Quotes About Lyrics

When you listen to the music in this film [Despicable Me], it's working on the level of melody, but the other key element is lyrics. There are a number of songs in the film where the lyrics themselves are very much speaking to the essence of what Ted Geisel was setting out to do.

It turned out so well because it was the first album that I could identify with in terms of lyrics. ("Captain Fantastic") It was passionate...I could associate myself with every song...It's a unique album in our history. This was the story of us..."Curtains", the lyrics to that are so beautiful because it sums up our friendship so much, and our relationship.

[The lyrics and melody] usually come a little simultaneously, but I would say the lyrics are first; usually I have the idea for a story in my head, or few lines.

I would say the songs that have different lyrics. I always write the music first, and there's a couple of songs on this box set that have different lyrics from what ended up on the final recording.

I approach song writing three different ways. One way is where I write the initial melody and lyrics first and then take it in to the producer to collaborate. Another way is where the producer sends me his initial musical track ideas and then I write the lyrics and melody over his track. The third way is where we just jam out in the studio and see what we come up with.

Well a good writer writes, a good musician listens to a lot more than he actually composes, and if you're going to do lyrics - well, there's a Freudian slip. That's not even a slip, that's a Freudian move: I said going to do lyrics. If you really want it to ring true, you'll live it first. Go really get your heart broken!

I write the lyrics based on what is going on in my life - I'm not going to write about the old hair metal stuff, like castles and stuff.

I'm totally into Taylor Swift. I think she has super-clever lyrics, and I love that she writes her own music. Some of the themes she writes about are stuff I wish was there for me when I was in high school, and I'm so happy she really cares about her female fans. She's not catering to a male audience and is writing music for other girls.

I was babysitting the night High School Musical premiered last year. I watched with the kids and we sang along to the lyrics. I was making $12 an hour.

When she awoke there was a melody in her head she could not identify or recall ever hearing before. 'Perhaps I made it up,' she thought. Then it came to her - the name of the song and all its lyrics just as she had heard it many times before. She sat on the edge of the bed thinking, 'There aren't any more new songs and I have sung all the ones there are. I have sung them all. I have sung all the songs there are.

Yeah. My singing and my songs were very influenced by all of that. People would come up to me and ask, Is that a Billie Holiday song? I'd say, No, it's my song. The lyrics would be in my style, but the songs would be very jazzy.

If the lyrics have meaning to it and it gives me a certain emotion, I think that's the most beautiful part about music - you can feel it and connect to it.

I don't understand why America embraces Lady GaGa and Katy Perry and all of the "pop stuff" as much as they do. The Jonas Brothers, Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber are also included, and I don't really get any of that. Maybe that means that I am old. That stuff seems like it isn't that "authentic." Katy has a cool writing style though, and her lyrics can be poignant and mean stuff from time to time. I really appreciate that about her.

The danger of these collaborations across disciplines is in having too strict of a division of labor - in my case, of getting stuck doing the music. When I make an album, I write music, I write lyrics, I come up with the visual design, etc. I get to do all of that stuff.

I just kept it real and had the freedom to do what I want. It's not designed for any age group. It's not made for radio. There are no edits. The whole album contains explicit lyrics but that's because you need it.

"On Script" is one of my favorite songs I've ever written. I'd just been jamming on it one day, and again I was struggling with lyrics. I'm still figuring out what it's about. I've seen a couple of reviews that are like, "It's about the monotony of playing the same songs every night," because I say, "On script every night/Like a well-rehearsed stage show." It's not about that at all, but I find that funny, how people project what they think about me, or songwriters in general.

A lot of times when I'm writing lyrics, I just think about insecurities that I might have and turn them into a scene. Some things may be true, and some things may not.

We recorded Star Climbing over a three-year period between our studios, working on songs and lyrics until we felt like we had found the albums direction. It is our most distinctive album to date, combining all our different tastes and styles into one.

I've never heard of any one single artist being the subject in an ongoing series of radio programs for decades. Bearing this in mind, that's the kind of thing Frank Sinatra brings out in his audience, his followers. It's personally satisfying to me because his music by and large was the greatest quality of lyrics, melody, orchestration and, of course, his magnificent approach to telling a story.

Playing the guitar, you kind of lock into a rhythm and a groove, and then it relaxes me to make up lyrics and sing.

It's more like you write what comes to you... You try to reflect the mood of the songs. Take 'Rearviewmirror', we start off with the music and it kinds of propels the lyrics. It made me feel like I was in a car, leaving something, a bad situation. There's an emotion there. I remembered all the times I wanted to leave.

After that, I specifically started writing lyrics. I would like sweat and think and get it all together.

Vocals are not central to what I do, and I've never liked singing live. I've always been more inspired by rhythm, texture, harmony than vocal melodies and lyrics. Plus, for me, I can better express my musical ideas through instrumental music than vocal music, the emotional interpretation of which can easily supersede the actual musical content or aim.

Every time I see a film or TV show, I think about how that composer made those choices and how that director envisioned music and how that could work onstage or in a film and how you could support that even further by putting lyrics to it.

Of course, no lyrics are ever unintentional, but I think bands like Wolf Parade and the Arcade Fire have a tendency to touch on big themes without really following through on them or tying them in to a particular logic.

But I don't like working on lyrics publicly in the studio - I prefer to take them away and work on them in my bedroom.

Then, once I have lyrics, being able to shape them around a song is nothing new for me, I've been doing that for 25 years. The soul searching part of it, the spontaneous part of it, that was, and remains, a really terrific process.

Men felt a chill in their hearts; a damp in their minds. In a desperate effort to snuggle their feelings into some sort of warmth,one subterfuge was tried after anothersentences swelled, adjectives multiplied, lyrics became epics.

It'd be tricky to read into my lyrics - some are autobiographical, but sometimes I just like the sound of words.

A more detailed world is a more complicated and complex one, and therefore a more empathetic one. I feel Gord's Downie lyrics are exceptionally empathetic, or that's what they accomplish. The fact that they can cross all those cultural cliques and boundaries really amplifies that, to me.

I have had much to learn from Sweden's poetry and, more especially, from her lyrics of the last generation.

I think, there are a couple of songs. I'm really proud of How far I'll Go. I literally locked myself up in my childhood bedroom at my parents' house to write those lyrics. I wanted to get to my angstiest possible place. So I went method on that.

I'm not really good at writing sad sappy ballads. In terms of the lyrics not matching the vibe of the music, that's kind of the way my career has gone; everyone is a little confused about it all the time.

Many ideas have been transformed by adding one crucial adjective-women's bank, women's music, women's studies, women's caucus. That adjective did more than change a phrase. It implied a lot of new content: child care, flexible work hours, new standards of creditworthiness, new symbolism, new lyrics.

Sometimes people mishear my lyrics and think a song's about something it isn't.

I remember when I was very young, I read an article by Fats Domino which has really influenced me. He said, 'You should never sing the lyrics out very clearly.

If you're 30, 40 years old, you're not getting listened to by minors. Like, Jay Z has some of the sickest lyrics ever, but I would never buy his CD, just because of my age and because of his age.

I create my own lyrics. I have a great band. I have a drummer from East Berlin.

Probably some of the songs I never even really listened to the lyrics. Half of them I'd hear off the radio and was probably singing the wrong words and didn't even know it.

He doesn't make it so complicated but just really allows the lyric to come through even though there's a lot of production going on. I think that's the key and that's the magic, it's making sure that people could still connect with the lyrics while they're on the dance floor.

I'm used to getting sexy sometimes in the lyrics.

Sometimes it's nice to be able to reflect on the music itself and then write lyrics that I feel anyone can relate to. It's not my dreaming tree that is dead. The feeling of a loss of hope is universal. There are moments that we've all felt a little bit of it, so I don't think it is something that is too hard to identify with.

I still to this day get the most inspiration from rap lyrics.

If you're single, then I'm single?" What's that supposed to be? Lyrics to a pop song?

In the early '90s, it felt like there was space - there was like an empty feel. There was nobody really doing this. Maybe the Pixies were, a little bit. Their lyrics were also disjointed, more psychosexual or something. That's part of youth, too, maybe, that you just feel like you're doing something different.

Phillip is a repository of random snatches of film dialogue and song lyrics. To make room for all of it in his brain, he apparently cleared out all the areas where things like reason and common sense are stored.

I didn't get into Tupac [Shakur] until a little later, once I started understanding rap and people's stories. Eminem was the first rapper that I actually started dissecting the lyrics, and once I got attached to his stories, then I started listening to Dr. Dre, then Snoop 'cause they were all under one camp.

I have one piece of music, since 1997, and I don't see it having lyrics. Where does it go in this world? So I haven't recorded it.