Songs Quotes by Scott Weiland, Matt Bellamy, Taylor Hawkins, Zac Brown, Jakob Dylan, Beau Bridges and many others.
My favorite hobby is writing and recording songs at my studio. I like to surf, but I don’t get a chance to do that as much as I’d like. I don’t live close to the beach. I also like to ski, but I don’t get to do that much, either.
Apple, iTunes, and streaming services have made the single a more easy thing to access. What that’s done has made the album as a collection of songs almost meaningless. But an album that has a concept or story or reason to be an album, if anything, has more meaning now than it ever has.
I’ve been lucky enough to have fulfilled so many ambitions, and gone way past anything I ever thought I would do. I could never have imagined the career that I’ve had with the Foo Fighters – playing stadiums and having songs on the radio. It’s amazing, and my goal is really just to carry on playing.
It does make me sad that there’s a lot of great songs out there, and they’re not going to see the light of day because they’re competing with these tailgate songs.
My songs have always had hope and perseverance in them – I never write songs that have no escape hatch, no positivity.
And when I’ve been away from my family and friends, I have felt good hearing some of those old songs.
I’ve done a couple of songs which are not up to the mark. So, mentally, I’ve set a goal that I should be more dynamic and try and push myself as much as I can.
When making any record, a producer has a list of things you hope an artist brings to the studio. Songs that are strong even without the bells and whistles.
I borrowed a guitar at age 16 and taught myself to play because I wanted to write songs.
My favorite songs are the ones that really come from the heart.
It’s funny because as a composer, you want to hear your songs live on. I think a lot of times people will create a song and it becomes stagnant or something that they’re no longer interested in playing, and they leave it alone.
The way we write our solo songs is that we take the emotions that we feel and put them in the lyrics. And we try to put them in the songs.
I’d experimented with so many different types of music. I had these folky songs I’d written and recorded, but something wasn’t quite right.
‘Trap House’ is one of my favorite songs off ‘300 Days 300 Nights’ mixtape, I sent it to Thug, he loved it and knocked it out on the spot in Atlanta.
Some songs you get. Some songs you may not. And I think that’s the beauty of art: to question and to ask, to understand the deeper meaning after two or three or four listenings.
I’m not the type of person who makes a lot of songs in a day just to see which one is the best.
My boys asked me to write beautiful letters for their ex-girls so they could get them back. I thought, ‘I should be writing songs for myself.’
The act of song writing and recording became one and the same to me; because I essentially recorded everything I did from the day I began trying to write songs. I’ve always had a lot to say. I’d always written poems.
My songs emerge from my life, or wherever they do, unbidden and unplanned and completely on a schedule of their own.
Singing your own songs is all about individual expression.
If you’re a pop singer, you don’t need to evolve. You just get a set together, have some hit songs and play them over and over.
My family used to say, point-blank, ‘We’d support you if we thought you could sing, or we thought you could write songs, but you can’t.’
I wrote most of these songs right before the end. A lot of these songs are about that. Even if it’s not direct, you can feel the beginning of the end of the breakup in these songs.
If you break down most rock songs and look at the lyrics on a piece of paper, it’s all about melody. It’s all about presentation. And a lot of bands are really great, but you can’t understand a word of what they say.
If you write great songs with meaning and emotion, they will last for ever because songs are the key to everything. Songs will outlast the artist and they will go on for ever if they are good.
Even when I was calling myself the Microphones I only really ever played new songs… because I feel, like, a pretty strong connection to the song when I’m performing it.
We always try to sing what we feel, and it would be best if we can become artists who can deliver the feeling through our songs.
My favorite songs to sing have always been songs about regret. I don’t know why that is, but to me, that’s country music.
You know, Tupac would go into the studio and make like six or seven songs in one day. That’s how he operated. He was real quick with his pen.
Music is in me. I don’t have much of a choice. People might listen to one of my songs or come and see my because of my famous last name, but if my music’s not good they won’t hang around.
Spotify favors hits. It’s very much a meritocracy: It’s not like radio, where whatever is being played is what you hear. We offer songs up, and from there, it’s up to consumers to stream the music or not.
It’s part of the calling to at least do a few songs in the show that give people some hope. There’s so much hurt in this world and… music is such a great healing balm and a great way to forget your troubles.
Love songs are one of the great essences of life, the only thing that’s lasting.
Singing was probably my first love, and song writing. I write a lot of love songs and heartbreaking songs.
Bob Marley is a huge influence. I love reggae music, but I also love the purpose of the songs he writes and the style of the music – it takes your worries away and makes you feel good, and I think that’s what music is about.
I’ve copyrighted 3,000 songs.
When playing big festivals, I tend to play big, over the top techno tracks, like hands in the air songs that make sense being played in front of 30,000 people. I steer away from subtlety in the interests of big bombastic dance music.
In college, I faced an interesting problem. I wanted to play music all the time and yet I wasn’t ready for anyone to hear it. To remedy this, I took to retreating to stairwells as a safe place to sing and write music. It was there that I wrote most of my songs in college and really grew into an artist.
I’ve been writing a lot of sad songs, and I got to the point where I was like, ‘You can’t write another one or you’re lying.’
The conservatory professors thought everything should sound like French and German symphonies. But to my ear, bouzouki songs, which tell the sufferings and heartaches of ordinary people, offered a way to make classical music available not just to the upper classes.
I was so young when the Killers started. I was 21. I’m proud of those songs, but there’s no way I would write ‘Somebody Told Me,’ as I get older. Especially after having kids.
The spiritual quest was always the predominant aspect of my life. It’s always been there. But there’s also an incredible passion connected to it; it’s not just a dry investigative process. I have been extremely emotional about it, and that comes out in the songs.
‘Hallelujah’ is going to be a standard that our grandkids, our great-great grandkids will learn to sing in church. It’s one of those really, really special songs.
Songs really are like a form of time travel because they really have moved forward in a bubble. Everyone who’s connected with it, the studio’s gone, the musicians are gone, and the only thing that’s left is this recording which was only about a three-minute period maybe 70 years ago.
A lot of the songs in ‘See Jane Sing!’ are pulled straight from the kitchen table and my parents harmonizing together.
Starship was a whole different thing. It was pop rock. It made more money and had more hit songs than Airplane. There was no cultural or social ethic behind it. For me, it was like selling out. I was the only one selling out. The rest enjoyed doing what they were doing.
My vocal ability is very limited, but I’m fortunate in that I can write the songs around my vocal limitations.
Most of the songs I sing have that blues feeling in it. They have that sorry feeling. And I don’t know what I’m sorry about. I don’t.
I can sit down at the piano and make you think I know how to play the piano because I know, like, the beginnings of four songs.
I am permanently a student of people who make great songs, but besides sort of learning by absorption, I just love listening to music, hearing what’s going on, hearing new things or new old things.
It’s certain rappers that can really rap, that really spit all bars, so I understand why someone would say, ‘You not a real rapper.’ But the main thing is, if you can make good songs, who cares? So I don’t know why guys be tripping on Drake. He makes great music. He’s dope.
I definitely believe that there are songs that, as artists, we don’t know the full potential.
Malaysian Tamil movies are amateurish, with songs picked up from our old Tamil movies and inserted in between.
I think the problem with people, as they start to mature, they say, ‘Rap is a young man’s game,’ and they keep trying to make young songs. But you don’t know the slang – it changes every day, and you’re just visiting. So you’re trying to be something you’re not, and the audience doesn’t buy into that.
I have always enjoyed watching my songs make people cry.
On a good night, I probably make three songs, and none of them are full songs.
The masses do not see the Sirens. They do not hear songs in the air. Blind, deaf, stooping, they pull at their oars in the hold of the earth. But the more select, the captains, harken to a Siren within them… and royally squander their lives with her.
I know what it’s like to have a broken heart. I know what it’s like to feel pain: When my songs don’t become hits, it breaks my heart. There are a million ways to break a heart. I can relate.
I’ve always been a big fan of taking old songs and completely turning them on their head. Having no adherence to the fine tradition of the original version. Rearranging them and taking a different approach to them.
I can’t wait to front my band with these new songs and play for fans, but I’ve decided to keep my day job too.
I’m not against screens, or new songs, or innovation. I just don’t like the gimmicks. I want to know when worship is over that that leader’s sole purpose was to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ.
Me and Jerry left because we felt we weren’t getting anywhere playing our old songs in tiny clubs. The group was getting stale and staying behind the times.
I feel like everybody’s life literally has a soundtrack because we love music so much, and there are so many songs that people love.
I don’t really like to talk about what my songs are about.
Between the Dinosaur Jr. albums and his recent solo albums, ‘Several Shades of Why’ and ‘Heavy Blanket,’ J Mascis is emerging as one of the last men from all that ’80s indie madness, still writing songs that you want to listen to over and over.
I’ll have to get people to write songs for me right now until my own writing comes around.
It was just the next logical step from making succinct pop songs. What do you do after that? You make pop songs that are longer and more epic, that push the envelope. Imagine your favourite song, or something that you play over and over in the car, except that you don’t have to start it over as much.
As society changes, as politics change, as people change, certain songs still seem to resonate.
I think remixes give songs more life.
Whenever I meet children’s parents, they complain that the kids don’t sleep until they listen to my whistle baja song! My songs have captivated the kids.
Songs I do have to strike an emotional chord the first time I sing them.
My mother made me listen to Carnatic music saying that only then I will be able to appreciate any good music. But what this has also done for me is that I’m unable to accept modern-day cinema songs.
In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.
Hindi film songs are the best of everything – whether it is lyrics, melody and talented singers.
When I write songs, when I sing songs, I don’t have anybody in mind. I’m just trying to express what I think people are feeling.
I just love writing songs and singing them. People seem to enjoy them, and that’s all you can really ask for. I didn’t get into it to try to be a celebrity or whatever.
I decided at 15 that I didn’t want to be one of those artists that gets up and sings love songs they don’t mean. I decided that I was going to be me to the fullest extent, that my songs were going to reflect relationships I’ve had, things I’ve been through, and even the stuff I’m embarrassed about.
The real challenge of writing songs isn’t just writing a bunch of parts – like a verse, chorus, verse – but making something that flows together, that brings you back.
I didn’t want to play these people any more songs and have them say that they weren’t good enough. So my response was to just not be able to write anymore. I know that’s not the healthiest of responses.
I wrote poetry before I wrote songs, and T.S. Eliot was my inspiration. I love his honesty and try to bring that to my own songwriting.
We didn’t rehearse or play the songs to death before we recorded them, and that let us catch a freshness and energy level we’ve never really felt while making records.
Like Juan Gabriel and Ana Gabriel, both singers and songwriters of legendary talent, Marco Antonio has reshaped a kind of Mexican romanticism. What he brings to pop music is the kind of songs that really talk to people’s hearts.
I don’t play an instrument – I just write in my head, and I usually hear fully formed songs. ‘We Are Young’ turned out so much like it was in my head. But it also exceeded all my expectations.
That’s where it begins and ends for me and these songs were the ones that touched me the deepest. It was like I was laying hold of some part of me that I didn’t even know was there until I let it out.
Punjabi songs and Babu Mann tops my playlist. I also listen to a lot of English music although I don’t understand a single word. If the music is good, I am fine.
Everyone’s computer, mobile phone or music-listening device should have a folder in my name with 100 songs.
Over the years, a lot of rappers – Lil’ Wayne, Ice Cube – have used my name in their songs. I’m a real touchstone of history.
It’s what the Pixies always said about music – they were writing songs and just trying not to be boring. That was their main motivation and it worked for them. I remember reading that and thinking that was the way to do it.
Missing You’ almost didn’t get on the No Brakes’ album, because the record company said, ‘The album’s finished. We don’t need any more songs.’
I was drawn to love songs, but I was just drawn to great music – no matter if it’s hip-hop, pop, R&B or whether it’s rock n’ roll or country. It could be a Garth Brooks song, and if it’s a smash, then I’ll love the different wordplay and different melodies. That’s what I’m a fan of – great music.
I am not against songs in films. We come from an oral tradition of storytelling. I have grown up listening to epics in oral rendition and oral rendition always had music.
Whenever I listen to songs, I rewrite them in my head.
It’s always fun to play songs by somebody else.
In real life, I am emotionally confused, which enables me to write songs. I’m a Pisces, and they say that Pisces are very sensitive. If men were just honest with themselves, they would see that they all have that side.
My head is full of songs I’m writing now, and things I am thinking now. I’m not very good at drawing on things that have happened, things I think might happen, or things I want to happen. I’m very much in right now.
But me writing sad songs doesn’t mean I am a sad person.
I think a lot of people think that my parents’ deaths is why I write such sad songs, but that’s not true. Those songs may just be the woman I am.
When I write music, it’s very strange: maybe it’s normal, but I see things in songs in different colors.
Even if the songs are at times painful – ’cause some of the songs are not all roses and balloons; some of them dig into deep things that I’ve been going through – there’s a joy that I think people feel from my music and, hopefully, from my performance because I am so in love with doing what I do.
Part of the problem with America is that letting go of emotions is viewed as a weakness, but it’s my strength. That enabled me to write my songs.
I don’t compose songs to showcase my proficiency in music or to please hard-core music lovers. The basic criterion is that my work should reach all sections of music lovers.
My parents have always had a great sense of humor. And I really appreciate good humor in songs, witty lyrics that sneak up on you and then you listen again, and say: ‘That’s so funny.’ John Prine’s songs have always had this really witty tone.
It’s a big flash of all these things and whatever you take out of that statement’s one statement, one mind, one statement, one act, one show, and all the songs are one.
We’re not one of those bands that throws the names of all their songs in a hat and pulls them out right before they go on stage.
Just because people play songs with great technique doesn’t mean the records are better.
I grew up in the entertainment industry, and I think being around that gave me a different perspective on people and what’s real and what’s fake. I think about that a lot, and it comes out in my songs.
The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.
I think sometimes all you need is to hear someone else say the same thing that you’re going through to realize that you’re not alone. I try to put some sense of hope into the songs, into whatever the situation is so that it’s not just dirt, drudgery and a life of misery.
Something about Mariah Carey’s songs really had me wanting to sing high like her.
I’m convinced there are a lot of couples who have got together while listening to my music. My songs are not exactly unsexy.
Songs like ‘Outfit’ and ‘Decoration Day’ and ‘Dress Blues,’ those were good songs, but the output wasn’t as consistent in those days.
The great songs just come out. If it comes quick, just leave it that way.
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.
I just claim to do what I do, which is to sing old songs and try to make them cool.
Some of those early Kinks songs, we were barely in tune.
Producing all my own songs and refusing to go to the hot producer. That’s the biggest risk I’ve taken so far.
Maybe some people that only listen to electronic music will pick up my record and get turned on to some of the story songs, some of the more country-type stuff.
Don’t trust anyone that doesn’t like any Bowie songs.
My songs are a direct route into my brain and my heart.
In my older songs, I used to hide behind fictional characters to deflect attention away from myself.
There are albums that I like because of specific songs, but then there are albums that I like as a complete body of work. ‘Ghetto Fabolous’ is an album I lived with daily.
A lot of people don’t realise I came out of the Smoky Mountains with a load of songs.
I always like story songs, Dolly Parton, Tom T. Hall, Mel Tillis, Red Stegall, when they’d do their story songs. I was totally enthralled.
I think often sadness is a great place to get songs from.
When I first was trying to play the clubs around Houston to start playing my own songs, songwriters like Eric Taylor and Vince Bell and Townes Van Zandt and Don Sanders were just really encouraging to me and would let me sit in with them during their sets and introduce me to the person that owned and booked the club.
I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I’ve always seen my stories as enlarged songs.
I’d say writing songs is, for me, as much playing the tape recorder as it is playing guitar or writing words.
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.
With our first record, we wrote concept songs but not a concept record.
I just try to write songs that people are going to have a dialogue about.
If I did a show and didn’t do Hootie songs, I would be ripping people off.
To reminisce with my old friends, a chance to share some memories, and play our songs again.
My favorite Bob Dylan record is the very first one where he sings one Bob Dylan song and the rest of them are his interpretations of the Dust Bowl-era folk songs, or even going back as far as the mass influx of people coming into the U.S. during the gold rush. His interpretations of those songs are incredible.
You can tell all our songs come from us and from our artists, the people we write with and travel with.
I’ve written many love songs for Gerard. But it’s never enough. I feel that he deserves a million love songs written for him.
When I was 5, I started taking singing lessons, and then, after ‘School of Rock,’ I started taking guitar lessons. I would always write songs and play them for my friends, and I would play my guitar on the set a lot.
I don’t think of my songs as sad songs. I think of them as vulnerable and honest. I crack jokes in between songs, so people don’t leave feeling too dark.
People want to listen to a message, word from Jah. This could be passed through me or anybody. I am not a leader. Messenger. The words of the songs, not the person, is what attracts people.
Americans might not understand, but within Korea, Big Bang was one of the first artists to make their own production. We have our own interpretation of our own songs. We do our own thing.
This is an album of songs that I’ve always loved, tunes that I heard. For the first time in 53 years of recording, I really had control over an entire album, start to finish.
My grandfather lived across the garden from us, and in his attic he had a lot of radios, appliances and inventions that he had made over 50 years, such as a keyboard called a clavioline, which can be heard on some Beatles songs – it was popular in the 60s. So we had all that at home.
If everybody was lyrical, everybody’s songs would sound the same.
A lot of the songs I’ve recorded are songs I write.
The program director at a radio station, by the way, is not the superstar. If he was a superstar, he’d be out creating songs, but he’s not. But he wants to act like he has control and power.
The songs that I like are the ones that you can’t visualize, that are just cries from the heart – those very straight, direct songs that make rock & roll music so wonderful.
My first songs were energetic because I liked their energy. When I used to battle people every day, I had to go hard. If someone went harder than me, they left with the win. I haven’t lost since I was 12 years old.
A song like ‘Heartbreaker,’ it’s a song about learning – it’s not necessarily a song about heartbreak. It’s more than that. We write those songs to relive how we got over something.
I can write a poem in 10 minutes. I like writing songs; I can write songs in 5 or 10 minutes. My concentration seems very short.
I think I probably would have enjoyed to keep my own private pain out of my work. But I was changed by my audience who said your private pain which you have unwittingly shown us in your early songs is also ours.
I can’t speak for other artists; every group has a different approach. For us, it will always be important to keep working hard, dancing better, writing better songs, touring, and setting an example.
I was 14 when I decided I wanted to start doing music and stuff. I was a really big fan of Ben Howard, and he put out a really amazing album in 2014, and then, after being inspired by my dad and Lady Gaga and Ed Sheeran, I wanted to start writing songs.
I grew up among heroes who went down the pit, who played rugby, told stories, sang songs of war.
If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend or, perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while.
I think the best riffs and the best songs come when you’re jamming and having a good time.
I’m trying to create a collection of stories – the ‘U.F.O.W.A.V.E.’ songs are all stories. I haven’t really taken direct lyrical influence from other songwriters, but my dad bought me a book of W.H. Auden’s poems when I was younger, and the imagery really interested me.
I was doing theater in my high school, and I started writing sort of silly songs on the piano backstage in summer theater. I eventually put them online and started getting this little following.
I love music and hopefully I’ll be able to do something with it – I just have to find time to get into the studio and record a few songs.
The main issue was deciding what to play: Should it be old Ramones material or new material? I had about three albums worth of new material, but I knew that people would rather hear the Ramones songs.
You just went right in and just recorded songs and listened them, and if there were any mistakes, then we would correct them and just went on… one take or two take.
I love deeply, and when it comes to singing love songs and something that I have no problem doing, I put all of my heart and soul into these love songs. I know my fans out there are listening, taking these songs to heart. Like I say, they’re relating these songs to their lives, too, and their relationships.
If you can’t get your songs to people one way, you have to find another.
I didn’t write songs for a very long time.
Human beings love poetry. They don’t even know it sometimes… whether they’re the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber… they’re listening to poetry.
You know, Nirvana used to start rehearsals with the three of us just jamming. For, like, a half an hour, just noise and freeform crap – and usually it was crap. But sometimes things would come from it, and some songs on Nevermind came from that, and ‘Heart Shaped Box’ and stuff on ‘In Utero’ just happened that way.
I’ve been singing one kind of genre for a long time but have always tried to push to new auras about picking new songs or the same kind of genre but trying to sing it differently, treating it differently.
I need some time to write songs and work on my thing, but I’m just living my life and doing family stuff and letting inspiration come when it comes. But I also don’t feel a desperate need to keep pushing myself into people’s faces to stay cool and relevant.
I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.
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.
A DJ can’t just play one song. It’s about playing a set, or how you connect songs in those two hours, and where you place them.
Sometimes, the songs that really affected me were not from the artist catalogue of their music, like the song ‘Thunder Road’ by Bruce Springsteen. I never got into any of his other music, but that song, to this day, is in my top three lyrical masterpieces of all time.
I think Bridge Over Troubled Water was a very good song. Artie sang it beautifully. The Boxer was a really nice record. But I don’t think I’ve written any great songs.
I don’t know if I could write songs if it wasn’t for the female race, to be honest with you.
There is nothing in the world of art like the songs mother used to sing.
I still have my first paycheck. It was just, I think, a dollar or two that I got when I started as a songwriter with BMI, and I had some songs there that I had through the company, and in the mail I got this big old check for, like, a dollar and a half or something. Somebody had recorded one of my songs.
Widespread Panic discovered a couple of my songs and started doin’ ’em on the gigs. They’d take a song and expand it and everybody plays a long time and people really like that. But I made my living as a songwriter so I try to get to singin’ and get it over with.
Sometimes I don’t go into the studio for quite a while because I haven’t found enough good songs. They have to have a certain caliber and connect with me because I’m going to be playing them for the rest of my life. I start off with a circle of friends whose songs I love anyway.
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.’
There are only couple songs that you can just hear and it’ll put you in a great mood.
There are a couple different factors that play into the decision of which songs to cover. It could either be we’re really inspired by a song that’s just come out or inspired by an international classic, but either way we bring it to the band.
I started out dabbling in rock and roll; then I did playback, and I have also sung for my own songs on screen.
All art is political. Yes. Even the stuff that sounds like bubble-gum songs. I think all art is, by nature, intended to motivate society for change, and the only reason change doesn’t happen is because within the target population, courage is lacking.
There’s gonna be a lot of great songs, but there ain’t going to be another ‘Trap Queen.’
I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best – I mean, when I’m at my best – of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.
Whenever I’m making songs, I am pretty much, quote unquote, freestyling them into existence.
One of my favorite reggae songs is Wayne Wonder’s ‘No Letting Go.’ And Sizzla ‘Give Me A Try.’ That’s one of my favorite songs as well.
I remember breaking the news to both my parents that I wanted to be a director, and they both looked very doubtful. They didn’t know what a closet Hindi film buff I was. I used to dance to old Hindi films songs on the sly, so my decision to be a part of Hindi cinema was shocking even for my parents.
I just write a song, and it just comes out however it wants to. And some of them are catchy songs like ‘Here Comes The Sun,’ and some of them aren’t, you know.
For Ripley I learned to play some songs on the piano, and I never really played them again.
I understand it’s my role to realize people’s dreams. I’m O.K. with that so long as my songs are my own. No one can take my songs away from me.
Me and Thugger could make nine songs in a day and then choose which songs we like the most and think is gonna do something. With other people, it’s like, we pick one song, and we hope it’s the one.
With songs, it doesn’t matter what song it is; every time I go out and perform it, it’s like the first time I’m performing it, the first time I wrote it. If it’s not, then I’m not going to do it that night.
I feel an acting stint would help me widen my reach as a singer. Being an actor would let me reach out to people who may not have heard my kind of songs.
Everything I do, whether it’s producing or signing an artist, always starts with the songs. When I’m listening, I’m looking for a balance that you could see in anything. Whether it’s a great painting or a building or a sunset.
‘Nakhrewali’ is one of my favourite songs.
We’re in the same company as 2NE1 and we get our songs from the same producers, so the influence is natural. Since they’ve done a lot of things before us, we want to emulate them. But at the same time, we hope there will soon be an opportunity to show our own unique color. We want to succeed with our own unique color.
When you have a reputation for making not only good songs but great albums, that in itself creates added artistic pressure. But, at the end of the day, I guess that pressure is something I welcome.
I used to sing songs and write with my uncle, Bill Owens.
My brothers and I had a gospel quartet, and that was the only music people listened to. But I was already gravitating towards songs by Sam Cooke, and then one day I put on a Jackie Wilson record, and baby, I was thrown right out of the house.
I try to make the songs as good as I can – the way I like it, you know? And I guess my taste sometimes happens to be what other people, particularly radio programmers, like too.
My mom had a produce business in in Oxnard, and we used to take these long trips to talk to farmers and different distributors. She’d take us with her after picking us up from school, and she’d be blasting all this old soul music and R&B. I knew all those O’Jays songs before I knew Snoop or Dre or Tupac.
As a rapper, I was heavily influenced by American rap albums. But for songs that are more melody-driven, I get my inspiration from Korean albums.
These days, there are many people around the world who listen to the songs that made me infamous and read the books that made me respectable.
My dad has a lot of foresight and decided that I would not do any shows in Mumbai till I became a singer and got to sing my own songs. He knew that if I started earning money from shows, I would not have the time and aggression to rough it out to become a singer.
The thing I always default to is that I’ll always be here to write songs.
I play in a band, I write songs, I sing, you know, perform on stage.
I hardly ever listen to any of our old stuff now. Once the songs have been recorded and put on to vinyl they become someone else’s entertainment, not mine.
I got a lot of film companies approaching me to write some songs for their films.
I write songs about real things… The subject dictates the mood and it goes from there, really.
Lynyrd Skynyrd has always been about writing songs and talking to people through them. That’s what we do, and that’s what we’ll keep doing for as long as we can.
I love music, of course, and many, many, many genres. There are hardly any songs I would say that I hate. There’s a couple, and I don’t even know exactly why I don’t like them.
I have learned that music helps a lot of people survive, and they want songs that can give them something – I guess you could call it hope.
If I had a label, everything would have been easier. But it wouldn’t have been the same album, from the cover art to the songs on it.
Sometimes, entire songs are ready in just about five minutes.
When I release my music I will text Sharon Osborne and ask her about my songs.
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.
On ‘Love Letters’, I focused exclusively on songs with lyrics, creating a collection of songs that directly address heartbreak and its ensuing emotions in a way that instrumental music can only hint at.
For me, my favorite Mariah Carey songs were never the singles, ever. My favorite Mariah song of all time is ‘Sent From Up Above’ from her first album, or ‘Vanishing,’ songs no one talks about.
Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.
I have been consistent by staying true to who I am and will continue to sing the type of songs that those who have continued to support my career expect from me.
I want to create songs that will last across time.
I don’t think of them as teenage songs. The things that happen to you in high school are the same things that happen your entire life. You can fall in love at 60; you can get rejected at 80.
All those people who go to NASCAR and sing country & western songs and live in Tennessee, they totally ignore me, they don’t come to my shows, I just don’t exist for them and they don’t exist for me.
I learned to play guitar at a young age and converted poems and stuff that I had written to songs.
I’ve loved Patti LaBelle since I was a little girl. I love her so much because she’s spontaneous. I love Shirley Murdock, Keyshia Cole, Jazmine Sullivan and Tweet and Faith Evans. Faith’s songs got me through a lot.
The Marathi film ‘Natrang’ has amazing songs. I also like and have sufi and folk music.
I am probably the only composer in South India who has delivered many superhit songs but was not considered a success.
At first, I was using my sister Susan’s lyrics, as I could not write myself, only the music. And then one day, she and I had a fight, and she threatened to take away the lyrics from all the songs that I put the lyrics to, so it was that day that I began writing my first lyric to the music.
You get royalties from certain songs that you do when you do background. It’s according to the work that you put in.
I cannot sing the old songs now! It is not that I deem them low, ‘Tis that I can’t remember how They go.
Well, in Japan, I have got a group of musicians that I have worked with a lot, that concentrate just on the hardcore stuff, say, that Naked City has been working on. We have like a repertoire of sixty songs now.
I love Robyn. ‘Dancing on My Own’ is one of my favourite songs.
Some of their best songs don’t have bridges and choruses. So that made me think I should trust my instincts. My songs were okay, I figured. I didn’t need to change anything.
When I lived in a little flat in Pimlico in 1981, I’d write in the hallway. As you walked in, there was a tiny little recess type thing, hardly a hallway, really, and I’d sit there writing songs with my guitar.
Smiths songs certainly have an astonishing afterlife.
My songs are like my children – I expect them to support me when I’m old.
My guitar heroes are Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck and people like that – so I’ve tried to make an album of Robert Johnson covers that, well, while not totally faithful for blues purists, is faithful for people like me that grew up with the ’60s and the electric blues-rock versions of Johnson’s songs.
I’ve written songs everywhere, and I think the place does matter.
People take songs so literally.
I love songs that have a rocking and grooving feeling.
Songs are here to help us: they build bridges from heart to heart.
Love songs are the most complex to write because everyone knows about it.
I was a beach boy, and I believe I learned my songs from the birds of the Brazilian forest.
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.
I started to write my songs when I was 15 and living in the Congo.
I’ve had a bit of a crazy life. So writing lyrics in songs is easy for me.
I got to realizing that I wanted to record, I wanted to experiment. And doing those same old songs the same old way – I said, ‘I think it’s time for me to have some fun.’
To me, there’s two types of songs, good and bad. And I just like to stick with the good ones.
Social media can sometimes influence the charts, but I think that only great music makes it to the top. The good songs make it.
Music is a language in itself and the songs have their own soul, every song has its soul.
My first influences for playing were Johnny Ramone and Jimmy Page, the same as everybody else. Joe Perry. The guys in Alice Cooper’s band, whatever their names were. Mick Ronson from David Bowie. You know who really influenced me to write songs? Iron Maiden.
Musically, I always allow myself to jump off of cliffs. At least that’s what it feels like to me. Whether that’s what it actually sounds like might depend on what the listener brings to the songs.
Real popular culture is folk art – coalminers’ songs and so forth.
I’ve got songs that’ll make a gangster cry.
I don’t dream songs. I’m more apt to write dreams down and then to be able to interpret them into a song. I also tend to get up and write prose in the morning from which will come songs.
I don’t really need to stand out, there’s room for everyone. Although I haven’t built a niche yet, I’m just writing love songs.
When I was 13 or 14, I took seven months off from touring. I did a lot of weekend gigs in Louisiana. We have fairs and festivals every weekend. But I took seven months off. That’s when I really started digging deep. I wrote a couple songs that year that I still play every now and then for people.
‘Alligator’ was the first record that anyone paid attention to, and it seemed like it was the screamy songs that got us that attention.
I doubt I’ll be singing forever, because at some point people aren’t going to want to hear my music, and I hope that I’ll still get the opportunity to write songs.
I can’t see myself just endlessly singing the same songs over and over again.
Some songs are just like tattoos for your brain… you hear them and they’re affixed to you.
I can remember when I was just, like, about four years old in Compton, and my mother would have me stack 45s, stack about ten of them, and when one would finish, the next record would drop. It was like I was DJ’ing for the house, picking out certain songs and so this song would go after that song.
I love a lot of Irish folk music and Irish folk songs.
I think Bob Dylan showed us that songs can rise to the level of literature, and he proved it over and over again. That’s why they keep trying to get him a Nobel Prize for literature: because there is no Nobel Prize for songwriting.
The wonderful thing about having your songs on the radio is that people are going to go out to your concerts and buy your merchandise and that sort of thing, and it feels good to get that level of name recognition.
I compose my own stuff. I’ve been writing songs with words. I’ve been playing more on the keyboard because I can transpose it to sheet music on the computer.
I never see songs as permanent. I’m always in a state of revising everything.
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.
I don’t want to have one hit, one song of the summer, and then have me disappear forever. I really want my things to last, and I want my songs and my bodies of work to resonate with people. I want to hit people – at least make a dent in them. I want to make a mark somehow.
Songs you can dip in and out of, but a book… well, it can overpower you.
I grew up the biggest fan of the Cure. Knew every lyric, had every album, B-side, single, poster, everything. Then cut to fifteen years later, and we’re working on songs together. Ridiculous.
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’m always storing away phrases and ideas and things that I think might turn into songs.
Most country songs, certainly all the stuff I’ve written, are stories driven by characters.
I’m not afraid to write my feelings in songs.
To look for some kind of insight or meaning in pop songs is not really – well there’s plenty of other places where you should probably look first before you start looking for it in a pop song.
Too often, politics is like bad theater. The mass media simplifies stories and personalities into their most basic, digestible and familiar bits. Listeners prefer songs they have heard before, after all.
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.
With pop songs, they usually have a three-month roll out.
I’m not claiming divinity. I’ve never claimed purity of soul. I’ve never claimed to have the answers to life. I only put out songs and answer questions as honestly as I can… But I still believe in peace, love and understanding.
There has been a great laziness in my soul. Lots of days I could write songs, but I could also take my $400 and play the slot machines at the riverfront casino.
I feel a connection to many songs that I won’t sing because I don’t think they are right for me! There is something in my gut that immediately responds. There’s no science to it.
I must be careful not to get trapped in the past. That’s why I tend to forget my songs.
All my songs are clean, and I am very careful about the lyrics, too.
We make our own music, and the songs appeal to the public well, and the public likes them.
Songs are out there – they’re waiting to be grabbed. I start with a phrase, musical and lyrical, words like ‘I don’t think so’ and a nice riff. It rolls from there.
The lyrics are different from Nick Cave songs and lyrics. His songs are very narrative.
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.
I know a lot of artists say this, but it’s hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There’s no tricks.
At times, yes, I have been typecast. But I love having a regional identity in my songs. I want to deliver music that reflects the culture of our soil.
In my head, I consider ‘No Turning Back’ my ‘dipping the toe in the water’ album. It was mostly covers of favorite songs, and there were three originals in there. So, it feels like it was just my album to see what the temperature of the water was.
I think some people think I’m, like, anti-label, and I’m not. I just wanted to sign a deal when the time was right. I’m anti being shot out of a rocket when you’re not ready and the songs and image aren’t there.
I have such an eclectic taste in music. Come to a backyard BBQ at my house, and I will run the gamut from Skynyrd to Sinatra to ’90s grunge, rap, R&B, and classic rock. I have issues. If I had to pick one, I love this country artist named Craig Morgan. His music and his songs are so relatable and tell such vivid stories.
Often I listen to songs on repeat for days and days at a time. There’s something hypnotic or meditative, and it mirrors the way that I am putting the sentence together, going back over the same phrases again and again.
It is true I’ve written songs for other performers; I’ve worked with Tricky, Tears for Fears, A1, HearSay among others.
There are a lot of songs that would ostensibly be a good candidate for parody, yet I can’t think of a clever enough idea.
I’ve done lots of songs for film soundtracks and things like that – stuff I’m not ashamed of, but that doesn’t represent my legacy with the Pretenders.
I got a couple on per album but my problem was that I wanted to sing the songs and not let Roger sing them.
Post Malone is one of my biggest inspirations. I just love his songs and his writing. He’s a genius. Then person-wise, I’m a huge fan of Zendaya. I love her. I watch her interviews and everything she does all the time because I think she’s just such a crazy good human being.
I wanted people to understand that I have my own music, and I didn’t want to sing other people’s songs at shows.
It is a part of us, film-makers and audiences; what we can’t say with dialogues, we say with a song. We tell stories through songs, look at our folk cultures.
Everyone is trying to make these huge songs; I just make things that I want to listen to. Music that I will be comfortable listening to 10 years from now, that’s my only thing.
When I was younger, and Iron Maiden and Def Leppard and all that stuff was coming out, I was learning all those songs and trying to play guitar and develop my chops. I was a big fan.
My first band was called Nubert Circus, a very embarrassing, dumb name. It means nothing. We were kind of grunge. I would say we were more funny punk, a lot of songs about food and stuff like that.
Prince used to call me up 3am in the morning and invite me to hear some of his new songs.
You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.
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!
‘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.
We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
I know people who have written big hit country songs that are really kind of terrible songs, but for the rest of their life, they’re the guy who wrote that. You’ve got to be careful; if you don’t want that to happen, don’t write those songs.
I don’t hate myself anymore. I used to hate my work, hated that sexy image, hated those pictures of me onstage, hated that big raunchy person. Onstage, I’m acting the whole time I’m there. As soon as I get out of those songs, I’m Tina again.
I sing the songs that people need to hear.
Surface R&B doesn’t work any more. The whole heartthrob thing, songs about unrealistic love and tearing your shirt off every show – that’s not really where it’s at any more. It’s becoming harder for those guys to sell records, and harder for them to succeed.
I think the narratives on ‘Trans,’ ‘Plans,’ and ‘Narrow Stairs’ moved away from the way I wrote on the first couple of records, which was a lot more impressionistic. I was writing those songs in my early 20s, so I thought I was being more clear than I actually was.
My songs are all about celebrating poignant music. While some of them focus on fun and revelry, they are fortunately backed by powerful lyrics. Put together, the lyrics, tune and my voice strive to take the songs to the next level.
I had just lost my dad and I remembered all the songs we used to go and hear at concerts, and the records around the house and sometimes we’d play together.
Sometimes my songs wander off a bit and are not always coherent.
So much of grandeur and richness in songs unnerve me.
Songs are all poetry, and they don’t make any sense.
I say, ‘Yeah, Taylor Swift.’ I think she is a smart, beautiful girl. I think she’s making all the right moves. She’s got a good head on her shoulders. She’s surrounded with wonderful people. Her songs are great. She keeps herself anchored. She knows who she is, and she’s living and standing by that.
Sometimes, I make 50 songs and pick out the best 10. I’ve been in the studio all day, all night, making the beat, writing the raps. You never know what’s gonna be a hit.
I think there are things in my story that have helped my creativity. Your father being killed, for instance, is one of the best things that could happen to a kid if he’s going to write poetry or songs.
Daft Punk’s ‘One More Time’ remains one of my favorite ‘getting ready to go out tonight’ songs.
I like to oversee what I do, so I have a hand in writing my songs. I also have people there to help me with my vision.
I may like the Blizzard best, of all the songs I have written.
Westminster politics is very unattractive, and people are channelling political energy into more inward questioning – there are a lot of musicians whose songs are all about feeling, and it’s almost like that’s the only safe place to express yourself.
I met Arcade Fire on their first record, ‘Funeral.’ I loved that record, and it was a record I was listening to while I wrote ‘Where the Wild Things Are.’ Those songs – especially ‘Wake Up’ and ‘Neighbourhood’ – there’s a lot of that record that’s about childhood.
A Minor is one of my all-time favorite keys to play in. It’s a very moody key, and also ‘A’ is the first letter of my name. It just represents the songs through my eyes.
A lot of my solo albums were produced by different people who had their idea of what songs I should do, and they had me doing a lot of ballads.
I never look for music by genre. I look for an artist who puts a dependable trademark on things. Like Elvis Costello – he’s a great songwriter who presents his songs in a number of contexts. I feel the same about my own music.
I’m a lyric man – I’m always looking for meaningful songs.
I continually blacken pages and scribble away, so I always have a number of songs that are half-finished.
I wasn’t personally that familiar with the Classic Rock bands. That is where Jorn Viggo came in: he played me tons of that stuff – Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, plus a lot of bands with cool songs, riffs, vocals, etc. We really listened to tons of music.
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 really love rap music. I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s with Public Enemy, N.W.A., LL Cool J – I’m a hip-hop encyclopedia. But I got kind of frustrated with the chauvinistic side of rap music, the one that makes it hard to write songs about love and relationships.
I got more songs with Gunna than anybody – that’s like the only person who I’m around!
I write most songs randomly. They don’t always deal with something I’ve been through but something I think is important to tell.
When I wrote those first songs for the Truckers, songs like ‘Outfit’ and ‘Decoration Day,’ those were strong songs, very strong songs. But had I been in the position of writing an entire album at that point in time, I don’t think the whole album would have been of that kind of quality.
Songs are about just being totally honest and putting those words to music.
I write about everything that happens in my life, whether or not the songs actually are released or not.
I’ve been asked over the years to compile a list of desert-island discs. I couldn’t do that. If I was trapped on a desert island, I don’t think I’d want 10 songs to bring with me.
I think that once you start writing songs, you start developing a library of ideas that you can go and take from, so it gets easier as you go.
I was probably 7 years old when I started playing the guitar and writing some serious songs.
My songs are the door to every dream I’ve ever had and every success I’ve ever achieved.
A lot of rap songs don’t usually have a lot of melody per se.
I do write a lot of children’s songs, and I’m going to do a children’s television show, which also means I’ll be doing a lot of albums. So I do hope my future will hold a lot of things for children.
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.
Nowadays, people are re-making old songs and that’s good for us because the teenage audiences will get to know who the singer was and who is singing now.
I’ve had songs written during the Falklands war, and during the first Gulf war I got letters from soldiers saying they were listening to these songs, like Island of no return.
The saddest songs are written when a person is happy.
The first set of lyrics for the first songs I ever wrote, which are the ones on ‘Pretty Hate Machine,’ came from private journal entries that I realized I was writing in lyric form.
I cannot tell you how lucky I am: the songs that I sing, I like!
I made myself famous by writing ‘songs’ and lyrics about the beauty of the things I did and ugliness, too.
I’m the kind of person who lives my art. It’s not that I want to necessarily do it: it’s that I have to. It’s always been that way. That’s how I write songs, and it’s always been this way.
My biggest challenge was to make sure that the songs I did were who I am.
My biggest influence growing up was Avicii, who put me onto creating the sorts of melodies that feature throughout my songs today.
It’s weird being a DJ and you have a playlist of your own songs that you could hold it down for an hour.
The main objective in any song, the songs that I write, has always been that it reflect the way I feel, that it touch me when I’m finished with it, that it moves me, that it can take me along with it and involve me in what its saying.
My songs have always been frustrating themes, relationships that I’ve had. And now that I’m in love, I expect it to be really happy, or at least there won’t be half as much anger as there was.
Actually, if I could deliberately sit down and write a pop hit, all my songs would be pop hits! Let’s put it this way. I play what I like to hear. And sometimes I like to hear something poppy, and sometimes I don’t.
When scoring music, the idea is to ensure that your song makes it to the playlist on your audiences’ music player and stands out from the multitude of songs released every day.
I don’t wanna get into that space where a lot of guys now, their solo album is like eight or 10 songs with other people, you don’t get an idea of who this guy is. I just wasn’t interested in that.
I love writing songs. I love doing my radio show and talking to the fans and listening to what they have to say, but there’s a certain responsibility that comes along with being given the gift of music. I take that seriously, but at the same time I try to use it to do something that makes a difference in a positive way.
I’m tired of Glen Matlock saying he was the songwriter for the Sex Pistols. I co-wrote as many songs… but I don’t go shouting about it.
There’s so much talk about the drug generation and songs about drugs. That’s stupid. They aren’t songs about drugs; they’re about life.
Every year on my birthday, I start a new playlist titled after my current age so I can keep track of my favorite songs of the year as a sort of musical diary because I am a teenage girl.
Before, I was terrified on stage. I only play guitar during the acoustic songs. After a while, you can elicit certain responses from the crowd, like Elvis.
Sometimes I just think that there are more things to be said to make the audience understand what I’m trying to do more. When I’m singing, I don’t want you to just hear the melody. I want you to relive the story, because most of the songs have pretty good storytelling.
Everybody should start listening to love songs.
I do disagree with the way videos of my songs have been made. ‘Afreen Afreen’ is a very powerful song; it did not require such a video. The emphasis should be on the song. Again, I have told my recording company, and in the future, they will screen the video only after my approval.
A lot of those songs are actually about Sarah, who I was recently divorced from about five or six months ago. I’d been seeing her off and on since I was about nineteen, so a lot of those songs are about her.
For me, ‘Diamond Necklace’ is a commercial attempt, as it has songs and glamour.
The track ‘Fire’ is quite different from the other songs in ‘Kites.’
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.
I’m a songwriter who’s put my childhood memories and teenage angst into songs.
I write the songs and hand it over to the world and see what happens. But the things that I’ve written for people that have been hits, I don’t know that I would have directed them in the right path, but they definitely wound up on the right path.
And I ask why am I black, they say I was born in sin, and shamed inequity. One of the main songs we used to sing in church makes me sick, ‘love wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.
Songs won’t save the planet, but neither will books or speeches.
If you look at the charts every year, there may be five or ten memorable songs from each year.
Now, we are selling over 5 million songs a day now. Isn’t that unbelievable? That’s 58 songs every second of every minute of every hour of every day.
No, we’ve been performing our old songs a little differently each performance.
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.
The best way to do that is to pick up a new instrument or an instrument that you don’t typically write on and see where it takes you. Whether it’s using an acoustic guitar, or piano, or electronics as tools, all of these lead to creating different types of songs and I used all of these methods for this record.
I had girlfriends who really irritated me by their devotion to the Beatles. I didn’t begrudge them their interest, and there were songs like ‘Hey Jude’ that I could appreciate. But they didn’t seem to be essential to the kind of nourishment that I craved.
I just like playing songs with happy vibes and good feelings.
Nostalgia is one thing. It’s great to go and play the old songs. People know them and appreciate them. You got to give them what they want to hear.
It is unethical to promote old songs sung by new artistes, and the government should ban these things.
When I made ‘Real,’ I recorded it over the phone in prison. I did it in a week. I had no idea what it was going to sound like. I couldn’t even listen to the masters before it came out, I couldn’t listen to 90% of the beats. I recorded 21 songs in seven days.
I love to do songs that speak of the female heart.
Yeah, but on the U.S Tour we threw a new song into the set almost every night. Ofcourse, you can’t do too many new songs every night as they’ve never heard it.
I started writing songs with my best friend Eden Rice when were in our early teens. We performed together at local coffee shops in suburban Atlanta as Kemp and Eden, until fate intervened and we were separated.
I was trying to make my name just Artist in the beginning, but it was weird at first, because I wasn’t an R&B singer or nothing. Not an R&B singer. I didn’t do no melodic songs, none of that yet.
Folk songs express the dreams and prayers and hopes of the working people.
Some songs are dead easy, and others can be quite challenging. Other times, you just have to put it in the bin.
I’d probably be a super wealthy guy if I had sat around writing songs and getting them placed like everyone else I know. But I write songs about people or after I meet them and they’re somewhat biographical – they’re fiction but also non-fiction.
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.
Courage: Great Russian word, fit for the songs of our children’s children, pure on their tongues, and free.
I put a metronome up to all the songs, and I tried to really keep it true to the original tempos.
I just believe in collaboration. I mean, I’ve written songs on my own, you know, but I think if the artist has something to bring to the table – someone like Pink, for instance – where they have something to say, it makes your job easier and more special.
There was an open mic night when I was about 11 years old and I went and I played the songs that I’d written in my bedroom and it was the first night where I felt like I was myself at school.
Success isn’t about reaching your goals; it’s about striving for things, like the joy of trying to raise a family, trying to be a successful singer, trying to write good songs, trying to be a better person. It’s that old thing about life being about the journey, not the destination.
I started out in the folk music world only because of the way my songs were written and performed, with just an acoustic guitar, but I always related to the rock n’ roll lifestyle.
That’s what I find with any good song, you just have to let it happen. Out of about twenty songs you might write, one of any significance. It might be thirty or forty, but I just keep churning them out and churning them out in hope that one of them will stick.
I had between 20 and 40 songs for ‘Detox,’ and I just couldn’t feel it. Usually, I can hear the sequence of an album as I’m going, but I wasn’t able to do that. I wasn’t feeling it in my gut.
Quit shouting those rerun songs at me.
My wife grew up loving country music, so I always run songs by her whether I wrote it or if somebody pitched it to me.
I grew up in the era of the concept album. What I do now is pick up on singles, and they are their own complete stories; you don’t necessarily have to hear the rest of the album because I don’t think albums are created like that anymore. They get songs from all over the place.
We’ve gone further on this album, where we have a Big Band song, kind of a Sinatra-type song; we have a couple songs that have electronic music on them. We’ve got a couple rock songs, maybe a little heavier than what we’ve done. So the title ‘Jekyll & Hyde’ really covers the breadth of the record.
Sometimes, I write ’60s or ’80s style pop songs.
I started singing and writing songs since childhood and later started releasing my independent music.
I start a lot more songs than I finish, because I realize when I get into them, they’re no good. I don’t throw them away, I just put them away, store them, get them out of sight.
We’ve been called the soundtrack of people’s lives. There have been lots of downs, of course but mostly ups. That EW&F is still clicking at least twenty years on and has a life of its own, that the songs have stayed alive – we’re like a good book that people go back to.
Songs don’t have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I’ve done is about alienation… about where you fit in society.
Queen songs are not about the life of a rock star – they tend to be about the lives of normal people, which is why I think the songs connect so much. We’re very lucky that they seemingly connect with every generation.
You can be up there, talked about, appreciated all over the world, with people singing a lot of songs about you. But if you don’t measure up and you are not really connected with your people… it will explode in your face, no question about it.
I have a high range. Sometimes I sound like Stevie Winwood. Some people say I sound like Peter Gabriel. Some of the songs I write are funky. Others are slow. Some are ponderous, and some are there to shock. I must say some are pretty damn good, too.
I think the fans really wanna hear the songs the way they sound on the record.
Love songs are all about how I’ll move a mountain for you and I’ll never hurt your feelings. I’ve never been given a mountain, and if you love me, you should hurt my feelings sometimes. If I walk outside looking ugly in that shirt, you don’t love me if you don’t hurt my feelings a little bit and tell me.
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.
Blues are the songs of despair, but gospel songs are the songs of hope.
I think all songs should have weather in them. Names of towns and streets, and they should have a couple of sailors. I think those are just song prerequisites.
Writing songs is about trying to connect with people on a deeper spiritual level – but I’m not a fan of contemporary Christian music.
It’s funny because if you ever ask anyone in England to try and do a Beatles accent, no one knows what they really sound like. If you ask anyone in America, they would try and give it a go. English people just know their songs.
I play a couple basic folks songs and break them down. I did that on a six string. I can’t recall all the songs on it. There’s some finger picking on it.
You write in songs what you’re too scared to write in real life, and then you sing the songs to loads of people instead of telling it to the person you should be telling it to… Songs are a great way of dealing with those issues but kind of a coward’s way as well.
I’m not the type of guy to go so deep with the concept songs, but there’s deep thought in everything. Maybe it’s not just a repetitive hook telling you what the song is about – you have to use your brain a little bit.
There was a period in my life when I was trying to write standards: songs that everybody recorded. I did a pretty good run of it.
I’ve got the luxury to tailor make the songs so I can sing them.
There are seven songs finished and on par with any that are on Siren’s.
My songs are like my kids.
What’s really fun is seeing mothers bringing their daughters to the shows. And the best part is the mothers know they don’t have to worry about sexual innuendo in the songs. The shows are family shows.
When people come and see me, I want them to experience joy. I don’t do any sad songs in my show. It’s to lift the spirit.
Coming back to Dinosaur Jr. and actually writing songs for the band was really intense for me.
I wrote ‘Happy Man’ with a couple of boys of mine. I have been writing in Nashville for a long time. Of course I was writing songs back in Oklahoma when I was a kid.
People talk about Bollywood being very kitsch, and just songs and dances, and over the top and colorful.
I want my songs to be enjoyed by those who travel in a town bus and they should be played repeatedly in a tea shop.
My voice hasn’t changed really very much. I still do all my songs when I perform live and still do them in the original keys. I’ve been blessed with that ability to retain that.
Just like any songwriter, the songs come out of where I am in my life and what I’m doing and who I’m hanging out with and the kind of sounds I’m imagining. I always loved the idea of it evolving in the same way that life changes.
We just made music that we liked and that people liked in Korea, and then people outside of Korea began to like it – in the same way that we hear pop songs from outside of Korea and enjoy them too.
I’m a big collector of vinyl – I have a record room in my house – and I’ve always had a huge soundtrack album collection. So what I do, as I’m writing a movie, is go through all those songs, trying to find good songs for fights, or good pieces of music to layer into the film.
I grew up in the era of Britney Spears, where artists had songs written for them, and you got up and sang them. That’s how I always thought it was.
I always try to give my songs as gifts.
It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.
At school, I was always daydreaming and fiddling in inkwells, but I had to learn to grow up and become articulate. And doing that was what brought me into writing songs. It’s like therapy for me, because it exposes what I’m really thinking.
I could stand out front and sing Eagles songs that I sing in my set, but I think people enjoy watching me sing and play the drums. It seems to fascinate people. I don’t know why.
I’ve been lucky. Massy songs like ‘Bambai se aaya mera dost’ from one of my earliest films and ‘Tu ne maari entry’ have been specially successful for me. I am blessed.
Even though other people wrote my songs I put my stamp on them. I have a connection, but there is no truer connection than an artists and their own song.
I used to feel that if I wasn’t living out my songs, I wasn’t doing myself or my craft justice, and that’s a dangerous way to live because then you become what you make.
I mostly play old period songs, as they suit a ukulele more. I bought it when I saw the tribute concert to George Harrison. Joe Brown came on and sang ‘I’ll See You In My Dreams,’ and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
My friends started making music, and then I started making covers because I was like, ‘I don’t have anything to write, but I like music.’ So I would just cover Frank Ocean songs.
I don’t think people are fans of me because I wrote hit songs. I think they’re fans because I’m a lunatic or a weirdo. The hit songs came out of my idiosyncratic personality, not the other way around.
I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
I think it’s a shame that ‘Woman in Chains’ wasn’t a hit at the time, although it’s become one of people’s favorite songs.
You can’t understand the words of Cocteau Twins songs, but their harmonies put you in a dreamlike state.
That little Miley Cyrus… she’s like a little Elvis. The kids love her because she’s Hannah Montana, but what people don’t realize about her is she is such a fantastic singer and songwriter. She writes songs like she’s 40 years old!
My music, my songs are 100 percent inspired by girl power.
I started out writing poems before I figured to put melodies to them and play the guitar. Somewhere, there’s a book out there on all those early songs and poems. I hope no one ever finds it. I don’t think it’s my finest work.
The thing with Led Zeppelin songs is that they were never the same. They were very fluid and tight but loose.
Lou Reed is something like a personal favorite of mine, but you could always put me into that drawer of singers who can’t really sing, who speak their songs.
My songs tend to sprint toward some epiphany and then explode.
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 love to play guitar. I’ve been writing my own songs on the axe since I was nine years old. I suck at leads.
Instead of slashing my wrists, I just write a bunch of really crummy songs.
I think ‘Lovin’ Feelin’ was probably one of the most – probably in ’64 and ’65, one of the more dramatic love songs for these kids to grab hold of. I mean, they had been listening to, you know, kind of cute songs, and ‘Lovin’ Feelin’ was just a strong, powerful song.
I don’t write songs about a specific, elusive thing. I write about love, and everyone knows what it is like to have your heart broken.
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.
For me, singing sad songs often has a way of healing a situation. It gets the hurt out in the open into the light, out of the darkness.
I constantly tour every year, around the clock. That’s how I make my living, and I do very well. Because I have classic songs.
Gujarati is a very sweet language and I have always used elements from Gujarati songs in my music.
We have to make sure the music and the message and the words and all the elements come through in our songs and every time we appear in public.
Of course, growing up, you listen to your favorite people on the radio and you want to have an album of your own and you want to have number one songs that people know and can sing back to you when you have shows.
Writing songs is like capturing birds without killing them. Sometimes you end up with nothing but a mouthful of feathers.
Well the country songs themselves are three-chord stories, ballads which are mostly sad. If you are already feeling sorry for yourself when you listen to them they will take you to an even sadder place.
Most of the songs I sing, they have that blue feeling to it. They have that sorry feeling. And I don’t know what I’m sorry about.
I grew up listening to Hindi and Marathi songs of Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosale.
I don’t believe in, and I am a devout non-believer, in playing new songs live if the subjected and pathetic crowd has not heard them before because I consider it like mass psychosis and genocidal.
When we would go to all these different regions on tour, having people sing our songs in Korean is amazing. All these different parts of the world are giving us love, and we’re very grateful for that.
I would never put my songs in a commercial.
Composers and lyricists are making songs that are approved by the producers and directors.
I love melodic tunes and I think Kannada listeners have an ear for romantic songs.
Any musical person who has never heard a Negro congregation under the spell of religious fervor sing these old songs has missed one of the most thrilling emotions which the human heart may experience.
I’ve been doing musical theater since I was a kid. And look for a CD from me in the future. I want to write all the songs!
I want to be like Bruce Springsteen or something, making songs that are relevant.
I stay way from that area, and there’s only so many songs you can write about love, sex and death.
This is my home. Home is where the disease is. As long as I stay in America, I’ll never run out of subjects for songs.
These songs are old friends I have entertained myself with when I’m washing the dishes, driving to the store and walking down the aisles. The ones that you sing when you’re driving in the car and as a singer you always go back to them.
Dream Theater music, there’s a lot of background and context to the songs, as far as the subject matter and the albums they come from.
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.
In Nashville, everybody just wants to write the best songs. So it’s a very inviting songwriting community.
I don’t want to think that anything is off limits for me to write about, but I also don’t want to intrude on anybody’s life, which is why there’s very little specificity or names in the songs I write.
I hate negative songs; I won’t sing them. It doesn’t matter if it’s sold 2 million more albums.
As artists, we’re always going to like the songs we just now made over the songs we made a year ago.
I think, no matter what, when you’re writing songs, most people write about the extremes of their experiences.
I don’t fight my ability to sing sad songs: it’s what I am good at, so I must be built for that.
I have a crazy work ethic. I’ll do 20 songs a day. I love music that much.
People were talking about songs of the common man in order to make the common man. With Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly, they were so common it was just uncommon.
You can make a hit song in 15 minutes. I don’t know about someone else’s song, but songs that people like of mine, I’ve created in 15 minutes or less.
I got songs about being broke, being on welfare, being poor, Section 8.
I understand what songs like ‘Mr Brightside’ mean to people. They will last forever.
Yoga introduced me to a style of meditation. The only meditation I would have done before would be in the writing of songs.
I grew up in an era where the record companies just sold records to everybody, and the whole family bought songs. Today, record companies are failing because they are putting their accent just on the young, and I think that’s rather silly.
John Lennon was a musical genius. All I have to do is think of some of his songs and even the titles make me feel good… and I’m not the only one. His music has crossed cultures and even generations.
When I started out, I wrote the songs, recorded the songs, mastered, mixed, did the artwork, made the packaging and did the distribution, all myself. Now I understand what everyone’s jobs are, who is doing them right, and who isn’t.
I would be involved with music whether I had a career or not. I’m always going to be writing songs and recording them.
I started going on YouTube and studying everybody who was super popular, from Taylor Swift to Beyonce to Michael Jackson to Chris Brown, just everybody… That’s what helped me find my voice and helped me find how I write songs, just doing covers.
I spend as much time as I can in my garden, and if I’m not writing songs or gardening, I’m painting.
In France, the image I had was of a shy girl – a poor lonely girl and not too good-looking. When I went to England, I had another image. I felt the journalists were much more interested in my looks than in my songs.
It’s very important to me to stay true to who I am as a musician and the songs that I love.
Not many people know, but Pahari songs are amazing.
I wouldn’t just have other people write songs and me go out and sing it. I would sit down with a guitar and write 11 or 12 good songs for an album and that is gonna take a long time.
I still love to do the old songs. I know some people don’t.
I thought I would make good songs. Then I made Black Heart’ and it was praised a lot. I love doing it and it is my passion.
Somewhere around the fifth, sixth album, we got this little formula together where we knew how to record Too $hort songs. You need the bassline, a good drum pattern, call in the keyboard, the guitars – it’s just a way we mixed it all together.
I really enjoy listening to Japanese pop aka J-Pop and I also like listening to anime songs as well. Both of these types of music are unique to Japanese culture and listening to these types of music gets me going.
I do sometimes go back to my old songs. Some I feel very proud of. They make me wonder, ‘How did I do this?’
I can go from doing an electronic track to hip-hop to even folk songs. I think people like that variety in me.
To passively get up and play a bunch of old songs wouldn’t have really motivated us. So we are bringing the new material into the set and it goes down really well.
Remixes also appeal to the older generation who get to revisit their past through these songs and after all, music is loved by all, so the more music, the happier people are.
As long as I could sing my songs, I wasn’t as angry about what had happened, about being shoved back for this or shoved back for the other.
I sing songs that I have lived or I write them because I have lived them. I think the believability factor is key.
To me, it’s all about the song. Songs are what make me excited. You hear a great song and you want to record it or get a great idea and you want to write it.
Whether I’m telling stories in songs or if directing is the next step, being a storyteller is what I like doing.
I remember driving the tractor on our farm, and Tim McGraw would be on the radio. I’d find myself walking out of class, singing his songs. And then Tim ended up playing my father in ‘Friday Night Lights.’ It was surreal.
Making a record? You’ve got to have the song, then you create a record. I think it’s the same with a live performance. If the material is strong, you’re already 90% there. I always tell young people it’s all about the music, the songs. Work on the songs, work on the songs, work on the songs.
I’ve got a few reasons why I’ve got to maintain stability. I’ve got into wanting people to hear my music. I’ve got something I want people to hear because I know they’ll like it. They’ve gotta like it! The songs I’ve been writing are the sort of things you have to like.
Music was never just a hobby for me. I’d pick up a guitar every day to work on whatever I was writing at the time. I would put my ideas in songs the way some people might put them in diaries or journals.
‘The Beatles’ did whatever they wanted. They were a collection of influences adapted to songs they wanted to write. George Harrison was instrumental in bringing in Indian music. Paul McCartney was a huge Little Richard fan. John Lennon was into minimalist aggressive rock.
I think, after ‘Let Her Go,’ I wanted to show people that I don’t just write really sad love songs about my ex-girlfriend: that there’s another side to Passenger as well that’s a bit more up-tempo and more inclined to social commentary.
I love ‘Sunday in the Park with George.’ I saw that when I was just, just starting theater school, and I remember singing ‘Finishing the Hat’ or at least reading the lyrics to ‘Finishing the Hat’ and other songs from ‘Sunday in the Park with George’ to my mom to try to explain why I wanted to be an artist.
I’ve done gospel songs on every album.
I still take a lot of pride in being able to write my own songs. My story’s coming from me.
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.
The most important thing for me is the thing I strive for. But I also hope when I play my songs for people – adult, children, mostly children – that they feel mighty, they feel noble, they feel like warriors. And they feel like they can do anything in the world because that’s how I feel.
My dad used to hear me humming songs while watching television and discovered I have a nice sweet tone which should be further trained and toned.
To me, the best love songs work on two – maybe three – different levels, where you’re talking about the person who you’re right opposite, and all the people like that.
That’s one of the things I like best about folk music is the beautiful melodies – and the harmonies – that exist in it. And of course, some of the stories, the story songs.
Hawkwind are one of those bands that people introduce you to because you don’t see them on the covers of magazines. I’d heard ‘Silver Machine’ but Russell Senior, who was in Pulp, got me into them. They had a song called ‘Master Of The Universe’ and we nicked the title in 1985 for one of our songs.
It’s fun to sing sad songs. And it’s fun to listen to sad songs. Enjoyable. Satisfying. Something.
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.
If some independent artists are using film as a medium to reach out to an audience, it should be promoted. Cinema is a popular medium and has a broad reach. There have been films with ghazals, classical and folk songs sung by local artists, which gave them popularity.
My ambition, a long time ago, was to be a film music writer. A compromise then was to be the guy who wrote songs for a band and played slide guitar. Then the singer didn’t turn up for an audition, and I was the only one who knew the words. That was it – bingo! Life took a different course.
The sooner you start writing songs, the sooner you’ll get better.
When I do uptempo songs, I like to bring in the funk and world music and different elements.
The creative part for me is making songs, and that’s what I really love the most, and that’s what I’ve always done for every band I’ve ever had.
Nothing wrong about EDM. Great songs came out of it, but there was a period when everything had to have a pace of 128 bpm and be DJ-related.
I think I’m most proud of my family right now. I’m more into that then I’ve ever been. It also gives a new area to draw from in creativity with my songs.
When I was writing the Destiny’s Child songs, it was a big thing to be that young and taking control. And the label at the time didn’t know that we were going to be that successful, so they gave us all control. And I got used to it.
Well, as a songwriter, it’s really dangerous to use the word love in a song. It’s a word that has been used in songs so many millions of times before, and it’s the most popular topic to ever write about.
I love Benny Hill. He one of my favourites of aaall time. Like, the way Benny did it, he was just amazing. Just seeing how he put songs together and comedy and the timing and the sketches. He was way ahead of his time.
I think that people respond to honesty in music, so I only choose songs that are the truth for me.
My buddies worked with me for weeks, and I went up to take my test, and started crying because I couldn’t remember the words. I can remember songs. If you put it to a melody, I would have sung it to ’em in a minute.
Many of my fans often tell me that they listen to my songs to get through things. And therefore, obviously, I hope that they can picture being in a place where things are better… I hope my songs can bring people to a calm place.
Songs don’t just come out of the air. They take time, but it’s good fun, too. Maurice gave me encouragement.
My mum would play Stevie Wonder around the house, and I remember just loving the songs and feeling so blown away by how much was going on.
Everything about Sinatra was good. He had the ability to pick great songs, and once Sinatra had sung them, that pretty much was it. He pretty much put his stamp on everything.
Me and Kurt Cobain were both listening to a bunch of Lead Belly and diggin’ it. We thought, ‘Let’s do an EP of all Lead Belly songs.’ We did a couple, and both of us were like, ‘Nah, this is a bad concept.’ We set it aside.
I know I’m stronger in the songs than I really am. Sometimes I need to hear it myself. We all need to hear those empowering songs to remind us.
All my songs are where I am.
I’m not going to be rockin’ n’ rollin’ when I’m 50 years old. But you can be in your prime on television, compose songs, or write a Broadway play when you’re 50.
When I was a mailman, writing songs was my escape from the regular world, and now writing songs is my job. And I’ve always been one to avoid my job.
Anxiety and spiritual searching have been consistent themes with me, and that figures into my worldview. But I tend to make my songs sound like relationship songs.
Oh my God, if you’re talking terrible theme songs, you have to mention Matt Hardy. I can’t understand what they’re even saying. There’s a point in Matt Hardy’s song where it sounds like they say ‘I want to meet the cheese.’ I’m always like, ‘Meet the cheese?’ Just goofy stuff.
I’m going to try to make happy songs or some political songs, like ‘A Country Boy Can Survive’ – something people can get excited about.
You know, I’ve sung a lot of emotional songs in my life, but when you’re writing it yourself, it’s very difficult to decide what to reveal.
I really want to work with Eminem. I know it will never happen, but I would love if he let me do a hook on one of his songs or he featured on one of my songs. It would be incredible. I’ve just always admired him since I was young.
I’m just a wee, chubby boy that happens to sing songs.
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.
Then I decided I couldn’t just crawl in the corner and die, so I started putting pen to paper and wrote some songs. I had no idea what for or who I was going to work with. I tried to find my way and direction.
If I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often.
I sure love to write songs, but I’m not so sure of my voice.
Sing the songs of joy to the Lord, serve the Name of the Lord, and become the servant of His servants.
I have hundreds and hundreds of songs waiting to get on albums, but I don’t know about the three-month radio tours and if I’ll be interested in that. I haven’t figured it out, but I will definitely be doing music, whether it is independent or with a major record label.
All the songs I write are about human dynamics, whether it’s with girlfriends, boyfriends, or family.
I think I’m going to put together a compilation under Disney’s name of my songs that I’ve done for them – because I’ve done six or seven by now! The latest was for the Princess Diaries 2 soundtrack. So that’s the next thing that’s coming out.
I was brought up in many different cultures, moving around all the time, and I find my identity in my songs. I project the identity I want to have throughout the songs that I write.
Even when I don’t think I’m writing, I’m writing. There’s some part of my brain geared toward making songs up, and I know it’s collecting things and I know when I get a moment to be by myself, that’s when they come out.
I can sit and analyze everything and beat myself up and say you don’t quite sing as good as you used to, you’re writing better songs maybe than you used to, but to me it’s just the journey.
I am the Crystal Palace DJ. I’m the guy who gets us going. I play the songs.
My best friend, who I grew up with in Paris, is Indian. So, I’ve grown up listening to a lot of Bollywood songs and watching a lot of Bollywood movies, old and new.
We bled writing these songs, we bled in the studio, and now we’re out bleeding getting them right live.
The word matters in country music, and it always has. And everybody had lived those words in country songs.
U2 – that’s a band that never should have existed. There’s no life experience in any of their songs.
Girls are losing their virginity at 15, 16. I’m not promoting that. But my songs are talking… about me becoming a man.
I have some tracks and songs written for future collaboration, and I’m happy to work with artists who have the right voice and taste.
I found it easier to make up songs than to learn other people’s songs.
Anyone who’s got a guitar, you like to pick it up. I can play a couple of songs, some ’50s rock and roll, a bit of Elvis. That’s it, really – I’m not a musician, I’m not a singer.
When I’m writing, I’m constantly thinking about myself, because it’s the only experience I have to draw on. And I don’t see an exact reflection of myself in every face in the audience, but I know that my songs have validity to them, and that’s why the fans are there.
I guess all songs is folk songs. I never heard no horse sing ’em.
I do want people to know that the songs that I wrote when I was with women were really about women. And the songs that I’ve written since have been fairly obvious about men.
Today, I’d like to talk to Bob Marley. I’d just like to ask him what was his method. Bob is one of the greatest songwriters ever. I don’t know if people understand how powerful his songs are and the simplicity and genius behind them, from ‘Redemption Song’ to ‘Is This Love?’ and ‘I Shot the Sheriff.’
I let my partners and my DJ listen to my songs and if they say, ‘Oh yeah I felt that one’ or ‘I am feeling that’ then I write it down and we just continue building the album from there.
As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn’t really have the nerve to sing my songs on stage, and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself.
People said when I started, ‘Why don’t you just copy your father’s style?’ I had to be myself, singing my songs in my own way.
‘Firepower’ is the eighteenth full-length studio album for Judas Priest. That’s a lot of metal songs over the decades, and the writing process is always the same, really.
When I was about 3, my grandfather used to give me and my sister a nickel to sit out on the front porch with him and sing songs.
They are very personal, emotional songs – people react to them very strongly.
I have to practice to be good at guitar. I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.
People have heard my music, but all my famous songs were made famous by somebody else… But that was my goal.
There’s probably a couple someones that are gonna hear the songs and go, ‘I think that might have been about me,’ or, ‘I know it’s about me.’ I do play that pretty close to the vest. I don’t think I’m ever gonna write a song and drop somebody’s name in it.
Growing up, I was obsessed with Disney movies like ‘The Little Mermaid,’ ‘Aladdin’ and ‘Beauty And The Beast.’ I was always singing the songs from these movies, so to find myself in the studio with Alan Menken was an amazing experience. In fact, it was a dream come true.
We have the capacity to receive messages from the stars and the songs of the night winds.
From a young age, I was encouraged to sing, dance and learn folk and popular songs in Spanish.
I made sure I made certain songs just so people couldn’t say every song sound the same.
I would sit on the street corners in my hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, and I would play. And, generally, I would start playing gospel songs.
We work pretty fast. I might be working, and I might knock out two, three songs. Quavo might come in two, three himself. Offset might come and do the same.
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.
That sense of failure, I don’t know where people put it who don’t write songs and aren’t able to emote physically. It must go somewhere.
I didn’t disappear; I started writing songs and worked behind the scenes.
I love songs that tell stories. They make you feel something, something real.
Ed Sheeran wrote his songs, so I wanted to write my own songs.
It does feel really good when you play a new song, and it’s the loudest singalong of the night. It means just as much when we’re playing the old songs, and people are singing along to those, too.
I remember hanging out at Starbucks. There were these older guys who would sit around and play Crosby, Stills & Nash songs. I was just so in love with music. I would just go hang out with them, and I would try to sing and harmonize with them. I didn’t even know the songs.
Sometimes when you have a song, you listen to it and say, ‘It’s OK. It’s music to drive to.’ But then there are songs where you can actually hear it as a movie.
My old songs used to take place in Gothenburg; then, when I lived in Melbourne, the songs just naturally took place more in Melbourne.
With ‘Location’ and all the other songs around it, my music turned into therapy for others. And that’s something I really love and am blown away by.
When I finally decided to do the show, I only had two weeks to learn the choreography and the songs in French.
Songs are a way to express what I have felt. A way to understand what happened to me or to other people.
That’s why these songs have lasted as long as they have because they’re just about feelings that don’t change. They are love songs, they are not specific, those kinds of feelings don’t change.
Most of the songs I write are full of power, and I’m suspecting it may come from my love for grotesque Renaissance art and the Eurovision Song Contest.
I don’t take breaks, man. In the past, I used to spend my free time getting in trouble, and now I spend it working on my music. If I’m not playing drums with my cover band, Chevy Metal, I’m working on songs for myself.
I have always wanted to learn the piano, but because I travel so much, I can never get any consistency of lessons. So everywhere I go, if I can find a piano, even if it is in the lobby of a hotel or something, I go on YouTube and pick some songs to learn.
I love singing our Christmas songs every chance we get. It’s really cute.
Most gospel music is very vertical. And there’s nothing wrong with that – there’s nothing wrong with, you know, ‘God, we praise you,’ and ‘hallelujah.’ Those songs are very important. But I also like to do songs that are very horizontal, that kind of fit within the fabric of people’s everyday life.
One of the reasons we survive as a band is that we are seen as a band of today. We don’t want to be seen as a band that tours and plays old songs. We feel that we are making the best music of our careers.
I make charts of songs that are good candidates, good targets, so to speak. Then I try to come up with ideas for parodies. And 99% of those ideas are horrible.
Five or six songs leaked from the original version of ‘Encore.’ So I had to go in and make new songs to replace them.
A lot of times, I played bass on songs. Gene plays guitar on some songs.
Great songs stand out wherever they’re from.
There are so many songs in my heart and in my brain. I wake up at 2 in the morning, and I have to get up and sing them. There are so many of them, it’s ridiculous.
I love working and writing new songs. But sometimes you need to wait, to have something in your mind, and then you can let yourself play music.
If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It’s a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.
Everyone needs an escape, whether that is through music or humor. My personal escape is through both of those things so I thought why not combine them? But not in a cringe way, I don’t want to make parody songs. I just want my music to have a humorous edge to it.
Things like ‘mad as a hatter’ or ‘grinning like a Cheshire cat’, are so powerful that music and songs incorporate the imagery. Writers, artists, illustrators, a lot of them have incorporated that.
While I’m playing baseball, I’m still writing songs and having tapes sent to me. I’m sure I’ll spend a lot of time in the whirlpool resting these tired bones, so I’ll be thinking of music then.
At some point of time, Imman won’t be in this world. But my biggest asset would be if my biggest hater had at least 100 songs that I composed in his playlist. That’s how I know my work will continue to live.
Probably the first artist who really captured me was Tim McGraw. His songs ‘Don’t Take the Girl’ and ‘Indian Outlaw’ were fun, and he was different than a lot of artists.
I’ve always had this thing about it not really mattering where you’re from, because there’s always been this big cloud over America saying you have to live in L.A. or you have to live in New York to make it. I always knew it didn’t matter as long as you had the songs.
But my point is these Civil War songs were gruesome. The hatred that’s so bad in this country today, and for the past 10 or 15 years, bad as it is, is nothing compared to the kind of things people would write down and sing back in the Civil War.
I work hard at that, but the fact that there are a lot of good songs means there are also a lot of really bad songs I’ve written that you never hear.
I’d like just to be remembered as a guy that came along and did his music, did his best and showed up on time, clean and ready to do the job, wrote a few songs, and had a hell of a time.
We gather for prayer, and reading the Bible, and singing the songs of David.
Songs go through cycles for me. And sometimes I lose my passion for some of them.
I have songs that define characters from each film of mine. It can be a song from that particular film or something that just goes with the wavelength of the film; you listen to it, and it gives you that rhythm. I can’t articulate how it helps, but it somehow gives you an understanding of the character.
The most powerful love songs always turn on the discrepancy between the act of declaring love and the knowledge that the ostensible addressee is no longer there, was never there, and could never be there.
Listening to ‘Songs in the Key of Life’ always puts me in a good mood.
I’d rather let the song live and, as I get older, I’m less absorbed with the clothing. The older I get, I just wanna write good songs.
I love songs but am inhibited to have my characters burst out to express themselves through songs. I use the route of using old songs at the right places.
I’m just writing songs about how I feel or about how people I know feel.
I don’t think music affects what words I choose to type in what order, within what punctuation, at this point, because I’m rereading and editing each sentence, at this point, in my published books, probably 100-150 times each, on average, and listening to probably 20-60 different songs in that time.
I was writing songs from when I was 12. My songs always came from questions that I need answers for.
I knew the words to 25 rock songs, so I got in the group. Long Tall Sally and Tutti-Frutti, that got me in. That was my audition.
When I was young and didn’t know any English, I was drawn by the energy and power of foreign songs and their melodies.
I’m So Sorry’ is probably one of my favorite songs that I’ve written… I wrote it very quickly and confidently. And then I didn’t question it.
Since I was doing all of it myself, I had to decide where I wanted to go with the songs, how to proceed with the chords, if the sound was alright, and all that detail on my own.
I think of music videos as commercials for songs.
I never went out to make the music that people would like. I mean, I tried, because every teenager tries to do that. But in my heart, I’d always come from gigs where I played upbeat guitar covers and I’d start writing sad songs on the piano.
I love writing sad songs.
As a busker, one thing that does not work is self-consciousness. A busker needs to be working. A busker needs to shed all ego and get down to work. Play your songs, play them well, earn your money, and don’t get in people’s way.
It’s not about being happy 100 percent all the time, cause that’s just life. I make sad songs, too, that really only make the happy songs better.
When I’m writing, I’m thinking about how the songs are going to play live. Fifty bars of rap don’t translate onstage. No matter how potent the music, you lose the crowd. They want a hook; they want to sing your stuff back to you.
Sometimes I’m sad and mostly I like sad songs.
Everyone who knows me knows that I’m a hopeless romantic who listens to love ballads and doo-wop songs all the time.
Nostalgia is a powerful drug. Under its influence, ordinary songs take on dimensions and powers, like emotional superheroes.
There’s something missing in the music industry today… and it’s music. Songs you hear don’t last, it’s just product fed to you by the industry.
I want to thank Bollywood for accepting me and loving me the way I am and my songs. Bollywood has given me the reach.
The Bowery was a place that would let us do original songs – not just covers – but we would have to work for tips, so we learned how to work an audience. In order to keep our jobs, we had to keep people happy, so that meant playing the latest Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top or Merle Haggard.
Before we really started writing our own songs in the James Gang, we’d play covers, and then, in the middle of them, we’d go for a jam for four or five minutes. At some point, we had six or seven of those sections, and we didn’t need to cover other people’s songs anymore.
How You Like That’ has Blackpink’s own color and it’s more powerful than the previous songs. We tried to put in pop, rock and hip-hop aspects in it. Orchestral sound in the beginning is very impressive.
I love songs that are very autobiographical.
If you listen to the songs I write, they are the most ADHD songs ever. They have five hooks in one and it all happens in three minutes.
I’ve got a song on every album, two songs as a matter of fact on every album without Auto-Tune, and that’s the song that nobody talks about. It’s weird.
One of my most popular songs, ‘Satellites,’ I paid $300 for that beat on SoundClick.
Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do, and then just go for it.
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.
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.
I usually speak with all my drummers so that I write my songs with them in mind, and we’ll have bass sounds, choir sounds, and then you can multi-task with all these orchestral sounds. Through the magic medium of technology, I can play all kinds of sounds – double bass and stuff.
I lived next to Russian soldiers. We had Russian army guys in our house when I grew up. We made lemonade for them; they were everywhere. I had a Russian school. I grew up with Russian traditions, I know Russian songs… it infiltrates me a lot. I even speak a little Russian.
‘Appetite for Destruction’ was the only thing written with lyrics and melody fitting the guitar parts at the same time. After that, I got a barrage of guitar songs that I was supposed to put words to, and I don’t know if that was the best thing for Guns.
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 done paid Gunna to write my songs. I never put the songs out but like when I first started rapping I used to pay him like $100 like ‘I’ma give you a $100 write something for me so I can try to learn to go in and record it.’
You get to thinking that because you’ve written 50 or 100 songs, you think maybe you know how to do it. But when they’re not coming along, you’re just as in the dark as you ever were. When they’re coming along, there’s nothing to it. Sometimes it’s so easy, it’s like you’re a court stenographer.
There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we’d all love one another.
My aspirations aren’t to sell millions of records, but to write really good songs.
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.
The Beatles are great for everybody – they write the songs that made the whole world sing.
When I wrote songs like ‘Everyone I Love is Dead,’ I never thought about how I was going to execute them live.
Not every song of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s was a single, but songs like ‘Tuesday’s Gone’ and ‘The Ballad of Curtis Loew’ and ‘Made in the Shade,’ ‘I Need You,’ people learned those songs from the radio because radio played albums, not just singles.
I didn’t really know what I was doing when I started. I just started writing songs. After two songs I just continued to explore it.
It’s hard to be in the limelight and write songs that cater to fans that have expectations of you. We just want to write songs that we love, but all the different people with different ideas coming in make it difficult. We have to ask ourselves if we’re writing for the most important people: the fans.
It’s not until I hear songs that I’ve done, that I realize how much of an inspiration music from the ’60s and ’70s has been.
Even when I was 3 or 4 years old, I’d go out riding in the car with mom and dad, and I already knew all the songs off mom’s Hank Williams and George Jones records by heart. I remember just sitting in the back seat and singing them at the top of my lungs.
You choose to be happy, and in life we have as many good days as bad days. I try to find and record those songs that pull you through the bad days, and keep you believing that the good days are just around the corner.
My idea of my music is constantly changing so I feel like how other people react to my old songs just ends up putting more pressure on myself from my own perspective.
Fill the earth with your songs of gratitude.
As for finding comfort in the zone, I’m comfortable singing what I write. I like writing emotional and slow, melodious songs. I haven’t tried singing songs from other genres, but yes, I would like to give them a try.
I have to choose songs that represent my personality.
A lot of my songs are about things that concern me personally, not a heightened version of myself or any of the characters that I play.
‘Blueprint 3’ is made up of songs, but it’s also a commentary on the idea that in order for rap to survive, we have to stretch out the drama. We have to stretch out the audience. It can’t be this narrow – we have to stretch out the point of view.
My mother’s records were formative for me, but when I became a teenager, I wanted to find songs that she wasn’t hip to. She was so hip, though, that I had to go outside rock n’ roll – so for about 10 years, I only listened to hip-hop, house and techno.
I’ve loved musical theater ever since I was a kid. My mother’s a pianist, and my grandfather was an amateur theater director and stand-up comic. And I was an only child. And I loved attention. So from an early age, my family was teaching old musical songs.
You know, I always when people ask me, like, what is my most favorite song, I quote Duke Ellington, when they would ask him, what’s his favorite composition? And I say, I haven’t written it yet. Because, you know, there are different songs for different occasions.
As yet, the Negroes themselves do not fully appreciate these old slave songs.
I’m just going to sing my music; I’m going to write my songs, and I think that people get to know me in that sense.
My mother features quite heavily in a lot of my songs.
From the heaviest of the heavy to classical to country, that’s what I listen to, I listen to a variety and I enjoy good music, good songs.
To me, country music’s about life. It’s about Monday through Friday. It’s the blue-collar, 40-hour week, songs about life. It used to have more of a sound, but I think the heart of that’s still the same. It’s still American music.
I’m actually the son of Mary Guibert. My mother was born in the Panama Canal zone and came to America when she was five with my grandmother and grandfather, and that was the family I knew. Everybody sang; everybody had songs all the time, and they loved music.
Songs definitely add to the excitement about a movie.
Instead of giving all your best tracks to artists, producers now have the opportunity where we can take our favorite beats we make and put our favorite artists on them and release fun songs for people to listen to.
It’s challenging to open for someone: You’ve got to prep the audience, get them in the mood, and get their attention if they don’t know you. You’re going to show them what songs you’ve got. You’ve got to leave your mark.
Most of my songs are about insensitivity of some kind.
I don’t want to be just that transgender performer or that transgender musical artist. I want to create songs and art and have those be judged on their merit alone.
I just take rock songs and mix it with hip-hop and a little bit of R&B.
I used to tell people I slept on the floor, in my songs.
One of my favorite songs is ‘Ghost’ by Indigo Girls. Emily Saliers wrote that, and she is one of the most talented songwriters ever.
I was gonna write songs, I was gonna be a star and a singer and I never thought of doing anything else.
I would rather put out two year-defining songs a year than flood the market with eight or nine songs.
We have some very personal songs; songs that are a little more close to our hearts, that speak our story a little more.
It’s really a sad story, and I liked that. The songs on this album talk about relationships in every aspect.
I love listening to pop songs in Spanish and Italian.
There are a lot of bad worship songs, in my opinion, but there are a lot of good ones, too.
‘Victory’ is like, you won, so the question is, what? What did you win? I think that the songs go into that. It’s just about reaching a place in myself.
My songs form a kind of biography or diary of my life as they are about people I have loved and people I only knew in my heart, places I have seen only for a moment and places I have lived all my life.
When songs make me wanna throw up, it makes me ashamed to even be in the same genre as those songs.
We’re often overseas, and many people sing along with our songs in Korean and tell us proudly that they studied Korean. It makes me proud.
Right now my mind is on the people who stole our instruments, and, specifically, the person with my guitar, which will no doubt end its days having Green Day songs worked out on it. A better fate was deserved – and while the reverence given to guitars annoys me, I shall miss it.
I write songs about stuff that I can’t really get past personally – and then I write a song about it and I feel better.
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
The only way to have longevity is to have good songs.
If you look at my last songs and first short stories, there is a real connection between them.
You know, all my songs are relatives, brothers, sisters, cousins.
I’m a huge reggae fan. I want to go to Jamaica and make, like, Bob Marley ‘One Love’ positive songs. That’s what the world needs.
I love grooves and dance music, but I like the feeling behind songs too.
Singing songs like ‘The Man I Love’ or ‘Porgy’ is no more work than sitting down and eating Chinese roast duck, and I love roast duck.
Every time I step on stage an’ see all of the lights or hear fans singing the words to my songs ,it’s a surreal moment for me.
In my songs there are no bad words, so kids can sing them, and girls can identify with singing with them, too, because it’s not like a man singing reggaeton.
In their heyday, the Pet Shop Boys were the Interpol of the Eighties, dressing up to sing really weird pop songs about lust and loneliness in the big city. They’re low-pro now, not retro-worshipped in the manner of Depeche Mode, New Order, or The Cure, but you can hear the reason why – these guys are too sad.
As a political weapon, it has helped me for 30 years defend the rights of American blacks and third-world people all over the world, to defend them with protest songs. To move the audience to make them conscious of what has been done to my people around the world.
I sure lost my musical direction in Hollywood. My songs were the same conveyer belt mass production, just like most of my movies were.
The performance of a music director should be judged in a holistic manner, which includes songs as well as background score.
It’s warts and all in my songs, and I think that’s why people can relate to them.
To be honest, neither ‘Satta’ nor ‘Stumped’ needed songs and music. But when we recorded a good soundtrack album, everyone suggested we create credible situations for songs.
I write most of my songs when I’m in a bad mood.
The demand in India is to have a hit, which becomes a promotion for the movie and makes people come to the theater. You have five songs and different promotions based on those. But when I do Western films, the need for originality is greater. Then I become very conscious about the writing.
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.
I’ve been singing Shakira songs in front of my bathroom mirror into my hairbrush forever. It’s like a daily routine.
I was making the music and writing the songs which reflected the emerging consciousness of my generation.
Bob Dylan’s first couple of records in the 60’s weren’t considered cover records, but he only wrote one or two original songs on each album.
‘Time after Time’ is one of the best pop songs ever written, in my opinion. It’s an incredible, beautiful, timeless song.
I think playback singing has a lot to do with voice acting. I would suggest to all the youngsters to understand the character, situation, and the story behind the songs. That is when you can add soul to the rendition which, I think, is missing in today’s music.
As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I’d written? Yes. There’s many of them!
What’s so powerful about the Psalms are, as well as they’re being gospel and songs of praise, they are also the blues.
Pretty much my whole life, I’ve been a performer and have loved singing and writing songs in my room for my own ears.
My fans get passionate about certain songs.
If you have good songs and a real desire to make music, the next thing to do, instead of approach record companies, is to get yourself a really good manager because then it allows you to focus on your profession of being a musician. Then they can focus on the darker art of the record label and the music industry.
The male gay community seems to be very into female singers. I think it could be the songs we sing. They’re more open with their feelings. And they have good taste!
