Quotes About Song

The song that I will sing is an old song, so old that none knows who made it. It has been handed down through generations and was taught to me when I was but a little lad. It is now my own song. It belongs to me. This is a holy song (medicine-song), and great is its power. The song tells how, as I sing, I go through the air to a holy place where Yusun (The Supreme Being) will give me power to do wonderful things. I am surrounded by little clouds, and as I go through the air I change, becoming spirit only.

I always think of each night as a song. Or each moment as a song. But now I'm seeing we don't live in a single song. We move from song to song, from lyric to lyric, from chord to chord. There is no ending here. It's an infinite playlist.

When writing I just go with the song. I go with the song and try to tell the story. So the story may be "Wonderful Baby", which is a little song. Or it might be a gentle song, "Empty Chairs". Or it might be a rock and roll song like "Prime Time" or "Run, Diana, Run", or "American Pie". I don't know where it's gonna go. I don't have any idea what I'm doing. I just do it. I just keep doing it. I keep taking adva

My first song was Hula Hoop Song, in 1955. It was a novelty song. I had to find someway to reach out and it was with a novelty song. Now, all of my recording obligations have been taken care of. I made 14 albums for Warner Brothers. Five for United Artist before that.

I can't remember the first song I learned to play on bass, but the first song I learned to play on guitar was 'For Your Love' by the Yardbirds. That kind of was the beginning for me. I thought it was a great song and I loved the open chord progression at the beginning of that song.

I wouldn't want someone assuming that some negative song has some truth between me and my wife. There was a song that one of my buddies sent me, and it was an awesome song. It was about this woman who had fallen in love with a man that wasn't her husband, and I love everything about the song except for the fact that I personally cannot sing it. It would kill me if someone thought I was singing it about my wife.

"My Trigger" is the best combination of song and track. "Heart Is Full" is maybe the best song we've done as a song, and that's why we try to play it in different ways, too, because I think for a lot of people the track was a bit distracting from the song.

There are no limitations with a song. To me a song is a little piece of art. It can be whatever you like it to be. You can write the simplest song, and that's lovely, or you can just write a song that is abstract art.

Sometimes you're writing a song and you have an image whilst writing a song. I don't think you ever base a songwriting process around a video, but when you're writing a song sometimes it'll be a very visual song.

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.

There are times when I want to be plainspoken about my feelings in a song. But there are other times when it's really good to try and get my head around different kinds of song structures, or maybe I might get turned on by trying to write a song that would fit in this one scene in a movie. And by the end of all this, you just end up with a bunch of different ideas. And songs are really just ideas.

If 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.

The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song.

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.

For music, unlike a $500 software program, people are paying a buck or two a song, and it's those dollars and pennies that have to add up to pay for not just the cost of that song, but the investment in the next song.

I've been on a real Credence Clearwater kick. I've been collecting their albums on CD -- right now I really like 'I Put a Spell on You.' I don't know who actually wrote it; it might be a traditional, or like, an old blues song, I haven't looked in the liner notes, but it's the first song on their first album. I love all the hits; I mean @#$%&, I like every one of them. I think my favorite song by John Fogerty is 'Have You Ever Seen the Rain?' They're my favorite American band of all time, totally.

Here's some free advice; like the folkies of yore, you need to be not just a writer of songs, you need to be a lover of songs, a listener of songs and a collector of songs. If you hear a song in a club that knocks you out or you hear an old recording of a great song you never knew existed, it does not diminish you to record it; it actually exalts you because you have brought a great song from obscurity to the ear of the public.

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.

Well, Neighbours wanted to do a song on the show, and they asked me what songs I had. I told them I'd just written this song, called Born to Try, and I had just gone overseas and spoken to some people from Song about it.

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."

I love lyrics. I've always been averse to the straight lyric idea. I guess a big part of it is, that songs that are literary always turn me off. Because they feel so abstract. Like a song. What is a song? We have to remember what the function of a concert and the function of playing a song for people are. It's all become really abstracted.

I write when I have to; I write when the song is done and I deal with the idea and I just go with it and I'll become what that song is all about until I have finished it. And when you do that, it makes the song more visual, it makes it more personal.

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.

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."

I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that.

I'm constantly working on something new, whether it's a Garbage song, or for someone I'm producing or a song for film or TV whatever it is. I guess I'm sort of living in the moment and moving towards what I'm doing next. I think most artists are like that.

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.

That's really what was wonderful for me growing up, since I got to know so many of the songwriters who liked me and thought I had talent. They would then tell me how to read a lyric and sing a song, and challenge me to try and find a different end to a 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.

A good song stays in your head because it's catchy, a great song stays because it means something to you.

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'm in a house where if the washing machine shuts off, it sings a song. If iPad gets a message, it sings a song. I'm living in a real postmodern time - every single thing sings to you to tell you it's started, it's stopped, you've got a message, you didn't get a message.

All I've got on my iPod is every single Queen song and every single Judas Priest song. Queen were an incredible heavy metal band. I saw them on their first ever tour, at Birmingham Town Hall. They just blew me away.

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.

I don't get particularly precious about things like this, though. Like the record company said, "We need a radio edit that delivers the hook" - I don't even know what they consider the hook in that song ["Oh No"] - "that delivers the hook sooner." So I'm like, "Okay. I see that." And they were all walking on eggshells, like is this going to be sacrilegious to me or something, to mess with this art I've created? And I'm like, "Great. I get to tinker with it, I get to mess with my song some more."

Anywhere in the world, in every oppressive country, time sooner or later comes and libertarian people sing the same song: Goodbye Mr Dictator! This is a universal law, this is a universal song.

I finished your song, she said. Our last song. And I want to play it for you.

When I'm writing a song, it's just me and the songwriters. Then when the song is done, there are publishers that hear it, then people in my management, then my wife and my boys and my friends, and if they're all lovin' it, it's kind of withstanding all the criticism I need.

It was always meant to ease out of a big radio song and flow into the next one. Don't is the bridge song in between Sing and Thinking Out Loud.

Making a record's a real fight for me. I'm constantly fighting with this thing inside of me that says I should be sitting in a room with Matthew Shipp or I should have Han Bennink on drums or this song should be playing for the next 20 minutes in my head, not a silly little pop song. It's constant.

I can write a song in about an hour if it's a simple country song.

Forgetfulness heals everything and song is the most beautiful manner of forgetting, for in song man feels only what he loves.

An important meeting point for me was realizing the similarity between a DJ set and a Grateful Dead set: I grew up listening to how the Dead would take a song and just jam on it, and then transition into another song.

The reason I've gotten into script-writing, which was accidental to begin with, was that I found it was a far more effective medium for violence. Which is something that I'd always written in songs, but the violence always sat strangely within a song. And I was always interested in the way in which you listen to murder ballads and things like that - these weird lines would kind of come out, like, I drug her by the hair or something - that sat weirdly in the song. Film seems to be a medium designed for betrayal and violence.

One of the nice things about a favorite pop song is that it's an unconditional truce on judgment and musical snobbery. You like the song because you just do, and there need not be any further criticism.

Cowriting is very personal. A great song is an honest song, so you have to be able to open up to the person in the room. It's like a blind date. I know in the first five minutes if it's gonna be weird.

It was a slow process. You gotta remember I hadn't recorded a song sober in seven years. So it took me awhile to even feel like I could record a song sober.