Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Even if my songs are quite sad or quite dark, I don't want my songs to make people sad. It's very important for me that all my songs have some kind of hope or light.
And it really is a good feeling to get up there and make that sound. I'm not stuck in a time warp, because I can use as many of the old songs as I want to, just the favorites.
I give bird songs to those who dwell in cities and have never heard them, make rhythms for those who know only military marches or jazz, and paint colors for those who see none.
David Bowie is my biggest inspiration. Pretty much the only thing that stayed the same with Bowie was his eyes. Everything else constantly changed, from his sexuality to his songs.
Personal songs take a little more to record, definitely. We had to bring our souls into the recording studio. It was us being very vulnerable. We heard that our fans can kind of feel that.
When I started, I faced a lot of hardships. People used to call me a Rafi clone because I used to sing my favourite singer's songs. Then 'Sa Re Ga Ma Pa' happened. It gave me a good break.
There are a lot of people who really abused sampling and gave it a bad name, by just taking people's entire hit songs and rapping over them. It gave publishers license to get a little greedy.
You can't fake this music. You might be a great singer or a great musician but, in the need, that's got nothing to do with it. It's how you connect to the songs and to the history behind them.
'The Impossible Dream' is, in my opinion, one of the greatest songs ever written. Here is a man, an old man, a very old man full of daring, bravery, courage, determination, romanticism and dreams.
I'm a Gemini and I have a lot of different moods. Sometimes I'm very serious and introspective and pensive, but other times I'm completely goofy and girlie. So, I like my songs to cover all my moods.
'The Ways of a Woman in Love' is one of my very favorite early Johnny Cash songs. I like the way the lyric talks about the character walking by the girl's house and wishing he was the one in her arms.
I'm not everybody's cup of tea. But sometimes criticism can be hurtful. Be respectful. I'm a good piano player, I can sing well, I write good songs. If you don't like it, fair enough. But give me a break.
Deep Purple definitely belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 'Cause they had great songs, great musicianship, they had an impact, and they're a huge influence on the heavy metal community as a whole.
I had no interest in music. But now, music means everything to me. I have no words to explain how beautiful music is. It is where you can create everything, like beautiful songs to sad songs to almost anything.
I have, like, a playlist with all my favourite songs on it. Sadie's Playlist is the soundtrack of my life. 'Wonderwall' by Oasis, 'Under The Bridge' by Red Hot Chili Peppers, TLC, 'Waterfalls' - I love the '90s.
Times were changing. Clothes were changing. Morals were changing. We went from romantic loves songs like I used to do to rock 'n roll. Now that has changed to rap. So, there's always a new generation with new music.
I live again the days and evenings of my long career. I dream at night of operas and concerts in which I have had my share of success. Now like the old Irish minstrel, I have hung up my harp because my songs are all sung.
To be honest, I know this probably sounds corny or whatever because I'm a musician, but listening to music really helps me relax and calm down - listening to my favorite songs. Also, laughing and hanging out with my friends.
If you look over the years, the styles have changed - the clothes, the hair, the production, the approach to the songs. The icing to the cake has changed flavors. But if you really look at the cake itself, it's really the same.
A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.
I remember seeing an interview from the Bee Gees and they were like, 'The biggest competition to the Bee Gees is the Bee Gees.' They just kept trying to top themselves and write better songs, and I'm just always trying to do that.
Whenever I'd go anywhere with my dad - in his 1980 burgundy Dodge Ram - he'd always listen to mix tapes of country-music stars like Garth Brooks, Clint Black and Willie Nelson. Those were the first songs I ever learned the words to.
In Malaysia, we have a lot of divas, like Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey singers. And they were all so so talented, just very talented. For example, there's this one jazz singer, her name is Sheila Majid, and I was always singing her songs.
I think that Bob Dylan knows this more than all of us: you don't write the songs anyhow. So if you're lucky, you can keep the vehicle healthy and responsive over the years. If you're lucky, your own intentions have very little to do with this.
We all love to sing along with our favorite songs. We sing in the car, in the shower, and at the karaoke bar. The problem is that half the time we don't know what we're singing. We're making up lyrics as we go along and hoping no one will notice.
I don't want to be famous or recognizable. I don't want to be critiqued about the way that I look on the Internet... I've been writing pop songs for pop stars for a couple years and see what their lives are like, and that's just not something I want.
Human mind has way too many shades. It would be so boring if this world was all sugar and gloss, just happy, colourful lives. People singing songs is not always the reality. Just like happiness and love, people also feel wrath, jealousy and vengeance!
I think my style is quite grungy and punky. I love the '90s and the music from that time, and I love punk music. I'm also a fan of mixing vintage with some high fashion, which links back to my musical taste because I tend to mix old music with newer songs.
Once the subject matter of rock n' roll changed from cars and pop love songs to songs about really true love and the blues and death and mortality, this light bulb went off in my head and I went, 'Oh, that's what they're doing. That's kind of - that's art.'
You obviously don't really forget how to play the old songs; you just don't have to spend so much time convincing yourself that you remember them. Way less mental energy is spent swimming around in lyrics you've already written and chords you've already played.
My true memory has been tainted by old home videos of my sister and I, ages 3 and 5 respectively, singing karaoke to Britney Spears' 'Lucky' in our living room, and tape recordings of my parents trying to elicit songs out of our throats at a similar or younger age.
I have never made money selling records. I have never really made money touring, either, or with merchandise, surprisingly. But I do make money by just having my songs in the background of television shows or in commercials or movie trailers. That's been really good.
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.
I grew up listening to a lot of player-piano music in my house and a lot of old Tin Pan Alley songs and American standards. My dad listened to a lot of traditional Irish music and I grew up doing musical theater. So most of the music I was exposed to as a kid was pre-rock n' roll.
The best vocalists I can think of are female. There is no singer I can think of who can touch Ella Fitzgerald. And when Billie Holiday sings, she's merciless about it. Her voice has just this immaculate sadness - even in happy songs, there was something that was so broken about it.
I actually feel I'm in a much better place than I've ever been because I'm thankful people still love the songs that I've written, and they seem to like me. And they come to the shows in droves, and they get all excited, and I can still hit all the notes, and I don't look terrible.
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.
The true treasure lies within. It is the underlying theme of the songs we sing, the shows we watch and the books we read. It is woven into the Psalms of the Bible, the ballads of the Beatles and practically every Bollywood film ever made. What is that treasure? Love. Love is the nature of the Divine.
I think Bruno Mars is a great example of a great voice and classic songwriting with a twist that makes it contemporary. I think he's done a great job of it. I think Katy Perry has undeniable songs for what she does, for that pop market. And, if we're talking in the truly pop market, I would say those two.
What really turns me on about technology is not just the ability to get more songs on MP3 players. The revolution - this revolution - is much bigger than that. I hope, I believe. What turns me on about the digital age, what excites me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing.
There's a reason why the Foo Fighters don't blast out Nirvana songs every night: because we have a lot of respect for them. You know, that's hallowed ground. We have to be careful. We have to tread lightly. We have talked about it before, but the opportunity hasn't really come up, or it just hasn't felt right.
I went to jail at 17. While I was there, I discovered that I could write. Once I started making some songs, other inmates wanted to know a little bit more about what I was doing, and they asked me to rap for them. They really liked it, and I made it a goal to come out and try to make something out of the music.
A lot of what I've done as Nine Inch Nails has been governed by fear. I was trying to keep the songs in a framework that was tough, and I learnt a lot from Jesus and Mary Chain about how to bury nice pop songs in unlistenable noise - the idea being if you can get behind that wall, you find there's a pearl inside.
I'm always working on new songs. With the technology these days, any idiot can record on Pro Tools on your laptop. All you have to do is plug a microphone into the input jack and anybody can have their own recording studio. So I'm always down in my basement, singing along to riffs or whoever I'm collaborating with.
There have been times I've planted stuff in songs where four years later I'll be singing it from a subconscious, kind of chameleon little lizard mind... and at a certain moment, all of a sudden, I'll hear a line from a different vantage point and it'll change its meaning. It's something I wrote but it changed because I did.
I was 11 and living in Kosovo. I knew I wanted to perform but didn't feel like I could do it there. So I moved back to London on my own at 15, carried on going to school, and started posting cover songs online. I had no idea how I was going to become a performer, but I felt like I had so many more opportunities being in London.
Of Montreal's early releases were loaded with playful but confessional acoustic tunes, but the band soon embraced glam-rock's freakier side on albums like 'Hissing Fauna Are You the Destroyer?' and 'Skeletal Lamping.' It was a shift fans might not have tolerated if it weren't for frontman Kevin Barnes' catchy, personality-driven songs.
I don't really think much of any songs I put out like I know... I think they're good, that's why I'm putting them out. But like I don't ever try to expect anything, so even with 'Caroline' or 'Red Mercedes,' I just put them out and hope for the best and people kind of gravitate towards them and I guess that's pretty cool and that's a blessing.