Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think if you're writing from the heart, very often, the subject matter will adjust as you age... but you try to write the best song you can possibly write. For us, we have the same basic elements that make up the America sound.
I haven't made anything I don't believe in. I've always started a movie with a song in my heart, and even when I'm a little unclear about it, something magical happens and it comes into focus in a way that I'm feeling good about.
I think singing and acting go hand in hand. Take an R&B singer: one song says, 'I love you,' the next is, 'Baby, don't leave me', the next is, 'If you leave me I don't care.' You have to drop in and out of different perspectives.
Sometimes, I look outside, and I think that a lot of other people have seen this snow before. Just like I think that a lot of other people have read those books before. And listened to those songs. I wonder how they feel tonight.
When I was first starting out, I drove myself around the country in my Honda Civic, playing anywhere that would have me. This is a chance to strip the songs down to their roots and let the audience hear them the way I write them.
All of the artists did such a beautiful job I can’t thank them enough. I’m just honored that 'God Only Knows' was chosen. 'God Only Knows' is a very special song. An extremely spiritual song and one of the best I’ve ever written.
My dream many years ago would've been to continue to write and record songs in record/album form for years to come, but now records aren't what they were then - and so it doesn't actually feel very good to make a record of songs.
I think people should be able to have at their behest, like, four hours of music, entertainment, visual knowledge, different pathways[.] That's what I'm trying to do with modern technology, not just another song and another song.
I had a melody and a rhythm and chords, but nothing to talk about. I remember reading about how the decline of the steel industry had been affecting the Lehigh Valley, and I decided that's what I was going to write the song about.
I think for many songwriter/performers, you need to go off by yourself and write the songs to begin with, but then you need people to bring them to life. So you have to be comfortable with solitude and also with being very social.
There's a band in a garage right now writing songs for an album that will do the same thing 'Nevermind' did some 20 years ago. We don't know who and where, but it will f***ing happen again. All it takes is for that storm to break.
And there are certain songs that are really timepieces and shouldn't be touched. But some of them are a celebration of good humour and sensibility and I think that's okay. I don't care about the past, I'm a musician with ambition.
I think great songs can come from anywhere and you constantly have to be able to look out for those. I think a lot of the times people will try too hard to write everything themselves and therefor miss out on great songs that way.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm now in the business of making spiritual records and using my voice for that purpose. I'm not going to be singing songs that I made in the past. I closed the door on that incarnation of Sinead O'Connor.
For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.
I'm so bad at lyrics. I'm always trying to get better. Sometimes, the song can restrict your lyrics - if you're trying to make a poppy song, you don't want to sing something that sounds like it could be on an At the Drive-In song.
Future's Pluto is my favorite album of the year. It's so emo. Future is the number one dude I'd love to produce for - every time I listen to the song he did with Rihanna, "Loveeeeeee Song", I'm like, "I should have produced that."
Every song you write you think is the last one you're going to manage. You put everything you've got into the song, and you've twisted it and pulled at it and dug in and found a way to complete it. To get another one is the trick.
I've always been a fan of melody and emotional melancholy, whether it was Rites of Spring or Tears for Fears or Neil Young. If I hear a song that has a sweet melody, I'm a sucker for it, whether it's Linkin Park or Little Richard.
If you're working with a producer like Rick Rubin or whatever, you sing each line probably 30 different ways. Each time they're like, "Can you try it this way, can you try it that way?" That's each line in the song, for each song.
I've already done two cover albums. I don't know, maybe it wouldn't be a good idea to do another, but I just did the Led Zeppelin song for fun, and I thought I could do it kind of quick since songs that I love a lot I can do fast.
The only time I think I've ever gotten sick of playing Guns and Roses songs really was during - after having played them in Guns and Roses, and then in Snakepit, and then playing 'It's So Easy' and 'Brownstone' in Velvet Revolver.
I think the best songs are being written by the very under-stated, under-appreciated indie artists. The thing that separates them from mainstream success is they either consciously or unknowingly refuse to deliver on a big chorus.
When I reissue these Minimal Wave Record songs, I also re-master them. With Oppenheimer Analysis, it turned out that the band still had the master tapes. So, Martin Lloyd from the band and I baked the tapes to restore the quality.
I never feel like I need to make a song that sells 5 million copies; that's not the point of why I make music. It's great if that happens, like it did with 'Clarity,' but my goal is to always make a better track than the last one.
Pete Ham in the group was a very good writer. He wrote the Nilsson song "Without You", which is a seriously good song. But the poor fellow topped himself. He was a lovely bloke, I can still see him now. It was a terrible loss.
I'm hoping that "Nothin' On You", "Billionaire" and "Just The Way You Are" - songs that I produced... I hope that it's a warning for people. I hope it lets them know that I'm a little unorthodox when it comes to genres and styles.
Sometimes I have a melody in my head; sometimes it's just a verse. I read lines from a book or movies that I watch and grab a few quotes and start writing on paper. From there, I record a really rough version and work on the song.
A great song is a great song, whether it's on vinyl or CD or cassette or reel to reel or mp3. Then again, that might be an overly optimistic view, but I do think that great music will transcend the medium in which it is delivered.
It's one thing when you're driving to go play at a radio station and you hear it on that station. It's another thing when you're just out in the middle of nowhere, and the song just comes on the radio, and you're like "Oh my God!"
Ride It' did it for me. Not only did the Asian community love it, but the black community and the white community got to hear about it. The song became such a big hit for me and got me noticed by the CEOs of Cash Money in America.
I didn't even know the industry of songwriting existed. I thought everybody sang songs and they were only singing the songs that they wrote. So after I found out about songwriting in college, I was like, "Okay, I want to do that."
I just always wrote songs as a side hobby. So it was sort of a natural thing to write comedy songs. But when I started writing songs, I wrote very serious songs. Or things that a 13-14 year-old would think are very serious issues.
Every song that is a Hopsin song, I 100 percent made it. Nobody helped me. There was no producer to say, 'Hey, put the beat like this... ' It was all me. If the song was wack, then the song was wack. If it's dope, it is what it is.
For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled, even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven't forgotten: The open road still softly calls like a nearly forgotten song of childhood.
The first song I wrote, in fifth grade, was totally ripped from Jeffrey Lewis. My aunt's boyfriend gave me bass lessons, and I played drums for a year in sixth grade. Around seventh grade, I got a guitar and forgot everything else.
So few hip-hop artists have ever advanced. Their songs on their seventh, eighth albums sound exactly like the songs on their first album. More than an artist, I'm a real person-and real people grow. And I wanna just sing my growth.
I wanted to get a guitar [when I was 13] so I could play punk songs because kid taught me power chords at summer camp. He was like, "You could play all punk songs if you just learn this chord and just move it around on the guitar".
Richie Faulkner is very respectful to the songs that he plays from when [founding member] K.K. [Downing] was in the band. He plays them incredibly. And he's got his own nuances and his own techniques that he puts in - as he should.
Any kind of anthemic song, for the most part, they're on the positive side of things. It's not hard to identify when a melody is just one degree too complicated or one degree too simple and where that line of pop memorability lies.
There is a witchery in the sea, its songs and stories, and in the mere sight of a ship, and the sailor's dress, especially to a young mind, which has done more to man navies, and fill merchantmen, than all the pressgangs of Europe.
You know Nashville, there's people that are ten times more talented than me, ten times better singer than me, song writer than me, but for some reason you get the ball and now - and now you run with it. And you do the best you can.
I'm not tempted to write a song about George W.Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them. And that's not funny.
I would point to a song like 'I'm Not A Loser', which I tried to evolve as best I could over the years. But finally after years of trying to evolve it into something a little more, up to date I guess, we just don't play it anymore.
In 1990 if you heard a song on the radio and you really wanted to hear it again you'd have to buy it on tape or CD. Hearing music doesn't hold that kind of value anymore because anyone can hear it. It's going to become even easier.
Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: "Pipe a song about a Lamb." So I piped with merry cheer; "Piper, pipe that song again." So I piped; he wept to hear.
Berry's On Top is probably my favorite record of all time; it defines rock and roll. A lot of people have done Chuck Berry songs, but to get that feel is really hard. It's the rock and roll thing-the push-pull and the rhythm of it.
I would say my relationships have always affected my music. Each one. I wrote most of my great songs, that I'm still using today, in 2008 when I had the worst heartbreak of my life with my first girlfriend. It inspired great music.
Like, when I write a song, the song comes first before production. Everything is written on an acoustic guitar so you can strip away everything from it and have it be equally as entertaining and good without the bells and whistles.
Children make up the best songs, anyway. Better than grown-ups. Kids are always working on songs and throwing them away, like little origami things or paper airplanes. They don't care if they lose it; they'll just make another one.