Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My focus is always on the day. What I've done behind me, I try to have respect for it, and keep an eye on it, and make sure it isn't abused, and obviously be thoughtful about it, because it's all real to me. I'm basically in every band I ever was in, and the songs, I still mean them all.
Mr. Presley has no discernible singing ability. His specialty is rhythm songs which he renders in an undistinguished whine; his phrasing, if it can be called that, consists of the stereotyped variations that go with a beginner's aria in a bathroom. For the ear, he is an unutterable bore.
Music is a total constant. That's why we have such a strong visceral connection to it, you know? Because a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. No matter what else has changed in your or the world, that one song says the same, just like that moment.
What I would like my legacy to be is that of a person who took good care of her family and sang some songs that made a difference in some way. I hope I'll be remembered as somebody who was always down to earth and who handled her career and other people with honesty, integrity and class.
When I listen to little fourth-dimension artifacts, they're like they were made as time capsules in the first place. You know that when you're writing the song and recording the song, you're already sending a message to the future listener, whoever and wherever and whenever that will be.
You can't just sing the song and live another life, you know. It's really difficult now because that's not what it's about. It's pop and pop just says that we could be actors. We could sing about stuff and not believe in it. It could be absolutely fraudulent and it doesn't really matter.
I love the 'Delilah' show. I've been listening to it for years and years. It's incredible. She's always got a song for the right occasion. Many people call in, maybe their spirit it a little down, and she lifts them up. She is really somebody special. She's a lifeline to a lot of people.
My music is more than me writing a flashy soul song. They're heartfelt songs about my family and true stories. I have also songs that aren't personal, but just painting a picture. I don't like being put under labels, but my music is going to continue to stay classic and timeless forever.
I heard Q-Tip on the Jungle Brothers' song 'The Promo.' It was very exciting. It was very new. The music and the culture around hip-hop was evolving. I think there's an emotional quality to their music and there's a vulnerability to the music. For me, A Tribe Called Quest was my Beatles.
When I was in high school, there were these British blues-rock-type bands with really good guitar players that would jam on one song for half an hour. And as much as I was amazed by some of those guitar players, seeing them prompted me to make a note that that's not something I could do.
Something that I think extends to a lot of African cultures is that the line between performer and audience is blurry. My mom would lead the wedding song regularly, and she isn't a professional singer. Even as an audience member, you're expected to clap and sing the response to the lead.
When I first heard John Smith my attention was captured by his sweet, earthy voice and fine craftsmanship, but what drew me in was his heart. It's clear that he's lived the pain in his songs and that his optimism is hope born of wisdom. That's a rare thing and a gift to all who hear him.
I've had my fill of "One Way To Rock" or "I Can't Drive 55." Those are guy songs to me, and I'm cool with that. But when you write a great love song and you start seeing that 50 percent of your audience is beautiful women, that's much more rewarding, than having a bunch of guys out there.
I was in a karaoke video in 1991, for a song called 'Sukiyaki,' which is a very famous Japanese song, and I've actually heard from people that they've been in bars in Asia where they've seen me come up in the 'Sukiyaki' video that they play behind you. I'm in that. I'm in a karaoke video.
To me, music shouldn't be ego-driven. When you go out on stage and play songs, it is. But when you're sitting in a room, writing songs, it's a completely different process. It's a completely different place. It's a creative place, a musical place. It has nothing to do with who likes what.
I've been doing morning pages: the first thing I do when I wake up is sit down and write three pages of whatever comes into my head. The more I do them, the more creative I get and the smaller my problems seem. I can turn something that I hated a few days ago into a short story or a song.
I was in Jacques Brel Off-Broadway for many years, so I've always been a singing actress, but the songwriting was a complete surprise. I had never written a song in my life. We were on the road with Jacques Brel doing the national tour, and I picked up a guitar one day and I wrote a song.
I always loved singing, but I thought it was like drawing - just something you do in your own little corner to calm yourself down. But when my friend, the French songwriter Etienne Daho, listened to my songs, he was so moved that told me that I had to do a demo, share them with the world.
Sometimes I've been to cryin' for unborn children That might have made me complete But I, I took the sweet life and never knew I'd be bitter from the sweet I spent my life exploring the subtle whoring that cost too much to be free Hey lady, I've been to paradise, but I've never been to me
I should attempt to write a love song, I have written lots of poetry about love so I could turn those into lyrics. I'm a sucker for romance - always have been, always will be. I love walking down the beach and listening to my iPod and belting them out. What would we do without love songs?
There's this old Frank Sinatra song: 'If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere'... that song was about New York, but it applies to America. People know that if you make it in America, you can make it anywhere, and that is both in terms of sophistication and customer satisfaction.
Every time I want to impress someone about samples and hip-hop, I play 'Portrait of Tracy.' It's one of the greatest bass players ever doing a whole composition with only the two harmonics of electric bass; then a three-second loop in it became every great R&B song in five-year intervals.
I write a tiny fraction of what I used to write. My only job used to be to just write songs, and that was a really nice job to have, but only a tiny amount of people heard those songs, and I didn't make a living from it, and eventually I begged my parents to let me move back into my room.
When you listen to the music, you see little movies in your head, and that's the beauty of it, I think. People can make up their own stories. They don't necessarily have to know exactly what each song is about. It's their way of interpreting of interpreting different feelings or emotions.
Everything comes out in blues music: joy, pain, struggle. Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance. It's about a man and a woman. So the pain and the struggle in the blues is that universal pain that comes from having your heart broken. Most blues songs are not about social statements.
Before we started writing we did feel pressure because of the success of the first record. One of the first songs that we wrote was "Out Of My Heart" which is the first single. As soon as we wrote that, we knew we just set the standard and every other song had to be as good if not better.
I never write a tune before the lyrics. I get the lyrics and then I write around them. Some people write music and the lyrics come along and they say, 'Oh yeah, I've got something to fit that.' If that's the way people write songs, I feel like you might as well just go to the supermarket.
In our country there's never been a successful progressive struggle that did not have a soundtrack, whether it was the civil rights movement, workers' rights movement, women's rights movement. There's got to be songs at the barricades, and those are the kinds of songs that I try to write.
I realized I had written maybe, I dunno, the first ever asexual love song. Where it's really just about a fear of dying alone - you need contact, you need love, you need empathy. You need this relationship but if there's no sex involved, people act like it's not a legitimate relationship.
I was trying to write a song based on a story in a random book of Puerto Rican short stories that I found in a thrift store. I thought it was really dark, and so I tried to interpret it. I've always been interested in writing from other people's perspectives and other gender perspectives.
All I'm saying, as a fan, is I'm tired of the same song for 30 years. Can't we change the message a little? You've arrived. You have a black president. Every white guy in a commercial doesn't have to be the idiot and every black guy in a rap song doesn't have to be God's gift to the world.
I live my life in widening circle That reach out across the world. I may not ever complete the last one, But I give myself to it. I circle around God, that primordial tower. I have been circling for thousands of years, And I still don't know: am I a falcon, A storm, or a great song? [I, 2]
I'd love to try and teach Donald Trump how to write a song. I'd love to put him in a room with another person - someone who's protesting him at the Women's March. I'd put the three of us in a room and all write a song together. If that can happen, it proves we can get over our differences.
The words of the scholar are to be understood. The words of the master are not to be understood. They are to be listened to as one listens to the wind in the trees and the sound of the river and the song of the bird. They will awaken something within the heart that is beyond all knowledge.
I basically taught myself how to sing and play by copying records, and that's just how it was for me. I know that's true for a lot of budding musicians out there - that's the thing that gets them inspired, is trying to learn their favorite songs. I think it's a great way to teach yourself.
I would say "These Days." It was the title song to an album I put out, and it's really this song that you'll hear throughout the episodes and the season in the show. I write all my music, I'm an independent artist so we do it all in-house and that song embodies exactly what the title says.
I'm not the best at choosing what's good and what's bad. I wouldn't even know what's a good pop song and what's a bad one. With that said, I wanted to say what's true to me. Some people might say that the Skrillex record was pop, but that was just about the chemistry between me and my boy.
Inspiration comes from books, music, films and of course, living memories and life experiences, my own and those of people I've known or met; the casual glimpse from the stranger or the life and death of the close relative; to breathe, for a moment, a Chekhovian air, it's all song and ice.
Back then, Pro Tools only had four or eight tracks, so we couldn't actually hear all the tracks. We could only hear eight at a time, so if a song had 25 or 30 tracks, we wouldn't be able to hear it until we went into the studio an put it all on tape. The process was a little bit backwards.
Ireland is not at all a simple place, and in many ways it is spare and sad. It has no wealth, no power, no stability, no influence, no fashion, no size. Its only real arts are song and drama and poem. But Limerick alone has two thousand ruined castles and surely that many practicing poets.
The content people have no clue. I mean, no clue. The cost of bandwidth is going down to nothing. And the size of hard drives is getting so big, and they're so cheap, that pretty soon you'll have every song you own on one hard drive. The content distribution industry is going to evaporate.
The court jester had the right to say the most outrageous things to the king. Everything was permitted during carnival, even the songs that the Roman legionnaires would sing, calling Julius Caesar "queen", alluding, in a very transparent way, to his real, or presumed, homosexual escapades.
I think there's a curiosity that can make you feel anxious as to what the world's going to make of what you're doing. It's not necessarily what you're going to get back in terms of record reviews or how people talk about your record, it's getting on the road and playing the new songs live.
I always wanted to know, and I always used to daydream, about what it would be like to stand on a really big stage and sing songs for a lot of people, songs that I had written... Daydreaming was kind of my No. 1 thing when I was little, because I didn't have much of a social life going on.
My mom thought I could dance because I used to dance to this Janet Jackson song she'd play when I was a baby. Then she would take me to a Saturday dance school. I used to go every week and got spotted by a scout, who suggested I audition for the role of Billy in 'Billy Elliot the Musical.'
The wind comes creeping, it calls to me to come go exploring. It sings of the things that are to be found under the leaves. It whispers the dreams of the tall fir trees. It does pipe the gentle song the forest sings on gray days. I hear all the voices calling me. I listen. But I cannot go.
Come indoors then, and open the books on your library shelves. For you have a library and a good one. A working library, a living library; a library where nothing is chained down and nothing is locked up; a library where the songs of the singers rise naturally from the lives of the livers.
I was trying to learn how to deal with the freedom that I had away from home for the first time. 'Long Black Train,' the song and the album, are very special to me. It was just one of those things that I felt like God gave to me for a purpose, and I've been out here promoting that purpose.
I think I had kind of an advantage. When I was growing up, my dad had just got out of jail and he had a great record collection. He had - it was all - these were the songs. So I heard a lot of these songs, like, my whole life, so for me it was easy. I already knew what I was going to sing.
My daughter is 15. None of her friends know who the hell Chris Rea is, but they know that song - as soon as it comes on, they start singing it. I've played with everyone from Status Quo to Talk Talk, but nothing impresses them as much as the fact that I play on 'Driving Home for Christmas.'