Popular quotes about Song! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 18
I'm no longer beholden to the sacredness of the recorded song as some kind of ultimate standard by which every performance of the song is measured. I like to diversify, that there are multiple versions of every song. And the songs incorporate a lot of improvisation, and an element of chance, and I think that's exciting. There's no one true formulation of a song, they have various manifestations depending on the space we're in. I like that.
Sufjan StevensThe song becomes the meaning itself through the vibratory qualities. When we begin to catch the vibratory qualities...the song begins to sing us...I don't know anymore if I am finding that song or if I am that song.
Jerzy GrotowskiI feel like this song [Yello, "Oh Yeah"] was probably done in a couple of minutes in a studio. There was probably no thought behind it; they were just playing with some samples and threw it together. I feel like there's no dream behind the song. Usually there's a dream or some kind of passion attached to a song. This song feels very empty. It made a lot of money for the songwriters but at the expense of culture.
Margaret ChoI did enjoy singing the song, called "The Count", which is Count Olaf's big song that he sings to the kids when they first arrive with his henchpeople. He wrote it himself, and he thinks he's really, really talented, and it's a terrible song. So we had to learn intentionally bad choreography... We did these almost Lady Gaga-ish kind of movements, which were just awful, but that made me laugh
Neil Patrick HarrisOften for me, if I hear a song I know, it clicks for me and I hear it in a different way and I think, "I could sing that song. I've got something to say about that song. Wanting to connect with an audience and wanting them to rethink songs; it is actually important to do songs they're familiar with. Also, I love those songs. In a way, I think I've changed people's perceptions of what a cabaret show like this could be.
Alan CummingIf you're recording the song on your four-track in your kitchen, when you finished writing the song, you're recording, and it's cool, and honor that. And maybe that's the version that should be released. And if you're recording the song again, it shouldn't be because there's a version you love that you're chasing. It should be because "You know what? I made a recording, but I don't love it emotionally." So, okay, then record again. And be in it and take advantage of the buzz and energy of "I'm getting to record right now!" It's such a beautiful and cool privilege.
Jon BrionI try to write down every song that comes to me, even though I know that every song that comes to me isnt a song that I need to sing.
Valerie JuneRight away, I knew I didn't want to have that look of other guys with long hair and bell-bottom pants, because everybody else had that look. I kind of adopted my boarding-school look, which made me stand out. Then the next thing you know, the first song on my first record is a song called "School Days." It's about going to the boarding school I went to. So then I just started to write about myself. The very first song I ever wrote was about a guy I met in a boatyard that we were working in. So I've always had this thing about sticking to more or less what I knew.
Loudon Wainwright IIIIt is the haunted premises of longing that the true love song inhabits. It is a howl in the void, for love and for comfort and it lives on the lips of the child crying for his mother. It is the song of the lover in need of her loved one, the raving of the lunatic supplicant petitioning his God...The love song is the sound of our endeavors to become God-like, to rise up and above the earthbound and the mediocre.
Nick CaveAll you gotta do is think of the song in your head. And it doesn't matter whether you can play it or not, you can get somebody to play it. With songs I've written, there's a song called "The Statue", which I can't play. There are songs that I've written that I've actually just hummed on - there's a song on one of the albums they have there on the Internet called "My Love Was True" and it's almost operatic. I can't play it. But I can sing it.
Don McLeanOn past records I usually did start with a story or an idea for a song and then write around it, but on Achilles' Heel I would just start writing and try to let the song and my sub-conscience determine the direction. which is a goofy way of saying I tried not to decide before hand what the song and or the characters would do and be like.
David BazanIt's better to find a composition through an instrument and to play it and record it because you have something. It's a composition, and the song is good. It lives as a song. The worst is when you have a song and nothing is working well when you produce it. It's not like what you expect in your imagination. It's the worst because it requires a lot of work.
Nicolas GodinI have this idealistic and maybe naive thought that almost any song can be anything. If you record one song today, it would maybe be exciting and cool. But I could record the same song next week and it would be something completely different.
Sondre LercheThat is the difference between a good song and a bad song lyrically - if you can listen to it and put yourself in that place, or see that person in that place, normally it is a pretty good song.
Ne-YoI think that I have come at it backwards in a way because a lot of what I'm doing as a songwriter is not incredibly intentional. There's a moment that happens which creates the song or the actual idea for a song, and then I'm like, "Oh, it's this kind of song."
MirahI don't have to say I'm going to make a song. A song is always there. I just have to open my mouth and a song comes out.
Peter ToshLATE will always be the most important song to me. I used to struggle to perform it live without getting upset but have performed it a lot now, which has really helped. Very often it makes people in the audience cry, and that means so much to me that they can relate to the emotions in the song. It was actually a really easy song to write, I wrote most of it in one day... it sort of flowed out of me. I was never good with dealing with emotion, so I think I kind of needed to write it!
Roxanne EmeryI wrote 'Lights' a long, long time ago. And I expected it to be on the album, because it was - I wrote it with 'Biff' Stannard. And he wrote every single Spice Girls song and every single pop song of the 90s, basically. So I thought, you know, I was really lucky to work with him, but I didn't think it would be a big song for some reason.
Ellie GouldingI want my careless song to strike no minor key; no fiend to stand between my body's Southern song - the fusion of the South, my body's song and me.
Margaret WalkerGod sings, we hum along, and there are many melodies, but it's all one song - one same, wonderful, human song.
Mitch AlbomFirst, in a love song, or any song for that matter, using a plastic word like "inhibitions" is just completely without feel or texture. It demonstrates a tin ear for communication.
Gene WeingartenI always knew Gordon Lightfoot was a really great songwriter, but his stuff even sounds better and better all the time. It's just so really good to me. It's just like that's what should be in a dictionary, you know, next to a really good contempory folk song, is a Gordon Lightfoot song.
John PrineExperience is all I have. I equate song-writing with archeology. Every day you dig. You dig into different places within yourself - even finding places that you've rarely been. And buried within the soil is song.
Jon ForemanEvery song has a memory; every song has the ability to make or break your heart, shut down the heart, and open the eyes. But Iโm afraid if you look at a thing long enough; it loses all of its meaning
Andy WarholA good song stays in your head because it's catchy, a great song stays because it means something to you.
Tove LoThe copy of an ad is merely a punning gag to distract the critical faculties while the image of the product goes to work on the hypnotized viewer. Those who have spent their lives protesting about 'false and misleading ad copy' are godsends to advertisers, as teetotalers are to brewers, and moral censors are to books and films. The protesters are the best acclaimers and accelerators. Since the advent of pictures, the job of the ad copy is as incidental and latent as the 'meaning' of a poem is to a poem, or the words of a song are to a song.
Marshall McLuhanThere are choirs singing in your head. If you listen, you will hear the music. It is the song of angels. Pay no attention to the sounds of the world. They are just noises, and even when added up all together they have no value, make no sense. Strain to hear the song of angels. Listen to the melody within your soul.
Neale Donald WalschI can write songs, but I'm not gonna really feel good about the song unless it feels like me, and I'm not gonna release a song or put it on an album or play it in concert unless it really feels like me.
Brett DennenThe tweets are getting shorter, but the songs are still 4 minutes long. You're coming up with 140-character zingers, and the song is still 4 minutes longโฆI realized about a year ago that I couldn't have a complete thought anymore. And I was a tweetaholic. I had four million twitter followers, and I was always writing on it. And I stopped using twitter as an outlet and I started using twitter as the instrument to riff on, and it started to make my mind smaller and smaller and smaller. And I couldn't write a song.
John MayerI can't say that I'm always writing in my head but I do spend a lot of time in my head writing or coming up with ideas. And what I do usually is write the music and melody and then, you know, maybe the basic idea. But when I feel that I don't have a song or just say, God, please give me another song. And I just am quiet and it happens.
Stevie WonderAs a consumer, if I heard someone who said, "I've written this song," and then I found out it wasn't by them, it's a bit disappointing. A lot of the guys that do that are really talented and they've made some incredible music, but they get addicted to having success and feel too much pressure, so they get other people to make sure that their next song makes money.
Howard LawrenceAs a songwriter, you're allowed to write anything, and as a person, I am all colors in the rainbow. I've been through everything, you know, so I can write a positive song like 'Better Get to Livin'' because that's my attitude. But that doesn't mean I'm happy all the time. You can't be a deep and serious songwriter without feelings. You kinda have to live with your feelings out on your sleeve and get hurt more than most people. The fear I might get hurt means I might not be able to write another song.
Dolly PartonI've always been drawn to all kinds of music - to me, it's all the same. There's different arrangements and slightly different ways of writing, but if it's a good song, it's a good song - you can dress it up any way you like.
Anna TernheimA lot of times, the choice of the right song will save a scene. Or there will be a scene that's a little flat and you put in the right song and somehow it just comes alive.
Alan BallTo me, a political song is also a personal song. Most political activism has been driven by empathy for other people and the desire for a world that's less divisive. Even if songs aren't overtly political, they can make a listener more empathetic.
Conor Oberst...in song the words tend to lose their significance, do often lose it, while at the other extreme, in current prose it is the musical value that tends to disappear - so that verse stands symmetrically, as it were, between song, on the one hand, and prose on the other - and is thus admirably and delicately balanced between the sensual and the intellectual power of language.
Paul ValeryAsh paused as he entered the house to find the three women lined up and... singing to... dear gods, anything but this. "Fergilicious." All he needed was for Simi to be here and off-key with them since it was her favorite song and he'd spent the better part of the last year cursing whoever was dumb enough to introduce that song to a hormonal teenaged demon. Worst part? Simi wanted him to call her Similicious.
Sherrilyn KenyonA song is no song unless the circumstance is free and fine. If a singer sing from a sense of duty or from seeing no way to escape,I had rather have none. Those only can sleep who do not care to sleep; and those only write or speak best who do not too much respect the writing or the speaking.
Ralph Waldo EmersonMy favorite Elton John song is "Daniel"; my son is named Daniel and he's partly named after my wife's father, but also partly named after that song.
Steven DrozdWe were on a tour, and there were some chord formations that were tough for me to play when I was a kid...it had become apparent that there was some stuff I wanted to do that [would require me] to learn how to do that. So I wrote the song and used some of these chord formations so I would have to play them. I thought it would be a great teaching vehicle for a while, and it was, but it ended up as a performance song.
Jorma KaukonenSanta Monica was a big song, and I always knew it would be radio friendly. But its not a defining song for me, though for a lot of people it is.
Art AlexakisWe made the song a big part of the story [Sausage Party ] itself, in that it's kind of their prayer that they say every morning, because we found that just to have an arbitrary song felt too unrealistic within the reality of our talking food movie.
Seth Rogen