Quotes About Singing

My mother was a music teacher and my grandfather was a professor of music, and there was a lot of singing in the family. It wasn't like trained singing or anything like that, but it was singing.

My father being in the movie business, I thought being an actor would be great. But when I started singing to people in coffeehouses, you know, singing folk music and then, later, singing songs that I started to write myself, I felt more than an affinity for it.

A lot of people think the blues is depressing but that's not the blues I'm singing. When I'm singing blues, I singing life. People can't stand to listen to the blues, they've got to be phonies.

When you find yourself on stage singing and you are embarrassed about what you are singing in front of your peers, then you have to think about your priorities.

I think the transition between singing covers on a reality show to being able to do my own thing was really exciting. I'm no longer singing covers every second, and people are actually getting to hear my own original music.

I love singing - singing is what I'm famous for doing. Now it's turned into things I am famous for doing - like having rows with my mum or about my boyfriend, so it does get irritating.

In many ways, I think I'm a good person for it. I mean, I'm not a musical theater dude. Or rather, I don't watch everything, and love everything, and have every album. The ones that I love - like I've seen The Wizard of Oz a hundred times. West Side Story I love. I love Singing in the Rain, I love White Christmas. I love the Dennis Potter ones like Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven. I love Sondheim.

When you're singing you can hear the echo of people in the audience singing every single word with you, and that was that big dream that I had for myself. It's happening.

I was more of a dancing kid than a singing kid. I mean, I sang in school choirs and I sang in school musicals, but I was much more interested in dancing than singing.

Singing with others is an unmediated, shared experience as each person feels the same music reverberating in their individual bodies. Singing is part of our humanity; it is embodied empathy.

I started singing in church and I was probably around seven and I started singing anywhere that I could. I used to sing at my school. I was in musicals and then it kind of got to a point where I started to - wanted to do my own songs.

Singing is not about timbres or category labels, singing is about fascinating acoustical properties like the colors of the human voice which derive from thought and emotion.

One night as I girl I spied my grandma and one of her sisters outside, holding hands and singing, "Sprites of the night are we, are we. Singing and dancing joyfully." It was witchy and wonderful because it meant there was power in joy. They were not afraid of the night because they were giggling. I am very interested in finding the surprising boundaries, for instance, where do joy and fear meet?

When I first organized the King Cole Trio back in 1937, we were strictly what you would call an instrumental group. To break the monotony, I would sing a few songs here and there between the playing. I sang things I had known over the years. I wasn't trying to give it any special treatment, just singing. I noticed thereafter people started requesting more singing, and it was just one of those things.

Meditation is totally different. When you concentrate you close your mind to everything else. Meditation means just an openness, a relaxed openness. It is not concentration. While listening to me you are listening to the birds singing in the trees too. The wind passing through the trees singing its song - you are open to it too. The aeroplane passing by, or the train - you are open to it too. This is meditation - you are simply open, available, conscious, available, all doors are open.

It used to be the case that for an Irishman to come to the U.S. involved a perilous journey on a ship. It involved singing lots of songs before you left saying goodbye, and once you were in the U.S., it involved singing lots of songs about how you were never going to set foot in Ireland again.

Starting in music, where I get a chance to connect with the lyrics of a song, I learned so much about performing on stage and connecting to your audience and to what you're singing about. Singing is very emotional. Every song has its own purpose.

Sometimes a musical imagination is as important as singing itself, you know, the voice, what you do vocally, the vowels. So there's a percussiveness that can sometimes be quite energizing and useful in singing as an expressive device.

With me, it's so eclectic and all over the map that no one knows what to expect, ... It may not be a great career move, but all these things - singing with the Funk Brothers and the Dead, singing a Dolly Parton song - is great. I'm welcome to all these different worlds, and that's been wonderful.

I think I like singing when I'm singing live. It's just in the studio when it's a drag.

The very first Walnut Whales recording was recorded just a few weeks after I had started singing, out of the blue, started singing. And the voice, you can hear how uncomfortable I am with it, and how terrified I am with it.

Sometimes,' he whispered at last, 'sometimes, I dream I am singing, and I wake from it with my throat aching.' He couldn't see her face, or the tears that prickled at the corners of her eyes. 'What do you sing?' she whispered back. She heard the shush of the linen pillow as he shook his head. 'No song I've ever heard, or know,' he said softly. 'But I know I'm singing it for you.

When you're on stage singing, you're naked. Your voice is something very intimate, and that's why I'm scared every time before I perform. It doesn't matter if I'm singing for a king or a queen or the Pope, it's enough to be in front of anybody. I suffer, but I can't do anything about it.

Just because I said lyrics are a sign of the inability to sing doesn't mean....A) I believe that, or B) I don't think they're cool. They are cool. Words are great. I sing along with my favorite songs, but when I am drumming and singing, the words become a note that for me. In the process of playing they have more emotional impact as notes then an actual word.

Since Jimmy Carter, religious fundamentalists play a major role in elections. He was the first president who made a point of exhibiting himself as a born again Christian. That sparked a little light in the minds of political campaign managers: Pretend to be a religious fanatic and you can pick up a third of the vote right away. Nobody asked whether Lyndon Johnson went to church every day. Bill Clinton is probably about as religious as I am, meaning zero, but his managers made a point of making sure that every Sunday morning he was in the Baptist church singing hymns.

I came to singing organically.

The trouble with the opera is there's always to much singing.

Time is my enemy. Time will catch up with me vocally. And I dread that. I dread to think about life without singing.

We sing a lot of the soundtrack in this film [Swiss Army Man] - me and Paul Dano - and on the last day of filming we had to just get into the back of our sound mixer's van and record a really crappy, rough version of the singing then. For some reason that was one of the most fun days.

When I went to Japan I sang in Japanese; when I went to Greece I sang in Greek. When I went to Spain, I sang in Spanish. I couldn't speak it very well, but I sang, I was beautiful in singing it. These things just constantly attracted people to the uniqueness of who I was and the way in which I performed.

I was trying to do something that seemed very natural and easy but which bridged that gulf between the singing voice and the speaking voice.

Being preoccupied with our self-image is like being deaf and blind. It's like standing in the middle of a vast field of wildflowers with a black hood over our heads. It's like coming upon a tree of singing birds while wearing earplugs.

I'm always doing things that scare me, because I feel like that's how you should live life. If I'm terrified - and I'm often terrified - then I should be doing that. Like trapeze class, or singing in front of 5,000 people.

Home should be an oratorio of the memory, singing to all our after life melodies and harmonies of old-remembered joy.

When we play Jenny Don't Be Hasty, that's cool because everyone really dances. It's between that and when we play Loving You, that's when you give it your all. Well you give it your all for all of it but that's like proper end singing with your full strength put in.

The things we sing about are timeless. Political affairs and social situations come and go. But if you're singing about empowerment and not playing by the rules, you can sing about them until you can't sing anymore.

As long as we live there is never enough singing.

I knew I wanted to do something creative. I didn't think I'd have the luxury of doing something like that, because I didn't know anyone who had pursued anything they really adored, but I had dreams for singing or writing.

My songs, well, they are sad, but in all of them the person singing them - me or whoever - is actually still trying and hasn't given up yet.

I absolutely never thought I would! But it's something to look forward to in my career. I'm not just the young, leading guy who falls in love, simple and naive. Even just doing Enjolras recently in Les Mis. I used to cover Marius and thought: "Oh, that's simple. What I should be doing." But then when I got Enjolras, I hadn't even thought about it. He's more powerful, sure of himself, a leader. It was nice! It was much harder singing, passionate, declamatory. Which was awesome - and now this!

When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That's one of the great feelings - to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue.

In a world beyond this one, that river goes on singing sweetly, enchanting us with what we want to hear, shaping what we need to see in order to keep going. In those waters, all disappointments are forgotten, our mistakes forgiven. Gazing into them, we see a strong father. A loving mother. Warm rooms where we are sheltered, adored, wanted. And the uncertainty of our futures is nothing more than the fog of breath on a windowpane.

Remembering that life can be full of surprises is useful in any part of your life. You can try a new way of singing a song you’ve performed for years, a new way of showing your family your love for them, or a new recipe. Don’t just play the licks you know. We’re all improvising all the time — it’s good to recognize that and embrace it.

There was never any pressure on me to go into the business, but I was always aware of it. I'd go on the set with my father and he and my mother would always be singing.

They had me all happy, singing. It was very awkward. I think the writers are frantically planning something appropriate to honor him, but we don't know what.

I still sing on bits and pieces. Singing's something that I love to do, but it's not something that I pursue as a career.

Shall I part my hair behind Do I dare to eat a peach I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.

For me, singing is the most natural thing in the world. I've grown up with it and I know I've got that gift.