all of the crappy songs that I wrote when I was 8 years old and encouraged me to keep doing it.