Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Most of the producers I work with are decent mixers. We'll wind up in these spots where I'll get the mix back and I'll put a few more pieces of production together and send it back to the mixer. It's so easy to change the entire perspective of the song by changing the mix.
Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston. I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, 'Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.'
Uncle Dave Macon was a great balladeer and banjo player from the early part of the 19th century... He would take a social problem or something that he was looking at and make up a clever little song about it, you know, in a language everyone understood, a man of the people.
For more and more of us, home has really less to do with a piece of soil than, you could say, with a piece of soul. If somebody suddenly asks me, "Where's your home?" I think about my sweetheart or my closest friends or the songs that travel with me wherever I happen to be.
My angel-boy is close now, as in five-feet-away close. There's no way I'm going to burst into song in front of him. But then the contrary part of me says, you're going to let a boy keep you from singing out loud? Sing, sister! Sing! So I do, and my angel-boy turns his head.
It's difficult for me to describe my own music; every song is an experience that I set to music. There's no lyrics, no singer, just instruments, but I'm sure you can feel what the song is talking about just by listen to it. I can't describe a feeling, my songs are feelings.
David Bowie emerged as a rock star in the late '60s. And as Ken Tucker wrote, "In the face of the hippy era's sincerity, intimacy and generosity, Bowie presented irony, distance and self-absorption. His song 'Changes' announced the arrival of a new counterculture," unquote.
The little song and dance number at the end - that's me, my voice, howling out. It was a new experience for me. I've never sung before and I've certainly never sung on screen. I think I sung on stage when I was 13 and for some reason nobody's asked me to try it again since.
Does it bother me that some people are burning their own System CDs and taking money out of my pocket? Not really. This has always been about putting the best possible version of the song in the fans hands. It was like selling an artist's painting before he had finished it.
One of the coolest moments for me is still when Kenny G came back to a venue to find me and personally tell me that he loved my song "Void of a Legend" and had watched the video several times. It's the ultimate feeling to get feedback like that from an artist you look up to
At 82, Nelson (who wrote the song "On the Road Again," among a thousand or more others) is the elder statesman of country music, a steadying and powerful voice in the industry and on environmental issues, and he's still on the road much of the year. The music keeps calling.
If someone wants to say 'I love you' in a straight play, they say it, and then it's the other person's turn to talk. But in a song, you can sing about it for another three minutes. The musical form has that unique opportunity to express at length what joy really feels like.
I covered Halsey's song once at a concert in Japan, and she's commented on a few of my Instagram posts and it like, shocked me. So maybe one day we could get together, and that would be a dream come true because I love her voice; and she seems like the sweetest person ever.
I was in orchestra in high school, but I really started when a friend of mine who's a drummer showed me some things. I was always just really fascinated with drums, it was the instrument I was always drawn towards. My ear sort of went to rhythmic aspects of music and songs.
I'm particularly attuned to lyrics, and very often a bad set of lyrics will ruin a song for me, while my friends will be just grooving on the music. I don't mean that it has to be about anything in particular, but there has to be some art applied to it, simple or otherwise.
That culture, of looking at catchy music as a negative thing, is weird. It has nothing to do with me, or the music I was into growing up. The Stones and the Beatles only tried to write hits. Every Motown song, every Credence Clearwater song - they were trying to write hits.
To outsiders it probably seems like splitting hairs, but to me, Bright Eyes is a simply the collaboration between myself and Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott. What you hear is definitely the sum of all our ideas and represents all three of us. But I still write the songs myself.
Loving is like music. Some instruments can go up two octaves, some four, and some all the way from black thunder to sharp lightning. As some of them are susceptible only of melody, so some hearts can sing but one song of love, while others will fun in a full choral harmony.
I'm writing songs that connect to millions of people. And that happens for a reason. I don't really worry too much about people who aren't into it because that's the beauty of music. It's subjective. If every single person in the world loved our music, then that'd be weird.
I'm selling my soul to Hollywood Records. I love you like a love song baby, a sinful, miracle, lyrical. He ate my soul. He's Lucifer. I'm torn I'm selling my soul to the rhythm because I'm become so possessed with the music he plays. I chose a path and I'm not looking back.
For me, the good songs are the ones that come really naturally. There are certain songs that you rework and rewrite and the craft becomes very evident, but a lot of times those aren't my favorite songs. The favorite songs are the ones that I can't even hear my own voice in.
When I'm writing a song, it's just me and the songwriters. Then when the song is done, there are publishers that hear it, then people in my management, then my wife and my boys and my friends, and if they're all lovin' it, it's kind of withstanding all the criticism I need.
You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat. Losing after great striving is the story of man, who was born to sorrow, whose sweetest songs tell of saddest thought, and who, if he is a hero, does nothing in life as becomingly as leaving it.
We managed to put together a compilation that had some creativity to it. In the meantime I was listening to the free radio stations and I noticed that during their war coverage they were playing these songs born out of the Vietnam War that were all critical of the soldiers.
History shows that all protest movements rely on symbols - boycotts, strikes, sit-ins, flags, songs. Symbolic action on whatever scale - from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to wearing a simple wristband - is designed to disrupt our everyday complacency and force people to think.
Working on solo material is something I had always dreamed of doing, and I'm incredibly happy with the results. 'Everything To Me' is a very personal song to me lyrically; it is such an upbeat and optimistic record, perfect for the summer. I can't wait for people to hear it!
I wouldn't want to do a Bollywood film per se, but I would like to do an Indian-language film. For some reason I think Bollywood has become synonymous with commercial cinema, which is song and dance and everything that is larger than life, and I am interested in the reality.
You can find me in the melodies, the chord progressions, the song style and structure. The lyrical places you fine me most are in the lyrics that 'show' more than 'tell.' I like to describe what the listener is seeing and let them make up the middle rather than telling them.
Would you like to go to a doctor who had taken his last medical course in 1948? You have to keep changing and keep learning so that you are constantly challenging yourself, adding a few new songs to your program every chance you get. If you don't, the world will pass you by.
I started off just trying to make a wish list for myself. I wanted to work with people I really admire myself. I wanted to work with other artists from other scenes so they could make my songs improve in a different way - people who have artistically different things to say.
Over the whole earth- this infinitely small globe that possesses all we know of sunshine and bird song- an unfamiliar blight is creeping: man- man, who has become at last a planetary disease and who would, if his technology yet permitted, pass this infection to another star.
I'd like to think I could physically manage doing that, but I don't think it feels authentic to the kind of performer that I am. I think that, for me, being stationary and just sort of singing the songs seems to be the most connected and authentic expression for me on stage.
Corporations have steered the industry into what it wants, and a lot of times they will make artists record what it wants or to make songs talk to who they want to talk to. But sometimes the heart and the head have to be able to talk and deal with a situation that's evident.
I warm up with my mom and make sure I understand what the songs are about, and make sure I'm using the right technique. To be honest with you, I really don't practice a lot... Usually I say a prayer and ask the Lord to sing with me and help me and stand on the stage with me.
The hip-hop aesthetic and the way it's produced always motivated me. Alongside that I was still wanting to make great traditional songs because I've never had any desire to rap. My love of hip-hop is driven by my love of rappers, but it was built out of my love of producers.
Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: So this winged hour is dropt to us from above. Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower, This close-companioned inarticulate hour When twofold silence was the song of love.
I had a boyfriend who told me I'd never succeed, never be nominated for a Grammy, never have a hit song, and that he hoped I'd fail. I said to him, 'Someday, when we're not together, you won't be able to order a cup of coffee at the f***** deli without hearing or seeing me.'
I went down to my keyboard and was playing random chords, and the one line I kept repeating was, 'I'm a lost boy from Neverland.' I decided to post it to Vine, and it got the biggest reaction I'd ever gotten. People wanted to hear more, and I had to explain it wasn't a song.
You know, I've always wrote my best stuff when it takes me hardly any time at all. Actually I wrote.....this is actually a really funny story...'Ghost Of Vincent Price', I've been wanting to write a song about Vincent Price coz he's one of my favorite characters of all time.
Here's the way the licensing works ... If you write a song, nobody can record your song before you do without your permission. But, once the song is recorded, they can get what's called a 'compulsory license', and they can record the tune, but they have to pay you royalties.
When I'm writing songs, I write visually. When I'm writing the words down and I listen to the melody and the lyrics, I start seeing the video form. And if I can get through a song and from the beginning to the end have the whole video in my mind, I think that's a great song.
I like dogs better than knights. A hound will die for you, but never lie to you. And he'll look you straight in the face. He cupped her under the jaw, raising her chin, his fingers pinchingher painfully. And that's more than little birds can do, isn't it? I never got my song.
I don't want to tell what the songs are about for me, because then people can't decide for themselves, which is why I write; it's for you to find your own meaning in. For me it's my story, for someone else it's theirs; if I tell exactly what it means, then it's only my story.
What's really cool is to be able to write music and have people around the world [who are] able to relate to it. They tell you that [your] song helped them get through a divorce or they got married to that song. It makes me want to keep doing that for [myself] and for people.
I practice yoga and breathing daily along with all the exercises on the instrument. I'm getting more and more monastic about it, especially when I'm on tour, because I'm making songs that are harder to perform all the time. So I no longer smoke and I drink a lot less on tour.
I didn't want to be a solo Westlife - covers and ballads - and the reason I signed with Capitol Records was because they wanted me to write songs myself. It was pretty scary, but they put me in a studio in Nashville with some new songwriters, and the results were pretty good.
Such times of crisis have inevitably brought 'music of conscience' to the fore and I expect we will be hearing more and more of it in the immediate future. When people feel empowered to come together and raise their voices, also will mean raising their voices in song as well.
Each song has its own secret that's different from another song, and each has its own life. Sometimes it has to be teased out, whereas other times it might come fast. There are no laws about songwriting or producing. It depends on what you're doing, not just who you're doing.
A recording of a moment in time, where I was physically there, and it's now in a song for all eternity, in a way. It's really weird. I had written the song, but I'm also physically there in a way I'm physically inside the song, because I've recorded something that's in there.
When I go into a room to write, it's like I'm not trying to say, 'I need to write a song that sounds like Eric Church or Jason Aldean.' I just try to get the best song that's in the room that day. Whatever style or sound that may be, I'm not afraid to attack it at that angle.