Quotes About Song

I'm one of those people that I make a song... then I write another song and then I'm like, 'But this song is so much better than this song,' and then I kind of ditch that song. It's a long process.

A song like "Walkabout", it's totally imitative. The goal of that song was to make people happy, and I've never really made a song to make people happy before. I really genuinely wanted people to listen to that song and have their spirits lifted.

Besides my fast and slooow songs, I further divide my work into three main song types: the ballad or story song, the variation on a theme (saying the same thing over and over and over again) song, and the weird song. It's important to have weird songs, but I find that a little weirdness goes a long way.

What's amazing about a DJ set is when you're able to re-appropriate a song or give purpose to a song that people didn't really think it was supposed to have. Give it this sort of hidden power by playing it before this song and after that one. That it fits into this logic and it goes farther than you thought it could go.

I had a dream that Louis Armstrong was playing the 'Swept Away' melody. I have no idea where it came from. But Louis Armstrong was playing it and singing the song to me. I woke up-it's a borrowed melody no doubt-and wrote it down. If I hear a song and I choose not to put it down, that's me neglecting to accept that song. I think there's a very spiritual and godly-type ting that happens, and it happens to way more people than we know. It's just that very few of us choose to engage it.

I learn stuff from making music every time I go in the studio. I'm continuing to try to find new ways to play in a song or be in a song and have a positive impact on a song.

If somebody sings a song that I wrote, I feel like its a nice point of validation for the song, because it shows that the song is able to stand on its own. I like that.

We learn a language through its song, and even if you don't have music you have the song of people you love's voice, and you'll notice that song in their voice.

I have a notebook that I take with me everywhere. I free-write in it when there are situations that I know I can write a song about. I will just start writing everything that I can think of while trying to write some things that are kind of poetic or sound like they could be in a song. Then, after the music is written, I go back and look at my subjects to see which one I think woud go with what music. Then, I formulate it into a melody and get the song.

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.

The thing that will never go away is that connection you make with a band or a song where you're moved by the fact that it's real people making music. You make that human connection with a song like 'Let It Be' or 'Long and Winding Road' or a song like 'Bohemian Rhapsody' or 'Roxanne,' any of those songs. They sound like people making music.

My philosophy on writing a song for myself is that I always, always, always want to write a song. I always want to write a song. I realize that as a record producer or a singer or whatever I might not, if I recorded on myself or someone else, the first time out I might not give it the right treatment, so that the world or many people will accept it and it'll be a public hit, or anything like that.

Whenever I think I know something is a classic, or an amazing song, I realise it's still so subjective, because you and your friends could be talking about something, say, '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' - an amazing classic song - or someone would be like, "'Hey Jude' is an amazing song!", and I'd be like, "I don't really like it."

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.

If something gets under my own skin, and keeps reoccurring, it starts to take on a certain weight and value, and I think, "I have to put this in the song. I have no choice but to mention Greek Cypriots in this song." It's a little internal challenge to myself. Like creating little imaginary rituals in yourself to help the song go from nonexisting to existing.

I think our songwriting has evolved. We can show that we have continued to branch out and do different stuff and incorporate different instruments. When it comes to writing, I think that we have pushed the envelope. We can do whatever we want to try - a longer song or a shorter song, some different instruments, some piano, an intro with just vocals, something that's scathing. Whatever. However we feel the song should go, that's what we will do. With that mindset, I think it's made us better writers.

I was just fooling around with the piano and Todd [Phillips] was like, 'Hey there's a great spot in the movie [The Hangover] where we need a little bit of a breath in the narrative. You should write a song and stick it in there.' And I was like, 'Well, what should the song be about?' And he said, 'The tiger.' 'Oh, okay.' So I went off and I wrote this song. I came back and Todd and I tinkered with it a little more and then we shot it right then. It all happened in a day.

Inspiration and stealing are two completely different things. If somebody wants to make a song like "Stairway to Heaven" and writes a song on acoustic guitar, Led Zeppelin does not own every song that's on acoustic guitar for the rest of time.

I 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.

I think, sometimes, artists release music too fast. If you just sit back and listen to the track for a little bit you could pick and choose how you want to do it and see if you really feel the song, because sometimes you might not even like the song after a few listens.

I had a really bad blushing problem when I was younger. The first time I ever performed was in an English class. I had an essay that I was supposed to write, and, instead of writing an essay, I wrote a song. So, I was playing this song in class, and I literally turned the color of this sweater that I was wearing, completely red. I think it was that feeling of challenging everything in me, my introverted personality. Like, "This is what you have to do. It doesn't matter if you do it wrong, you just have to do it."

God sings, we hum along, and there are many melodies, but it's all one song - one same, wonderful, human song.

I am saying what comes out, because I'm really not a methodical writer. I'm not a good building writer, where you are like "well, I going to make a song today, and I think it will be a pop song." Some people are great at it and it's beautiful. If I am feeling musical and I pick up the guitar, usually something will eventually come out and I'll see where it goes.

As a songwriter I hate this whole, 'If it's a sad song, it has to sound like a sad song thing.' And that goes all the way back to my days with the Format. I'm an insane narcissist, so if I have to get something off my chest, I'll get something off my chest.

I have a very eclectic iPod. So I've got my cardio people - so it's anything from Beyonce to some Jay-Z to Janelle Monae, her song 'Tightrope,' that's a good cardio song. And then I've got Sting. I've got Mary J. Blige. I've got The Beatles. I've got Michael Jackson. I try to pick the songs that I personally love.

With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself--one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad.

So I'll set a cycle in motion and pop it into record and I'll lay down a drum pattern, a bass line, a keyboard and guitar part, and once the groove is going I launch into the song and sing my song over the top.

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.

I wanna make stuff that sonically sounds really good. I don't wanna make a song about how people think I'm this when I'm really that. I don't wanna make a song about how I grew up broke.

So it's the unwinding of your nervous system. The corresponding experience to what winds you up comes out in your dreams. To write a song then, even one like Don't Bother Me, helps to get rid of some subconscious burden. Writing a song is like going to confession.

Writing a song isn't that hard. Writing a good song is difficult. Let's face it, we're faced with taking a complex feeling or event, making words rhyme and saying exactly what we want them to say in a short amount of time. ...the primary reason for keeping it short and to the point is to be certain that you're not boring your audience.

Revising a screenplay is much more frustrating than revising a song because you have to read through the entire work again while you are changing stuff. It is a lot easier to edit a song.

Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," a song that was written for Simone, she confronted the band's lead singer, Eric Burdon. "So you're the honky," she said, "who stole my song and got a hit out of it?

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 have a unique message to deliver, a unique song to sing, a unique act of love to bestow. This message, this song, and this act of love have been entrusted exclusively to the one and only you.

Don Quixote was a song for a 1969 Michael Douglas movie called Hail Hero! I wrote the title song for the film and they also used the Don Quixote one I had submitted.

The importance of selecting music and sequencing songs - making one song merge into another song. In retrospect, those are the most important lessons I got from DJs.

I wrote a song at age five about algae on the pond by our house, then the next 'real' song was in fifth grade about an unrequited crush.

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.

I have a song deep in my heart, And only I can hear it. If I close my eyes and sit very still ...It is so easy to listen to my song. When my eyes are open and I am so Busy and moving and busy, If I take time and listen very hard, I can still hear my Heartsong. It makes me feel happy. Happier than ever. Happier than everywhere And everything and everyone In the whole wide world. Happy like thinking about Going to Heaven when I die. My Heartsong sounds like this: I love you! I love you! How happy you can be! How happy you can make this whole World be.

The song 'Innocent' is a song that I wrote about something that really, really emotionally impacted me.

When I go onstage, I'm going to work ...I feel like my performance is about an emotional connection. I want to connect with people, whether it's like a romantic song or a happy song.

I think that the song, the song "Stand By Me" is one of those songs that... and someone asked me, what was you thinking about or what was you feeling about? It's something that, songwriters just write songs. It's like an artist that paints. They paint what they feel. It's not, it's not about how many of these painting I'll sell it's just how they feel at the moment. And that's how I wrote "Stand By Me".

Black Americans should be given credit for finding probably the perfect weapon; the weapon of the song. And that song continues. Most holocausts don't, so they have this bitterness left over. The phenomenon of the world, as far as Black Americans are considered, is that we are not a bitter people.

I'm very concerned with the healing process of a song and music in general. I think that's why I make music - it heals me and I'm extremely sensitive to people who tell me that this or that song made them feel better or helped them go through a difficult time in their life. I think that music is almost medicine. I don't know if that's my philosophy, but that's my thought process.

I released that I could crank out a song if I practiced it a lot. If I am in the practice of writing songs everyday or every other day, getting ideas and following through with them, and not just saying "I've got this idea, but I will get to it at some point." If I actually sit down and not be lazy, and follow through with it then you just get in the practice of doing things. It feels very productive, and then it gets a lot easier, because you are working the muscle in your brain. The "song-writing muscle" so to speak.

It's weird because when you initially write a song, you write it with no understanding that the world is maybe going to hear it one day. So when you go into the studio, you don't see the hundreds of people at a gig or the viewers on TV, you just write a song without any inhibitions or boundaries.

I didn't say I wasn't gonna do rockabilly. I just said I ain't gonna sing no song that ain't a country song. I won't be known as anything but a country singer.