Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think the most important thing about dance music is the connection. If you put 80,000 people together, no one knows each other, and once the music starts, everyone loves each other. That doesn't happen with a lot of genres. If you go to a hip-hop club, it's not like when one songs comes on that everyone suddenly loves each other.
The first time I knew what I wanted to do with my life was when I was about four years old. I was listening to an old Victrola, playing a railroad song...I thought that was the most wonderful, amazing thing...That you could take this piece of wax and music would come out of that box. From that day on, I wanted to sing on the radio.
The reader reads aloud, with a sing-song up … then down … then down again cadence. My mood shifts from merely reluctant to derisive. It’s a tired reading style. I’m sick of it. It attaches more importance to the words than the words themselves—as they’ve been arranged—could possibly sustain, and it gives poets and poetry a bad name.
It was my 16th birthday-my mom and dad gave me my Goya classical guitar that day. I sat down, wrote this song, and I just knew that that was the only thing I could ever really do-write songs and sing them to people. [...] Everything on this record is what I really wanted to say, and I'm back to being the poet I always thought I was.
I had never really written songs for anyone before. With [Broken] Social Scene, you're writing songs for others and your passing them around and exchanging things, but for a man who has the history that Andy Kim had, and has lived the life that he's had, you see such a youthful aspect of how he just wanted to create something again.
It's good to have some kind of California in there. It's almost always appropriate. It's appropriate on a sunny day or late at night. If you grew up on the Grateful Dead, which I certainly did, you listened to 10 million bootlegs. But you realize that American Beauty has some really tight, well-arranged songs that aren't meandering.
There were a hundred booksellers in the old round city founded by the eighth-century caliph al-Mansur. The café and wine-drinking culture of Baghdad has been famous for centuries; there was a whole school of Iraqi poets who wrote poems about the wine bars of medieval Baghdad - the khamriyaat, or wine songs, that I quote in the book.
And you may find somebody kind to help and understand you Someone who is just like you and needs a gentle hand to guide them along So maybe I'll see you there We can forget all our troubles, forget all our cares, and go Downtown, things'll be great when you're Downtown, don't wait a minute more Downtown, everything's waiting for you
When your feeling down, do you know you can change it, like that. Put on a beautiful piece of music, start singing, that will change your emotion - or think of something beautiful, think of a baby, maybe one you love, really keep that thought in your mind, block out everything but that thought. I guarantee you'll start to feel good.
I think it's absolutely possible to write a song and go somewhere where no one's been before, uncharted territory. In terms of content, I see limitations where there should be none. I know there are things I wouldn't write about, but that shouldn't be the case. You should be able to make a song out of anything, out of any situation.
I remember that the bass was turned up slightly more on the mix from last week, and I thought that was good - or whatever. Like, there were some little things in there that he said that he came to, like, really enjoy my opinion or at least, like, my little comments on the songs. So I was kind of destined to probably be a studio rat.
What was life has crumbled. What was form, now falls away. Mortal chains unbind and the soul s free. May you find your way to the ancestors. May you find your path to the gods. May your bravery and courage be remembers in song and story, May your parents be proud, and ma our children carry your birthright. Sleep, and wander no more.
I wanted the past to go away, I wanted to leave it, like another country; I wanted my life to close, and open like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song where it falls down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery; I wanted to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know, whoever I was, I was alive for a little while.
Old Khayyám, say you, is a debauchee;If only you were half so good as he!He sins no sins but gentle drunkenness,Great-hearted mirth, and kind adultery.But yours the cold heart, and the murderous tongue,The wintry soul that hates to hear a song,The close-shut fist, the mean and measuring eye,And all the little poisoned ways of wrong.
As an example, there is a Japanese composer / singer whose name is Tanimura [Shinji]: he has composed a song entitled entitled "Kazeno Komoriuta" and I have recorded my piano adaptation of this song and honestly I couldn't expect that it would be so difficult and challenging for me to perform my piano version of this beautiful song.
For us as writers, it's really important to have songs we believe in - even before sometimes we shoot a scene. If we have a song that's so perfectly designed for a scene on 'Rescue Me,' we'll play it on loud speakers during the shooting. It helps the cameraman and it helps the director, and it helps the actors know what the feel is.
'Don't Kill My Vibe' was made in a writing session, by Martin Sjolie and I, after he'd asked me what I'd been thinking about lately. I started talking about this earlier writing session that was quite difficult. The song is about the feeling of not being respected as a person, and I think that's something that speaks to millennials.
No disrespect to people that don't use music theory or don't know it. It does help to be able to figure out what key a song is in, even though with your scales you can figure it out so you can set your Auto-Tune right. So many songs with Auto-Tune are off or have the wrong note playing on the 808. And they pass it off as being hood.
Way back in the day, when I first started and had delusions of adequacy as a cartoonist, I would listen to music. When I switched to a career as a writer, I would try to listen to music, but if the songs had lyrics they would get in the way of the words I was trying to write. So I switched to listening to purely instrumental pieces.
I think music is the greatest art form that exists, and I think people listen to music for different reasons, and it serves different purposes. Some of it is background music, and some of it is things that might affect a person's day, if not their life, or change an attitude. The best songs are the ones that make you feel something.
Whenever I think I know something is a classic, or an amazing song, I realise it's still so subjective, because you and your friends could be talking about something, say, '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' - an amazing classic song - or someone would be like, "'Hey Jude' is an amazing song!", and I'd be like, "I don't really like it."
The song writing is different because with this stuff, I write it on my own and with Hot Water, we're more of a collective and I love both sides of that. Honestly, it's two different animals but I love and respect them both and feel really honored to be blessed with people who care about it and come out and support both sides of it.
I thought it would be cool to Skype with fans on their birthday and spend, like, a half-hour with them. I did a couple of two-hour Skypes. I just hang out with them and play songs and stuff. At first they're kind of shy, but after a while they open up. I've had a lot of people tell me I'm doing something no one has ever done before.
I try not to think about the idea of reaching more and more people, because once you get in that mindset, I think you lose the point of why you're doing it in the first place. Still, the best feeling I ever get is when I finish a song, and it exists, and it didn't exist before, and now it's there, and it makes me feel a certain way.
During those times like in my early years as a writer I could actually write a song in ten minutes because all of a sudden a song is writing itself, I'm just putting down words. It just seem each line that you put down flows with the other ones. It's like writing a love letter you don't think about it, it's something from the heart.
I remember I was really into this British band, The Vapors, with that song "Turning Japanese." I thought that they were really next level genius cryptic weirdos. And then I realized when I got older they are just using a lot of British words, and I didn't know what they meant. But I thought, Oh, they are making up their own language.
In a pure anonymous encounter you find a world alive and full of character. In New York, the street adventures are incredible. There are a thousand stories in a single block. You see the stories in people's faces. You hear the songs immediately. Here, in Los Angeles, there are fewer characters because they are all inside automobiles.
Someone gave me Roman Candle from Cavity Search when it came out. I was just starting to do A&R in the record business, and I remember being in my Volvo 240 in Silverlake, which is every bit the cliche it sounds like, sitting in front of my house playing the songs over and over again. It was the punkest record I had heard in so long.
All the forms of popular music from jazz to hip-hop, to bebop, to soul [come from black innovation]. You talk about different dances from the catwalk, to the jitterbug, to the Charleston, to break dancing -\-\ all these are forms of black dancing...What would [life] be without a song, without a dance, and joy and laughter, and music.
You wind up creating from silence, like painting a picture on a blank canvas that could bring tears to somebody's eyes. As songwriters, our blank canvas is silence. Then we write a song from an idea that can change somebody's life. Songwriting is the closest thing to magic that we could ever experience. That's why I love songwriting.
That's very hard because there's three of them that mean a LOT to me equally. 'Lissie's Heart Murmur' was one of the first songs that we ever wrote - it was one of the first songs, at the very very very beginning of our band and I've always wanted to see and hear that song recorded and turned into something and it finally was and is!
It so happens that certain songs becomes part of culture, and culture is a form of preserving patterns. Yes, we're Mexican, and we're proud to be, but we're also human. But like all cultures, there are retrograde elements and evolutionary elements. I think we'll chose to head towards the evolutionary ones and leave the others behind.
If you say, 'I'm going to cut this song because I know the teenagers are going to love it,' well, then you're going to alienate everybody else. When I cut my record, I'm just going to cut the things that I like, and whoever likes it, likes it. That's too much work to try to figure out the demographic. That's too much like a business.
I told Bernie Taupin that his best lyrics were for Song For Guy just because it doesn't have any words in it. But there you go... I'm a wind up! But a good Elton song for karaoke is I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues... "laughing like children, living like lovers, rolling like thunder under the covers..." Everyone can join in!
We haven't really changed, we've just gotten better at executing what we've always been trying to do. We're not really a band that has undergone huge stylistic decisions to change, we're just trying to follow the song. More and more, we let the song lead us - we don't try and put the song into a structure of our taste or our fashion.
Maybe that whole love thing is just a grown-up version of Santa Claus; just a myth we've been fed since childhood. So, we keep buying magazines, joining clubs, and doing therapy and watching movies with hit pop songs played over love montages all in a pathetic attempt to explain why our love Santa keeps getting caught in the chimney.
I would have to say Björk is my dream collaboration. She's just such a character and has such a spirit that is unlike any other artist out there. She's literally on a whole 'nother planet. She's consistently changing and evolving and doing these different wild things with her songs. I think I could learn a lot from a person like that.
I loved the idea of recording. The idea of sound-on-sound-recording captured me as a young kid, and once I realized what it was I had an epiphany. Before I was even playing the guitar, I would create these lists of how I would record things and overdub them, like Led Zeppelin song, 'I could put this guitar on this track...' and so on.
I never get enough of the adrenaline rush of hearing good music played live and played loud like this. Hearing these songs again snatches me out of the day-to-day and helps me forget all the things I usually waste my time worrying about. As long as the music's playing I don't have to do anything except listen, relax, and enjoy myself.
When it seems like the night will last forever, And there's nothing left to do but count the years, When the strings of my harp to sever, And stones fall from my eyes instead of tears... I will walk alone by the black muddy river, And dream me a dream of my own, I will walk alone by the black muddy river, And sing me a song of my own.
Meditate, oft. Separate thyself for a season from the cares of the world. Get close to nature and learn from the lowliest of that which manifests in nature, in the earth; in the birds, in the trees, in the grass, in the flowers, in the bees; that the life of each is a manifesting, is a song of glory to its Maker. And do thou likewise!
I want to be just a musician and songwriter, and hopefully known as a very good one. I love a lot of music that's considered folk music, but I also love a lot of music that's considered punk or considered rap. I don't mind being called a folk singer. But it seems a bit limiting. I want to be able to write whatever kind of song I want.
Anyone who says the Backstreet Boys can't sing is crazy. They're probably just reading some highbrow critic who hates anyone the general public embraces. I'm sorry, but those boys sing their butts off. They work hard on their choreography, and on their harmonies. Their tracks are tight and solid. Their songs are musical and memorable.
I've always written songs to use music as a form of therapy or as a way to look at my obstacles or my memories from a different perspective. It's always helped me realize the grass isn't always greener and how I need to live more in the moment. My songwriting is a documentation of whatever's happening in my life at that point in time.
"GG BE." I expressed how a guy's love for his woman is dying out because he is tired of how she lies to him all the time. And the woman in the song is waiting for me to break up with her. You know how some people prefer to get dumped than do the dumping, right? I expressed all this, which could happen to anyone, in a Seungri-like way.
I can't say that I'm always writing in my head but I do spend a lot of time in my head writing or coming up with ideas. And what I do usually is write the music and melody and then, you know, maybe the basic idea. But when I feel that I don't have a song or just say, God, please give me another song. And I just am quiet and it happens.
When you're dealing with TV and with movies, people dont take it as serious as they do with music. If a rapper does a song about shooting people on the block, and goes into a restaurant or grocery store, people grab their purses because they're afraid the person is violent. With TV and movies, people know it's okay, it's just a script.
I was having a conversation with my father and he was talking about this thing - strangeness and charm. It's actually the name of the two smallest particles that there are when you split the atom, so I wrote a song around it. I even managed to fit the word 'hydrogen' in there. Isn't that a nice thing for scientists to call them though?
Remembering that life can be full of surprises is useful in any part of your life. You can try a new way of singing a song you’ve performed for years, a new way of showing your family your love for them, or a new recipe. Don’t just play the licks you know. We’re all improvising all the time — it’s good to recognize that and embrace it.
I get total creative control when I'm in the studio now to do what I want to do. If I feel like doing a song I'll do a song. The buzz has been great, in fact a lot of people hit me up now, they're seein me on hiphopgame.com with the journal and I'm just telling people my ideas. All I want to do is make good music at the end of the day.