Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My favourite thing about live shows is you can make up new songs on the spot. Never played before, never again. And that's wonderful for me, because it frees me up to not have to worry about lyrics and stuff.
Sometimes melody and sometimes lyrics. It depends on the tempo and feel of the song. Slower pieces usually begin with melody and faster ones with lyrics. I write for the song and it leads me to my conclusion.
Recently, I've been working on anew album of material, which should be out in the new Millennium. I'm not sure which song will be put out as a single, but I'm still hoping to get another record in the charts.
I thought of my father's wisdom, as though it were buried in a box under a tree. As in the old song - a gold box with a silver pin. Some day I should be grown up, and I should dig up the box and turn the pin.
One of my favorite albums of all time is Michael Jackson's "Thriller". Every song is superbly written, performed, and produced. He is a great loss to the music world. There will never be another one like him.
I know that I can't ever write a song that just sounds completely saccharin. Even if I'm singing about someone being my complete love life, I'm singing about my own inabilities to be as bright as that person.
My song 'Play It Again' is a perfect example of my music because the verses go so hard, and they're so urban; and then this pop hook comes out of nowhere and socks you in the face and makes you want to dance.
You should listen to songs and listen to what works. Listen to why a song is a hit. Check it out-not to imitate it, but there are certain things that work-hooks and melodies. Hear what works through the ages.
I think the themes in my songs are very similar from the first album to the newest one. It's all about the human condition and how we are all trying to learn to live with each other and survive love and life.
It changes over the course of life, depending on how you're feeling. There's this incredible catalog of different songs, so it depends on what you're hoping for, what your dream is and that song will come on.
I had an old band in Scandinavia, the beginning of Mercyful Fate, so it reminds me of my roots as a teenager. We used to play songs like Grinder and all that. It's really like being a teenager again. (Laughs)
When me and Eric did songs back in the day, we didn't go and sit down in front of no A&R. We made our album, and then, when we finished, we handed it in, and then we picked the best song for the first single.
When you write songs you're commenting on love, you're commenting on sex, relationships, whatever it is that you decide to write about it. And I've wanted to write about politics or spiritual ideas for years.
[For Before the Dawn] it was in the hands of a fantastic drummer and percussionist and who drove it into another moment in time. It's such a poignant song and it was transformed into entirely different beast.
At the audition, your assignment is to find something new in the song. Something you've never noticed before. A breath carried over, a thought that ties the whole thing together. Then take the risk and do it.
People are part of my music. A lot of my songs are the result of emotional experiences, sadness, pain, joy, and exultation in nature and sunshine and so on...like 'California Girls' which was a hymn to youth.
If you're a musician, you can practice your guitar every day and write songs, but when you're an actor, you can't just like burst into a monologue. Your only exercise is when you're in prep or you're working.
If you just concentrate on what you're doing and allow yourself to actually enjoy and let your feelings come out, whatever the tempos, whatever the rhythms, whatever the songs, 9 out of 10 times it will work.
The downloads, the licensing, commercials, radio - it's made me more money than any song I've ever written, and it only went to No. 26. It wasn't a big hit at all. But it's a career song ["I Can't Drive 55"].
I have been around for a long, long time. I didn't make it 'til I was older. I went through the period when women were not getting signed, particularly if you were writing songs that were lyrically propelled.
I feel like I always had an ear. I have the ability and the gift to hear a song and really play it in a matter of five to 10 minutes and make my own version out of it. So it's always been easy playing by ear.
In so far as I have any beliefs, I suppose I'm like that old Peggy Lee song, 'Is That All There Is?' I want to believe there's something else going on, but what that something else is I don't pretend to know.
There's a story behind every old ballad or work song or nonsense song that I ever knew. Sometimes it's a fascinating story. A story of people struggling for freedom, struggling to get along in this old world.
It is a process of discovery. It's being quiet enough and undisturbed enough for a period of time so that the songs can begin to sort of peek out, and you begin to have emotional experiences in a musical way.
I've really enjoyed playing live shows, because sometimes things we'll just happen - sometimes a song will go on for 10 minutes. It always depends on the crowd. But it's always kinda different, which is cool.
Having my daughter in the backseat with her best friend, singing "Let It Go," the Frozen song, at the top of her lungs, and just watching her sing when she thinks no one is watching. That, to me, is pure love.
Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song.
It's part of the calling to at least do a few songs in the show that give people some hope. There's so much hurt in this world and... music is such a great healing balm and a great way to forget your troubles.
Say you write a song about a chandelier, and the chandelier gives off light. And the light is the color red and red reminds you of the color your not supposed to wear around a bull. So you name the song 'Cow.'
I was a B.I.G. fan. I like all of his stuff. I don't really have a favorite song. They all are good, and each brings different memories to me. And you can still listen to it to this day and it means something.
Oftentimes, when music is just blasting out it seems like it's overcompensating for something missing in the song's structure. When I think of the music that I listen to constantly, it's never like an assault.
The earth has grown old with its burden of care, but at Christmas it always is young, the heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair, and its soul full of music breaks the air, when the song of angels is sung.
Sometimes I'll write a song. When I've gone through something really hard in my life, sometimes it's other people's music. Other times it's actually writing the songs and getting out of mind and into the song.
Sometimes I would write something that was so private, people would say, 'Make it more universal.' I never liked that idea. I always thought the more personal a song was, the more people would want to hear it.
Mormonism has this great cheesy aesthetic - when you watch their videos, it's almost as if they're about to flash a smile at the camera and burst into song. Mormon cheesiness is so close to musical cheesiness.
It's that feeling when you hear your favourite song. That feeling, whether you're in a car, at a party or alone at home or in bed and you hear this song and it just hits you so strong - that’s what we aim for.
The [2012 covers album] 2120 [South Michigan Ave.] was different. We covered a lot of classics there. But most of the time when we did it I always prided myself on digging up obscure songs that no one knew of.
The songs are not necessarily autobiographical. A lot of songs are a combination of influences. It might be some part of my life, or something I've felt, or something somebody's told me. It all comes together.
The inner music of the Soul is the real song. It's tunes are self-existing and self-supporting and need no outer aids of hands, feet or tongue and lead to the source from whence they come, the Minstrel divine.
I don't think you ever write a song with any intention except the song's about such and such per say ... we've never written a song and thought 'oh it'd be great if in this part this happened in the audience'.
I know my own limitations. And if somebody says, "I need songs for a cartoon garage band - they look like this and they should sound like this," it gives you a direction. I like having that kind of assignment.
A lot of my songs, they're like puzzle pieces, and there's just one way to put them together. You could, if you needed to, get the scissors out and cut up things to make them work. But I don't want to do that.
You just do you like when you're doing any other song. It's nothing different. Some people are like "How's it like working with Kendrick Lamar?" and really, it's like working with anyone else that I work with.
It wasn't just about flashing lights and pinball machines blowing up and things like that. It was about using encores, bringing back the good songs and using techniques that I knew about from rock performance.
It's a pretty crazy thing in which I tried to make songs, real songs, not the quick stuff like on a tape. A dose of Kendrick Lamar, a dose of J. Cole... because it's got to be an album that goes [in the] club.
It's hard to really articulate what the parameters are that make one song parody-able and another song not, but if I can come up with a good enough idea for it, I go for it, and if not, then I have to move on.
To me, the message of my songs, of all songs, is "enjoy life." My message as a person who evidently doens't have much more planned is the same. It's the only message I ever thought art had any business having.
Most pop albums I was looking at as examples to point out production elements had a song that made you want to dance. I've been listening to electronic music forever and I just wanted to have something dancey.
I've learned that my people are not the only ones oppressed... I have sung my songs all over the world and everywhere found that some common bond makes the people of all lands take to Negro songs as their own.
Our goal is to write memorable songs. We're not there yet, but we're getting closer. Each time we sit down to write, we have hopes of coming up with something that will be remembered forever. That's our dream.