Quotes About Song

Musically, though, you're a character and you're singing a song. If you're not your own character, you're the character in the song, most of the time. Even blues musicians, a lot of them who were the most realistic, at times, they were singing a song and portraying a character in the song. There's something to be said for getting involved in the emotion of a song, too, with the characters.

The editing of a song is largely what makes the song for me and I think that actually if I had started going like 'I want you to burn' it would have pinned that song down to a particular thing and made that song a smaller idea than what it is. By leaving that off it's much more open, broader.

I learned very early in life that: 'Without a song, the day would never end; without a friend, a man ain't got a friend; without a song, the road would never bend-without a song.' So I keep singing a song.

For the first records I really never thought about anything other than the song itself. I thought that this was what the job of a songwriter was. I was really approaching music from a very different standpoint. To me when I was younger the song was just the melody. I think as I've gotten older and have been recording myself I've become aware of just how many layers can exist within a song besides just the main vocal.

somebody/ anybody sing a black girl's song bring her out to know herself to know you but sing her rhythms carin/ struggle/ hard times sing her song of life she's been dead so long closed in silence so long she doesn't know the sound of her own voice her infinite beauty she's half-notes scattered without rhythm/ no tune sing her sighs sing the song of her possibilities sing a righteous gospel let her be born let her be born & handled warmly.

'Unbelievers' was a song that we felt like we could tackle, so that's one of the reasons we wanted to start playing it live, we really believed in that song and we still believe in that song a lot.

A song that sounds simple is just not that easy to write. One of the objectives of this record was to try and write melodies that continue to resonate...Everything that happens to you influences your writing...The writing process for me is pretty much always the same-it's a solitary experience...I have yet to write that one song that defines my career...Beck said he didn't believe in the theory of a song coming through you as if you were an open vessel. I agree with him to a certain extent.

My first song was about the smog over Dublin in the 1980s, so yeah, I suppose I was always socially conscious. My first song was not a love song, it was about smog.

Whatever be the depth of woe Along the path that I must go, I'll sing my song— My song of joy for all the love That's lavished on us from above, And count no loss of treasure-trove When things go wrong. I'll sing the sunlight, and the bright Soft smiling stars that gem the night; For gifts of good That God hath spread along my way, The lilt of birds in tuneful play, The harvests full and flowers gay, The whole day long I'll sing my song Of gratitude!

There is a little bit of a head vs. heart kind of battle that happens sometimes with the song. There's the goose bump thing, where the melody or whatever it is just gets you and you don't know why. Sometimes, it's in a genre that you didn't think you liked and, all of a sudden, the song hits you and you just say, wow, I feel the hairs on the back of my neck. I love this song.

It 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.

When you get to say something in a song you're not directing it necessarily at one person. When it's in a song it's easier to get it out. I don't really worry so much about it when I'm writing a song.

I think the emotion that song carries makes it good. Because you have to produce around something - an emotional attachment and a feeling. The melody itself has a feeling in it. The keys, the tones, frequency, sonics, all of those have feelings in it. Like, it's the ghost within, the music itself. That's what makes the song even have a possibility of being great. The emotional connection. Because if you don't have that, I don't think you really have a song.

I can't constantly be trying to write the unwritten song, the song that the 15-year-old girl needs. I need to write the song that I need.

That 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.

No one can threaten poetry. It's always been there, always will be. Humans need it to live: it has sustaining powers. How could we (anyone) get through adolescence without some form of song? Song is only a version of lyric poetry that is carried more by melody than by internal coherence and unity. but lyric and song - they are the same.

If I try to write a song, I will completely fail to write a song. But if I'm just holding my guitar and I just start humming, then I'll have a song in an hour.

It's good when someone says, "Would you write a song for this purpose," or "would you record a song for this purpose," or "would you help me realize this song," again, for this purpose.

A recording of a moment in time, where I was physically there, and it's now in a song for all eternity, in a way. It's really weird. I had written the song, but I'm also physically there in a way I'm physically inside the song, because I've recorded something that's in there.

Songs give you incredible opportunity to convey a tremendous amount in a relatively short period of time. The first thing that John Powell, our composer, says is, "Is the song engaging you to tap your toe?" If you're not tapping your toe, it doesn't matter what you're doing in the song, it's not going to work. But, if you can get the audience to be engaged by the song, then it gives you the opportunity to accomplish so much, in a very concise way.

All of the artists did such a beautiful job I can’t thank them enough. I’m just honored that 'God Only Knows' was chosen. 'God Only Knows' is a very special song. An extremely spiritual song and one of the best I’ve ever written.

Music is a total constant. That's why we have such a strong visceral connection to it, you know? Because a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. No matter what else has changed in your or the world, that one song says the same, just like that moment.

I don't sing a song unless I feel it. The song don't tug at my heart, I pass on it. I have to believe in what I'm doing.

I 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.

Let's say music is needed for only 43 seconds of film. You have to score it so it is an entity, so it won't bother anyone when it ends so quickly. Or if a song runs 2 minutes and 45 seconds, but the titles run a minute longer, you have to arrange that song so it doesn't get repetitious.

Sleep in my arms. Like a baby bird. Like a broom among brooms... in a broom closet. Like a tiny parrot. Like a whistle. Like a little song. A song sung by a forest... within a forest... a thousand years ago.

We wanted to write a whole song about partying and then taking Yellow Cabs home. That's the weirdest topic we've ever thought of centering a song around.

I write anywhere. I'm always banging around on the dashboard. Whatever I'm doing. I can make music out of anything. Whenever a song hits me, I'll pick some sort of melody or rhythm out on it, and kind of enhance the song.

The same song on a different day was a different song.

Then I played the song that hides in the center of me. That wordless music that moves through the secret places in my heart. I played it carefully, strumming it slow and low into the dark stillness of the night. I would like to say it is a happy song, that it is sweet and bright, but it is not.

You know the one with the big ears? Wait a minute, he ain't my president, he might be yours, he ain't my president. You know that woman he had singing for him, singing my song - she's gonna get her a- whipped. The great Beyoncé But I can't stand Beyoncé. She has no business up there, singing up there on a big ol' president day singing my song that I've been singing forever.

I can't think of a recent baseball song except John Fogerty's Centerfield. It's very difficult to write a baseball song that pleases fans and non-fans alike.

Nobody's favorite movie is some dark, dysfunctional slasher story. Everybody's favorite song is a sentimental song. So why all of a sudden is it bad to be sentimental in books?

Certain songs have a life, and certain songs don't. A song is like a saddle: you ride it for a while, and if it's the right kind of song you can sing it for the rest of your life. And then other songs are only really important for certain periods of your life, and you move on from them and find yourself not necessarily needing to sing them anymore.

Yeah. I'm amateurish. I can play enough to write a song, or strum on a little guitar to write out a song. But, I don't play well at all. I wouldn't even attempt for a second to play in public.

When Billie Holiday sings a song, I hear the song, but I always hear her and her truth.

There's an infinite amount of possibilities and detours and things that can distract you from actually just performing the song and having whatever emotion that's invested into the song come through in the recording.

Morrissey writes wonderful song titles, but sadly he often forgets to write the song.

I was in a karaoke video in 1991, for a song called 'Sukiyaki,' which is a very famous Japanese song, and I've actually heard from people that they've been in bars in Asia where they've seen me come up in the 'Sukiyaki' video that they play behind you. I'm in that. I'm in a karaoke video.

Some years later I met Queen Elizabeth II, in our capital Ottawa at a Canada Day celebration. David Foster and I were doing the show and we both met her afterwards. She told me how much she loved the Canadian Railroad Trilogy. She looked at me and said, "oh, that song", and then said again, "that song", and that was all she said.

I love writing every song I can like a little mini movie. I like to have a character, or some characters, and really paint a picture with the song.

Someone like John Prine can write a song that tears into your soul, turn it over, and write a song that makes you laugh and feel light as a feather. With someone like him, you're getting a real picture of a person, a real expression.

I can picture the color of the song, or the shape of it, or who it is that I'm trying to appeal to, in the song, and what I'm trying to, almost, reinforce my feelings for. And I know that sounds sort of vague and abstract, but I've got a handle on it when I'm doing it.

When I was five years old, me and my cousin got into a fistfight because when "That's the Way (I Like It)" came on the radio, he said, "That's my song," and I said, "No, that's my song."

A 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.

What's really cool is to be able to write music and have people around the world [who are] able to relate to it. They tell you that [your] song helped them get through a divorce or they got married to that song. It makes me want to keep doing that for [myself] and for people.

While I wanted to be supportive of Kanye [west] on the phone call, you cannot 'approve' a song you haven't heard. Being falsely painted as a liar when I was never given the full story or played any part of the song is character assassination.

My 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.