Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I wrote my first song at 12 and remember someone asking, 'What were you going through at 12 that you could write about?' I get what you're saying, but 11, 12, 13 were the hardest years of my life. You learn everything. You learn how horrible things feel.
All things are aggregations of atoms that dance & by their movement produce sound. When the rhythm of the dance changes, the sound it produces also changes... Each atom perpetually sings its song, and the sound at every moment creates dense subtle forms.
It seems to be really trendy to get excited about a random-ass radio song. Which, I like radio songs, don't get me wrong. But I'm just confused at which ones seem to be heralded as some sort of genius-like concoction. It doesn't totally make sense to me.
I was born in love with music. My mother is a singer, many of my aunts and uncles on my mother's side are musical, my grandparents sang and played blues piano. It's literally in my blood. My mother wrote an original song to teach me the days of the week.
Ideas for songs can come from something as simple as a photograph and letting my imagination run wild on an old photograph that I found, or to a film that I have seen or to just most of the time, just daily walking through life and keeping your eyes open.
Sometimes when a record's done, I'm satisfied and I won't listen back to it for a while 'cause I'm usually pretty tired of the songs. Then I've got to learn them again to play them live, and sometimes it takes a while to realise it's a really good record.
I would have to work on the song and figure out how they wanted the song done, because they're such high-intensity songs. We figure that out first, then I go back and listen to it and go over and rehearse stuff with it and try to get a feel for the words.
To me, the idea of a weatherman is really powerful. There's a guy on television or on the radio telling us the future, and nobody cares. It's this daily mundane miracle, and I think the songs I chose are about noticing the beauty in normal, everyday life.
Songs come when they wanna come and I'll work at it when I feel like working at it. There are some songwriters that write every day, and I'm definitely not one of those guys. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. It's just kind of what I do.
I love melody, and that's what I love about pop music. The words can become what they are through a special melody. I learned to play guitar by myself, and writing songs came with playing guitar, so the writing isn't one part and the music something else.
On paper curiously shaped Scribblers to-day of every sort, In verses Valentines ycled'd To Venus chime their annual court. I too will swell the motley throng, And greet the all auspicious day, Whose privilege permits my song My love this secret to convey.
It was November--the month of crimson sunsets, parting birds, deep, sad hymns of the sea, passionate wind-songs in the pines. Anne roamed through the pineland alleys in the park and, as she said, let that great sweeping wind blow the fogs out of her soul.
When no one's buying your records, it's easy to justify selling a song. But once you start selling records, you can't really justify having two songs in Cadillac commercials. It looks greedy. And it is greedy. This whole music thing should be about music.
I'd been playing Ted in the show for about a year as well as playing in the group in my spare time. Then, at the 'Scrubs' Christmas party, I offered to bring along the band to sing a song. The producers thought we were terrible - but perfect for the show.
Usually, there's a story I've told that leads up to why I'm singing the song. The whole concept of the show was about being authentic and connecting with these songs. The best way to do that was in a room with an audience and for people to listen to that.
You have to love writing a song and architecture. You have to give it a form. It is my job to create a sonic landscape. I like to create ambiance and atmosphere. The writing is the intimate part of it. It is a sketch. The production is the whole painting.
I definitely consider 'Poses' - the whole album in fact - to be kind of a miracle. Like the last breath of that moment when decadence is healthy, 'Poses' encapsulates that feeling. It's a kind of song and a kind of album that I'll never be able to repeat.
That's something I can never lose: my love for the art of rap. As I grew older and became more interested in song writing, it just pushed my possibilities further. I always have to have a foot firmly on the floor as a rapper, because that's how I started.
It's always interesting - how do you actually convey thought through song? We're used to the convention on stage. In film, we used to be used to it, and now sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. You need to be fresh and really look at the material.
The autumn wind is a pirate. Blustering in from sea with a rollicking song he sweeps along swaggering boisterously. His face is weather beaten, he wears a hooded sash with a silver hat about his head... The autumn wind is a Raider, pillaging just for fun.
One of the most encouraging things is to see that so many of these young musicians and worship leaders are really concerned with doing a good job representing the truth of Jesus in their songs, and not just concerned with creative and musical progression.
I really don't try to force the creative process. I'm really jealous of those other rappers who just hear a beat and write a song within minutes. I know a lot of rappers like that. I'm the type of artist who kind of has to sit with some stuff for a while.
I love listening to Radio Head's 'Everything in its Right Place' because it's all major chords, it makes you feel really good. It's soothing, it's got a beautiful voice, crazy textures. When I'm down I listen to that song and it really makes me feel good.
At nineteen, it seems to me, one has a right to be arrogant; time has usually not begun its stealthy and rotten subtractions. It takes away your hair and your jump-shot, according to a popular country song, but in truth it takes away a lot more than that.
People will pay for great services. They said they wouldn't pay 99 cents for a song but they did. We've always believed that. When you go to work, you don't work for free; nobody works for free. Nobody can say, "I want to work for free." Nobody says that.
You can lose people without them dying, and I have, from moving, from traveling. The emotion is real, it just doesn't actually have to do with death. I'm singing about what I know, and it's a song about longing for somebody who's disappeared in your life.
The first song I heard from me was Meek Mill ["I Don't Know"], it was his first single before he went (to jail). I remember the first time I heard it was like eleven thirty at night, and I was like, "Yo, this is crazy!" And, I was smiling from ear to ear.
This day will never come again and anyone who fails to eat and drink and taste and smell it will never have it offered to him again in all eternity. The sun will never shine as it does today...But you must play your part and sing a song, one of your best.
I listen to, like, funky Chicago blues. I love blues, but I love the funky, happy blues. There's a song about pretty much everything, including kidney stones, believe it or not. So there's something there for whatever you happen to be suffering, you know?
There have been periods in my life where I have experienced depression. It has been through some of my darkest moments that I have written some of my best songs. For me, singing and writing is very therapeutic. It's much more effective than taking Prozac!
Shortly before she died Janis Joplin gave me the Gibson Hummingbird she recorded "Me and Bobbby McGee" on ... Janis was a good guitar player, for her purposes .. she just wanted to play along with her songs, and she had a real pure and nice style for that.
We went from being a band that was recording songs in my bandmate's bedroom to a band that's doing extensive touring and had a record on the Billboard charts and everything happened insanely fast, but it's not something that I sought out. It just happened.
They understand what their market is and who they should be selling records to, and most importantly, they know the kind of artist that they want to be, but they have to do it themselves. You don't want a 13-year-old singing some awful song from a musical.
Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world, but the heart has its beaches, its homeland, and thoughts of its own. Wake now, discover that you are the song that the morning brings, but the heart has its seasons its evenings, and songs of its own
I don't play the traditional Charlie Parker songs. But I do improvise and I do create with my instrument, and that to me is jazz. But there are people who use the word 'jazz' only in a traditional sense, and they would be offended by that, and that's fine.
"Art Imitates life," of course, is that phrase by Oscar Wilde. I called that song "Art Imitates Life" because Oh No was in the studio and he actually came up with that hook. When I was trying to figure out a name for the record, it just kind of made sense.
I'm constantly working on something new, whether it's a Garbage song, or for someone I'm producing or a song for film or TV whatever it is. I guess I'm sort of living in the moment and moving towards what I'm doing next. I think most artists are like that.
Everybody now who's playing in Unicorn band is deeply schooled in music. I'm the only one who's self-taught, which I think is a bit hilarious because I'm leading the band and writing the songs, but I'm surrounded by such overwhelmingly competent musicians.
I listened to it last night for the first time since we started this project. I went out to my car and put it in and went to an empty parking lot and just listened and read the little pamphlet that came with it. After two or three songs I burst into tears.
Forces that you might think are utterly unrelated to creativity can have a big impact. Technology, obviously, but environment, too. Even financial structures can affect the actual content of a song. The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.
Even now, when you get love, you see Radha. Become Radha and be saved. There is no other way, Christians do not understand Solomon's song. They call it prophecy symbolising Christ's love for the Church. They think it nonsense and father some story upon it.
The power of the masses can influence any government in the world. The power of the masses can elect an official, start a revolution, and drive history. Nelson Mandela did it alone from his prison cell. Ghandi did it lying down. Egypt did it singing songs.
"My Trigger" is the best combination of song and track. "Heart Is Full" is maybe the best song we've done as a song, and that's why we try to play it in different ways, too, because I think for a lot of people the track was a bit distracting from the song.
I wanted to make mini features. And there was a wonderful creative freedom; not necessarily copying the lyrics, but just trying to create emotion. Like the songs, you know? Just like how the song creates an emotion, I wanted the video to create an emotion.
If when you hear a song by OK Go you conjure up thoughts of a gigantic Rube Goldberg device or treadmills or drones or perfectly executed dance routines, then you know that this is a band that is masterful at coming up with amazingly creative music videos.
His hand took hold of hers, and as she said something low in his ear he turned toward her with a rush of emotion. I think that voice held him most, with its fluctuating, feverish warmth, because it couldn’t be over-dreamed —that voice was a deathless song.
I just know of so many musicians who burn out because they go on tour and they have to play their one-hit song over and over and over and over again. And they are not moved by their own song. And then when you go and see them perform there's something off.
Music helps define the character and is an extension of the character somehow, so that you are able to use both the songs themselves and the way that you sing them to tell something about the character and his story, as well as develop a performance style.
If you are a cabaret artist and you are mostly singing other people's songs, you're asking them to rethink a song, listen to it in a different way. The most impact you can have while asking them to re-listen to a song is if it's a song they know very well.
The abstract music is just more interesting because it doesn't really have anything to say, but if it is good, it creates thoughts and feelings, and I enjoy that. For me, once the music creates those thoughts and feelings, I begin to write a song about it.