Quotes and Sayings about Songs
"Idol has pretty much taken me out of my recording and out of my choreography. I have managed to slip in some choreography jobs. And I've been writing songs for other artists."
- Paula Abdul
(Related: Artists, Jobs, Pretty, Songs, Writing)
"There's a saying, 'It's easy to write songs, but very difficult to write great songs.' I'm going through that right now."
- Bryan Adams
(Related: Now, Right, Saying, Songs)
"I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs."
- Joseph Addison
(Related: Being, Garden, Songs, Value)
"I got about 6037 songs I wrote myself and I'm trying to get them on the market and I just wish people could hear them and stuff but they'll do pretty good."
- Hasil Adkins
(Related: People, Pretty, Songs, Trying)
"It's great to be able to get up there now and do an hour or 75 minutes of songs they're familiar with."
- Trace Adkins
(Related: Now, Songs)
"The fate of the singers who, like my songs, went up in flame was also the fate of the books which I later wrote. All of them went up in flame to Heaven in a fire which broke out one night at my home in Bad Homburg as I lay ill in a hospital."
- Shmuel Y. Agnon
(Related: Home, Books, Fate, Fire, Heaven, Night, Songs)
"Courage: Great Russian word, fit for the songs of our children's children, pure on their tongues, and free."
- Anna Akhmatova
(Related: Children, Songs, Word)
"I can't be bothered anymore about giving songs titles."
- Damon Albarn
(Related: Giving, Songs, Titles)
"Thinking about what songs are coming next instead of just relaxing, breathing and playing from my heart. Sometimes it can get to be almost like the enemy."
- Rick Allen
(Related: Heart, Enemy, Songs, Thinking)
"At the end of the day, they're happy if you do the obvious songs towards the end of the set and you've got to try and make yourself happy by doing certain songs at the front end of the set."
- Rick Allen
(Related: Day, End, Obvious, Songs)
"I'm always storing away phrases and ideas and things that I think might turn into songs."
- Mose Allison
(Related: Ideas, Songs)
"I sang and wrote songs when I was 12 years old."
- Mose Allison
(Related: Old, Songs, Years)
"I said, other people can write songs, let's see if I can. So the first 400 or 500 wound up on the floor somewhere. Then I wrote one called Melissa."
- Gregg Allman
(Related: People, First, Songs)
"I got tired of playing other people's songs."
- Gregg Allman
(Related: People, Songs)
"Knowing what I knew about Russia, as much as I loved the music and was fascinated by the songs and the whole idea of it, I knew it would be a very lengthy and frustrating process."
- Marc Almond
(Related: Music, Idea, Russia, Songs)
"For me it always comes down to what is a good song and I'm very old fashioned in the way that I like to make songs that have something classic about them whether you can play them with an orchestra or an electro synthesizer or an acoustic guitar."
- Marc Almond
(Related: Guitar, Old, Play, Song, Songs)
"That's what I like to do, I like to make songs."
- Marc Almond
(Related: Songs)
"My next record I really just want it to be a collection of great songs, classic songs in a way."
- Marc Almond
(Related: Songs, Want)
"Selfishly, I make music for me. I like to make music. I like looking for songs. I like working with interesting musicians. I like producing records. It's something I will always do."
- Herb Alpert
(Related: Music, Musicians, Songs, Will)
"Musically, I always allow myself to jump off of cliffs. At least that's what it feels like to me. Whether that's what it actually sounds like might depend on what the listener brings to the songs."
- Tori Amos
(Related: Songs)
"I think some people found the production took away from the actual songs, which I can understand."
- Emma Anderson
(Related: People, Production, Songs)
"I just couldn't get anyone to sing my songs, so I had to sing my own tunes."
- Paul Anka
(Related: Songs)
"I had this talent for these stupid little teenage songs."
- Paul Anka
(Related: Talent, Songs, Teenage)
"When you write songs, you can't really point out the exact thing you're inspired by. It's more a state or a mood or an atmosphere that you're trying to put into words."
- Keren Ann
(Related: Songs, State, Trying, Words)
"Sometimes you're trapped in writing songs and you don't have enough distance from what you do anymore and you need the talent and the years of other people to come and jump in."
- Keren Ann
(Related: Talent, People, Songs, Writing, Years)
"It's always a mixture of fiction and your own story. It's more I recreate atmospheres and moods through songs."
- Keren Ann
(Related: Fiction, Moods, Songs)
"I know what my job is: I write the songs, I sing them, I play them on the piano."
- Fiona Apple
(Related: Job, Play, Songs)
"I'm not used to not having enough time to live with the songs. Usually, if I write something, I live with it for a little while."
- Fiona Apple
(Related: Time, Songs)
"After that I didn't listen to music as much because '70s music just wasn't... I remember all the songs, but it wasn't because I was into them, you know what I mean?"
- Tom Araya
(Related: Music, Songs)
"I would have to work on the song and figure out how they wanted the song done, because they're such high-intensity songs. We figure that out first, then I go back and listen to it and go over and rehearse stuff with it and try to get a feel for the words."
- Tom Araya
(Related: Work, First, Song, Songs, Words)
"If it were bad songs, yeah, I'd speak up, but they're not bad songs."
- Tom Araya
(Related: Songs)
"That was the reasoning behind learning to play bass, and then after that it was more like it was neat to play songs together - for me to play bass and for him to play guitar."
- Tom Araya
(Related: Guitar, Learning, Play, Songs)
"My mother bought a piano, put it in the front room, and I just started writing my songs."
- Joan Armatrading
(Related: Mother, Songs, Writing)
"This is my seventh decade... and every once in a while I get a hankering to re-visit these songs again... songs with which I have had a great relationship."
- Eddy Arnold
(Related: Songs)
"United Artists wanted to do records with me. I had no idea, what a rare thing that was... to make an album. And they put a guy with me working on songs, and I got busy with films. I just kind of let it slide. Isn't that amazing?"
- John Astin
(Related: Idea, Artists, Songs, United)
"I never for a day gave up listening to the songs of our birds, or watching their peculiar habits, or delineating them in the best way I could."
- John James Audubon
(Related: Birds, Day, Habits, Listening, Songs)
"Kids know me from their Grease DVD, so they instantly respond. You can hear a pin drop when I do my old songs."
- Frankie Avalon
(Related: Kids, Old, Songs)
"So, it ended up being what you have there, seven songs brand new and ten live songs which is a good mix."
- Sebastian Bach
(Related: Being, Songs)
"To think that when they come out with these gigantic songs, it's pretty tough to top them, you know."
- Sebastian Bach
(Related: Pretty, Songs)
"Every single band in the world has these gigantic songs that people are obsessed with."
- Sebastian Bach
(Related: People, Songs, World)
"When you play all that as a body of work there are four great songs, four mediocre songs and four bad songs. I didn't know it at the time; I was just doing my best."
- Randy Bachman
(Related: Work, Time, Body, Play, Songs)
"My songs are like cheap Neil Young copies."
- Randy Bachman
(Related: Songs)
"Those two songs condense the two albums. They also show what the audiences wanted. I was desperate to keep the band together and find something that the public would like."
- Randy Bachman
(Related: Audiences, Public, Songs)
"I listened to it last night for the first time since we started this project. I went out to my car and put it in and went to an empty parking lot and just listened and read the little pamphlet that came with it. After two or three songs I burst into tears."
- Randy Bachman
(Related: Car, Time, First, Night, Project, Songs, Tears)
"It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page."
- Joan Baez
(Related: Nothing, Songs, Words, Writing)
"I like duos with percussionists. I like the songs that percussionists sing."
- Derek Bailey
(Related: Songs)
"It is my hope that during my brief passage through this universe, that I may share with you the joy of hearing the music of the stars... knowing that the composer was from a distant place and the songs were written eons ago, which now fall gently on this place for all to hear."
- Richard H. Baker
(Related: Music, Hope, Hearing, Joy, May, Now, Songs, Stars, Universe)
"We just wanted to write a bunch of songs that we thought were good songs."
- Travis Barker
(Related: Thought, Songs)
"We just wrote songs that seemed good to us. We wrote the album in like two weeks. We could have had more time, but we accomplished what we needed to in the two weeks."
- Travis Barker
(Related: Time, Songs)
"We were concerned with having good songs, not just songs that go two hundred miles per hour."
- Travis Barker
(Related: Songs)
"I learned the songs and played the gigs, and then they called me about a month later. They told me they were like super stoked on me and asked me to join their band."
- Travis Barker
(Related: Songs)
"I like songs that are simple."
- Syd Barrett
(Related: Songs)
"The songs of Bizet are by a French peer of Rossini. When Rossini stopped composing, he was living in Paris. He also wrote some beautiful songs in French."
- Cecilia Bartoli
(Related: Living, Paris, Songs)
"I could name a few songs and say exactly what summer they came out and what boy I thought I was in love with when I was fourteen years old, but I think that music used to be really more a part of the culture when people went out dancing in a different way than they do now."
- Ann Beattie
(Related: Love, Music, Thought, People, Culture, Dancing, Name, Now, Old, Songs, Summer, Years)
"There's 40 or 50 songs that nobody's heard that I've done in between albums. There's a whole evolution from Midnite Vultures to Sea Change that's never been released."
- Beck
(Related: Change, Evolution, Sea, Songs)
"There are a lot of people who really abused sampling and gave it a bad name, by just taking people's entire hit songs and rapping over them. It gave publishers license to get a little greedy."
- Beck
(Related: People, Name, Songs)
"It's not a bad problem to have because a lot of classic acts are known for one or two songs and in their show they basically hold those songs off until the end and you sit through an hour or so of lesser known material but in our case most of the songs are well known."
- Gerry Beckley
(Related: End, Songs)
"DUST includes rarities, demos, unreleased songs and instrumentals, live recordings, and more."
- Adrian Belew
(Related: Songs)
"I borrowed a guitar at age 16 and taught myself to play because I wanted to write songs."
- Adrian Belew
(Related: Age, Guitar, Play, Songs)
"It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them."
- Hilaire Belloc
(Related: Songs)
"We'll only be playing four new songs live, but all the material for the next album is basically finished."
- Daisy Berkowitz
(Related: Songs)
"We're playing the same songs, the same way, that we have for years."
- Daisy Berkowitz
(Related: Songs, Years)
"It's just a bunch of songs. I'm not trying to cure any major disease."
- Nuno Bettencourt
(Related: Cure, Disease, Songs, Trying)
"Obviously the biggest change is that it's me by myself. When you don't have another band interpreting your songs or playing them the way that they have, it's bound to sound different."
- Nuno Bettencourt
(Related: Change, Songs, Sound)
"I always imagine later on these songs I could've played with a band, but it never worked out that way."
- Nuno Bettencourt
(Related: Songs)
"I didn't really start writing music or lyrics or turning them into songs until I went to San Francisco."
- Jello Biafra
(Related: Music, Songs, Writing)
"This is my home. Home is where the disease is. As long as I stay in America, I'll never run out of subjects for songs."
- Jello Biafra
(Related: Home, America, Disease, Songs)
"Throughout my life I have cared as deeply about the songs of all peoples as I have about the rights of all peoples."
- Theodore Bikel
(Related: Life, Rights, Songs)
"The reason I do interviews is because I'm protecting my songs."
- Bjork
(Related: Reason, Songs)
"I intend to keep writing Christmas songs. There's still a lot more about Christmas that can be captured and feel like old-time Christmas. A lot of the traditions haven't been explained in song."
- Clint Black
(Related: Christmas, Old, Song, Songs, Traditions, Writing)
"We are not a Zappa cover band. We only play Frank's songs that were recorded by the Mothers of Invention and I think a lot of those songs were complex."
- Jimmy Carl Black
(Related: Invention, Mothers, Play, Songs)
"When I was young, I just sat down and started playing Chopsticks at the piano. I got so far and then lost interest. Eventually, I regained it and started writing songs."
- Otis Blackwell
(Related: Interest, Songs, Writing)
"I always figured it was best if I write my songs, take them to my publisher and just lay back. There used to be so many things going on - getting to the artist, getting to the publishers - you know, politics. I just didn't want to get mixed up in all of that."
- Otis Blackwell
(Related: Politics, Artist, Songs, Want)
"The grandmother, the mother, the worker, the student, the intellectual, the professional, the unemployed, everybody identified with the songs because they were descriptions of life in the city."
- Ruben Blades
(Related: Life, Mother, Songs)
"I didn't want to be on the losing side. I was fed up with Jewish weakness, timidity and fear. I didn't want any more Jewish sentimentality and Jewish suffering. I was sickened by our sad songs."
- Lionel Blue
(Related: Fear, Losing, Sentimentality, Songs, Suffering, Timidity, Want, Weakness)
"It's taken a long time but eventually when I had the songs in place and demos right and I found myself a manager, that's when everything started happening quickly but I think that's always the way it is."
- James Blunt
(Related: Time, Manager, Right, Songs)
"I've written more songs for this record than I ever have in the past so I'm trying to give it a lot of special attention to be sure my ideas really get translated right."
- Suzy Bogguss
(Related: Ideas, Attention, Past, Right, Songs, Trying)
"I kept looking to do songs that were written years ago and would live or outlive all of us, and the one thing they had in common was Sinatra."
- Michael Bolton
(Related: Songs, Years)
"When you have great songs that are going to live longer than the composers, everything you can do to bring those different elements and nuances out, serve the song."
- Michael Bolton
(Related: Composers, Song, Songs)
"Someone told me there was a publisher that could find a good home for my songs, but I didn't want to give up my pursuit of a career in the business as an artist."
- Michael Bolton
(Related: Business, Home, Artist, Career, Pursuit, Songs, Want)
"We had offers to go everywhere and we could have done them. But what would have been the point? We were tired. We had worked hard and needed a break before we got stale. We spent six months at home and writing songs."
- John Bonham
(Related: Home, Months, Songs, Writing)
"People have said to me, You can't write songs. You can't play an instrument. But I've got 10 gold records."
- Sonny Bono
(Related: People, Gold, Play, Songs)
"Strangely, some songs you really don't want to write."
- David Bowie
(Related: Songs, Want)
"Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I've seen on some of the songs that I've written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in."
- David Bowie
(Related: Songs)
"However, there's no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums."
- David Bowie
(Related: Songs)
"I've had songs written during the Falklands war, and during the first Gulf war I got letters from soldiers saying they were listening to these songs, like Island of no return."
- Billy Bragg
(Related: War, First, Letters, Listening, Saying, Soldiers, Songs)
"But, in the end, even a song that's as politically bland as Blowin in the Wind, you probably wouldn't get up and sing that now, whereas some of Bob Dylan's love songs that were contemporary with that, like say Girl from the North Country, you can still get up an play now."
- Billy Bragg
(Related: Love, Country, End, Now, Play, Song, Songs, Wind)
"So, in some ways, the political songs tend to be a bit more like reportage, whereas the love songs tend to be like novels, you can pick them up off the shelf and go into them any time."
- Billy Bragg
(Related: Love, Time, Songs)
"I put myself into character for my songs."
- Michelle Branch
(Related: Character, Songs)
"I know for works for me - those wonderful sad love songs."
- Toni Braxton
(Related: Love, Songs)
"We gather for prayer, and reading the Bible, and singing the songs of David."
- William Brewster
(Related: Bible, Prayer, Reading, Singing, Songs)
"My son writes songs and plays. He sings like an angel."
- Edie Brickell
(Related: Son, Songs)
"No matter how famous and established they were or however blessed they were with great songs or long careers, if they lived alone, they lived alone. That's not the way I wanted to live prior to the tour or after."
- Edie Brickell
(Related: Careers, Famous, Songs)
"We didn't rehearse or play the songs to death before we recorded them, and that let us catch a freshness and energy level we've never really felt while making records."
- Edie Brickell
(Related: Death, Energy, Play, Songs)
"A lot of the songs start with an image. I was sitting there playing the guitar and I pictured this old, dirty green car, with the window rolled down, in the hot, hot, hot Texas heat, and this beautiful woman I knew when I was a kid sitting behind the wheel, looking out at me."
- Edie Brickell
(Related: Car, Guitar, Old, Songs, Woman)
"But when it came to jamming and writing songs like we used to, we realized Brandon was a huge spirit in the band. Who knew? It was just something we had to learn."
- Edie Brickell
(Related: Songs, Spirit, Writing)
"And when I've been away from my family and friends, I have felt good hearing some of those old songs."
- Beau Bridges
(Related: Family, Friends, Hearing, Old, Songs)
"While I'm playing baseball, I'm still writing songs and having tapes sent to me. I'm sure I'll spend a lot of time in the whirlpool resting these tired bones, so I'll be thinking of music then."
- Garth Brooks
(Related: Music, Time, Baseball, Songs, Thinking, Writing)
"I guess all songs is folk songs. I never heard no horse sing 'em."
- Big Bill Broonzy
(Related: Folk, Songs)
"Girls are losing their virginity at 15, 16. I'm not promoting that. But my songs are talking... about me becoming a man."
- Chris Brown
(Related: Girls, Losing, Man, Songs, Talking, Virginity)
"You just went right in and just recorded songs and listened them, and if there were any mistakes, then we would correct them and just went on... one take or two take."
- Dennis Brown
(Related: Mistakes, Right, Songs)
"Certain songs by hearing the rhythm, it tells you that is either a love song or you might be heartbroken or the songs give you the vibes and you just know that certain songs are militant that you have to write."
- Dennis Brown
(Related: Love, Hearing, Song, Songs)
"If you are speaking about my own songs, I would think so because we were talking about that particular era and I was singing one of my songs that I recorded 50 years ago."
- Ruth Brown
(Related: Singing, Songs, Talking, Years)
"There was a time we decided that it was songs that were done especially from my background because of the things we were dealing with, but nowadays, anybody who has a need, and can find the need, they can sing the blues."
- Ruth Brown
(Related: Time, Songs)
"I think people are sick and tired of all the abuse songs, and drug addiction, we want to bring to world a big fat smile."
- Steve Brown
(Related: People, Abuse, Addiction, Smile, Songs, Want, World)
"I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs."
- Jackson Browne
(Related: Friend, Songs, Writing)
"So what I do, more than play any instrument - I mean, I love to play - but more than that, I write songs. Songs that are about living, about what it's like to be going through all the things that people go through in life."
- Jackson Browne
(Related: Life, Love, People, Living, Play, Songs)
"The biggest influence? I've had several at different times - but the biggest for me was Bob Dylan, who was a guy that came along when I was twelve or thirteen and just changed all the rules about what it meant to write songs."
- Jackson Browne
(Related: Influence, Rules, Songs)
"I have to choose songs that represent my personality."
- Peabo Bryson
(Related: Personality, Songs)
"T Bone is genius. The way they've recorded my voice and the instrumentation to these songs is really quite extraordinary."
- Betty Buckley
(Related: Genius, Songs, Voice)
"I love Mary Chapin Carpenter songs. I love her songs 'Come On, Come On' and 'I Am A Town', they're two of my favorite songs."
- Betty Buckley
(Related: Love, Favorite, Songs)
"There's something missing in the music industry today... and it's music. Songs you hear don't last, it's just product fed to you by the industry."
- Jimmy Buffett
(Related: Music, Songs, Today)
"I want to write songs and play them for people - live."
- T-Bone Burnett
(Related: People, Play, Songs, Want)
"But my point is these Civil War songs were gruesome. The hatred that's so bad in this country today, and for the past 10 or 15 years, bad as it is, is nothing compared to the kind of things people would write down and sing back in the Civil War."
- T-Bone Burnett
(Related: War, People, Country, Hatred, Nothing, Past, Songs, Today, Years)
"I think probably the only thing that is around in these songs is that I was really lonely when I wrote a lot of them. But it was really by my own choosing because I was devoting myself to songwriting and dancing and I wasn't really going out and seeing people."
- Kate Bush
(Related: People, Dancing, Lonely, Songs)
"Ozzy wanted to get us back together. It's been 20 years. We did a couple of songs during his farewell in 1992 and that got the ball rolling."
- Geezer Butler
(Related: Songs, Years)
"Toward the later days of Sabbath, instead of going in and knocking out what songs we did in rehearsal, we would polish them to death."
- Geezer Butler
(Related: Death, Sabbath, Songs)
"That jam was so much fun that by the end of the tour, we just jammed on all of the songs."
- Charlie Byrd
(Related: End, Fun, Songs)
"That's what my life is, writing songs."
- John Cale
(Related: Life, Songs, Writing)
"I cannot sing the old songs now! It is not that I deem them low, 'Tis that I can't remember how They go."
- Charles Stuart Calverley
(Related: Old, Songs)
"It's fun having songs about parties and gigolos, but I really wanted to use my music as a form of art. Art is supposed to spark conversation and make people think, and I wanted to do that with this song."
- Nick Cannon
(Related: Art, Music, People, Conversation, Fun, Song, Songs)
"My songs are a direct route into my brain and my heart."
- Vanessa Carlton
(Related: Heart, Songs)
"I had no album title, and the album is like a journey in that it's a complete body of work. It's not just a couple of catchy songs and filler, so I felt that I needed to capture the essence of the album."
- Vanessa Carlton
(Related: Work, Body, Journey, Songs)
"I've never... when I was having songs on the airwaves, and that sort of thing, I never felt a sense of pressure anywhere except from myself, to do things the way I wanted to do them; to feel authentic; to feel like I was presenting my true self to the world."
- Mary Chapin Carpenter
(Related: Pressure, Self, Sense, Songs, World)
"The songs come from a vulnerable place, but expressing that part of yourself can also make you feel fearless."
- Deana Carter
(Related: Songs)
"I think the themes in my songs are very similar from the first album to the newest one. It's all about the human condition and how we are all trying to learn to live with each other and survive love and life."
- Deana Carter
(Related: Life, Love, First, Songs, Trying)
"The songs certainly have not made my fortune, but I am still grateful for the royalties when they come in."
- Sydney Carter
(Related: Fortune, Songs)
"I start a lot more songs than I finish, because I realize when I get into them, they're no good. I don't throw them away, I just put them away, store them, get them out of sight."
- Johnny Cash
(Related: Sight, Songs)
"This is the bunch of songs I did first, and it's just the type of thing I do. I am a Carter Family girl, so the record is book-ended with Carter Family songs."
- June Carter Cash
(Related: Family, First, Songs)
"I had all the material for a long time, but I was just too busy. Sometimes we'd sit around at home and sing some of these songs at family things, and everyone always said I should record them."
- June Carter Cash
(Related: Family, Home, Time, Songs)
"I found it was really impossible for me to write songs when I couldn't sing."
- Rosanne Cash
(Related: Songs)
"When my dad died a lot of songs came, and they're still coming."
- Rosanne Cash
(Related: Dad, Songs)
"There are no bridges in folk songs because the peasants died building them."
- Eugene Chadbourne
(Related: Building, Folk, Songs)
"My musical heroes are people like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie who wrote and sang real songs for real people; for everyone, old, young, and in between."
- Tom Chapin
(Related: People, Heroes, Old, Songs)
"My older sister encouraged me from early on and bought me one of the first guitars I had. She listened to all of the crappy songs that I wrote when I was 8 years old and encouraged me to keep doing it."
- Tracy Chapman
(Related: Sister, First, Old, Songs, Years)
"Everyone is looking for connections between the songs. I don't usually approach a record as a concept. There's no overriding theme I'm trying to represent. It's all about the individual songs."
- Tracy Chapman
(Related: Songs, Trying)
"I see some recurring themes: things that feel threaded together, some symbolic references, and songs about some of the big questions, like death. There are a lot of references to weather, too!"
- Tracy Chapman
(Related: Death, Questions, Songs, Weather)
"The songs are not necessarily autobiographical. A lot of songs are a combination of influences. It might be some part of my life, or something I've felt, or something somebody's told me. It all comes together."
- Tracy Chapman
(Related: Life, Songs)
"When I was singing Jamie's Cryin', people were going out of their mind because it was the first time they got to see Eddie, Michael and Alex play those songs. That was a thrill."
- Gary Cherone
(Related: Time, People, First, Mind, Play, Singing, Songs)
"I was growing up listening to Queen. Freddie Mercury threw those incredible melodies into his songs."
- Gary Cherone
(Related: Growing up, Listening, Mercury, Queen, Songs)
"You can tell the difference between songs that were created in a garage and songs that were created in the studio."
- Gary Cherone
(Related: Difference, Songs)
"Social topics may hit too close to home for people, but then again, if you pull a heartstring, then that's what country music is. It's not just songs about getting drunk and leaving your girl."
- Kenny Chesney
(Related: Home, Music, People, Country, Country music, May, Songs)
"There aren't any rules, as far as anything-and that applies especially to writing songs, whatever gets the point across. So you're just kind of brought up to feel-in any field, if you say you can do it, do it. There it is."
- Guy Clark
(Related: Rules, Songs, Writing)
"I have no reason to sit home and write songs all day without going out and playing for the folks. And I have no reason to go play for the folks unless I'm writing new songs so they can sort of feed off one another. And I just try to do the best I can."
- Guy Clark
(Related: Home, Day, Play, Reason, Songs, Writing)
"Artists who write songs... what they're going through usually comes through in their music."
- Terri Clark
(Related: Music, Artists, Songs)
"I started writing songs at age 15."
- Vince Clarke
(Related: Age, Songs, Writing)
"I'm a lover of songs."
- Vince Clarke
(Related: Songs)
"I did a lot of writing for a lot of different kinds of bands that I was in and out of during those five years and that left me with a little body of songs that I liked better when I played alone, so I ended up going out solo and very soon made my first album."
- Bruce Cockburn
(Related: Body, First, Songs, Writing, Years)
"I wanted to play rock and roll when I started playing. Nobody at that time ever thought about songwriting. You sang songs, that's all. You sang other people's songs. That's all there were."
- Bruce Cockburn
(Related: Time, Thought, People, Play, Songs)
"The things in my songs are the edited highlights of my life. I don't go seeking out strange sexual experiences every day of the week."
- Jarvis Cocker
(Related: Life, Day, Songs)
"Some of the songs I do once in a while that I kinda... my set list is basically like my hits, there is a good reason why they are there; people really like them."
- Joe Cocker
(Related: People, Reason, Songs)
"Well, over the years, I've developed a stable of songs of which I'm known for and never get tired of singing."
- Joe Cocker
(Related: Singing, Songs, Years)
"Yeah, one of the main ways is for songs that make me want to move."
- Joe Cocker
(Related: Songs, Want)
"I love songs that have a rocking and grooving feeling."
- Joe Cocker
(Related: Love, Feeling, Songs)
"For me, the focus are songs, which really get the audience moving."
- Joe Cocker
(Related: Focus, Songs)
"I've written songs about things that nobody else has ever written about."
- David Allan Coe
(Related: Songs)
"It's great to hear from people who have been touched by these songs. It has been good to know that the Lord is using this in ways I am not even aware of."
- Jim Cole
(Related: People, Songs)
"I want to be as honest as I can about the things I've been through - the sorrows and joys, victories and defeats - and to use those experiences as a well to draw from. Hopefully, the songs that result from that kind of writing will be songs that mean something to others."
- Jim Cole
(Related: Result, Songs, Want, Will, Writing)
"Since I was the solo artist as well as the writer for the songs, I figured I had enough credits on it already."
- Cy Coleman
(Related: Artist, Songs, Writer)
"If I give myself a chore, for instance, when I was writing the songs for Shameless, I said to myself, Now, every day for 90 days you have to write a song; good, bad or indifferent. So that was really helpful."
- Judy Collins
(Related: Day, Now, Song, Songs, Writing)
"Music is always occurring. It is just a matter of marketing, attention, and many other factors, that determines whether people will hear these songs or not."
- Judy Collins
(Related: Music, People, Attention, Marketing, Songs, Will)
"I may like the Blizzard best, of all the songs I have written."
- Judy Collins
(Related: May, Songs)
"I don't think you get to good writing unless you expose yourself and your feelings. Deep songs don't come from the surface; they come from the deep down. The poetry and the songs that you are suppose to write, I believe are in your heart."
- Judy Collins
(Related: Poetry, Feelings, Heart, Deep, Songs, Writing)
"I don't know where my songs come from... If I knew, I'd know too much, more than we are allowed on this plane."
- Judy Collins
(Related: Songs)
"I don't dream songs. I'm more apt to write dreams down and then to be able to interpret them into a song. I also tend to get up and write prose in the morning from which will come songs."
- Judy Collins
(Related: Dreams, Prose, Song, Songs, Will)
"'Urban Renewal' was sweet because I've been - unfairly, I would say - plonked in the middle of the road because of a handful of songs. It came at a good time for me, because you do take a bit of a browbeating and, as you get older, you become better at accepting it and realizing why it happens."
- Phil Collins
(Related: Time, Road, Songs)
"I'm writing new songs for a Broadway version of Tarzan, which is very interesting. I think what I learned from the Brother Bear score side of things, I've brought into the new Tarzan songs. Thinking outside just guitar, bass, drums and keyboards."
- Phil Collins
(Related: Brother, Guitar, Songs, Thinking, Writing)
"I think the thing that has made it possible for me to write personal songs and sing them year after year is the sensibility for good writing. Just opening your veins all over the paper is not necessarily going to be interesting. I wanted to speak to people."
- Shawn Colvin
(Related: People, Sensibility, Songs, Writing)
"Universal was absolutely marvelous about sitting down with me and listening to my input. It wasn't something where they chose a bunch of songs that were best sellers. They did a marvelous job on the packaging. It's a beautiful tribute."
- Rita Coolidge
(Related: Job, Listening, Songs, Tribute)
"My grandmother passed at 104. She sang and wrote songs until she passed."
- Rita Coolidge
(Related: Songs)
"It's a big flash of all these things and whatever you take out of that statement's one statement, one mind, one statement, one act, one show, and all the songs are one."
- Alice Cooper
(Related: Act, Mind, Songs)
"It's great when you play to an audience that knows the words to all your songs, and sings them back to you."
- Chris Cornell
(Related: Play, Songs, Words)
"We play our Irish songs a bit more loosely."
- Caroline Corr
(Related: Irish, Play, Songs)
"A lot of the songs are written on piano or guitar, so I contribute, and I have done so since the beginning. So it's been good to be involved completely musically as well."
- Caroline Corr
(Related: Beginning, Guitar, Songs)
"Obviously I got known for some other songs early on, and some of those were rock'n'roll songs. Some of them were melodic pop songs. And I've done lots of different things, as you know, but every so often I get drawn back."
- Elvis Costello
(Related: Songs)
"You know, all my songs are relatives, brothers, sisters, cousins."
- David Coverdale
(Related: Brothers, Relatives, Sisters, Songs)
"Not necessarily, a lot of my songs are firmly tongue in cheek."
- David Coverdale
(Related: Songs, Tongue)
"With Whitesnake it would have been inappropriate for me to have played Deep Purple songs, although I did at the beginning because I didn't have enough Whitesnake songs."
- David Coverdale
(Related: Beginning, Deep, Songs)
"The opportunity to record the song came when Phil Collins' record label, Atlantic, was doing a tribute album to him and they asked all these different artists to do renditions of his songs."
- Deborah Cox
(Related: Opportunity, Artists, Song, Songs, Tribute)
"Both songs are really, really intense when it comes to performing them, and very draining at the same time."
- Deborah Cox
(Related: Time, Songs)
"I have two favorite songs. My first is called 'Dance of The Robe' and it's a very powerful number where she is feeling the pressure from her people to take on the responsibility of leading them."
- Deborah Cox
(Related: People, Favorite, Feeling, First, Leading, Pressure, Responsibility, Songs)
"Sometimes the song title comes with the songs, other times you just sorta make something up afterwards."
- Wayne Coyne
(Related: Song, Songs)
"There is a lot of melody and things that sound familiar in hundreds of songs."
- Wayne Coyne
(Related: Songs, Sound)
"Normally when we go in and write the songs we write, we think about doing a cover, but never a covers record. That would be, for us, a concept. We don't want to have a concept!"
- Robert Cray
(Related: Songs, Want)
"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."
- David Crosby
(Related: Music, Business, Father, Thought, People, Actor, Being, Folk, Singing, Songs)
"Sometimes you sing songs about the way you want to feel more than the way you actually do feel."
- Jon Crosby
(Related: Songs, Want)
"Just having the pain of being alive without anything else, whether it's good or bad. There's a lot of serious songs on the record, you know. That song is just about feeling like a fish out of water, feeling like you don't belong on the planet sometimes."
- Jon Crosby
(Related: Being, Feeling, Fish, Pain, Song, Songs, Water)
"The bands that wrote the big, heroic rock songs - I really wanted to make a record like that."
- Sheryl Crow
(Related: Songs)
"I have been around for a long, long time. I didn't make it 'til I was older. I went through the period when women were not getting signed, particularly if you were writing songs that were lyrically propelled."
- Sheryl Crow
(Related: Women, Time, Songs, Writing)
"Yeah, I came in at the end of the Notorious album, played on about five tracks and then we went on a tour. Then we did another album, Big Thing, and then we started writing songs together in 1989."
- Warren Cuccurullo
(Related: End, Songs, Writing)
"When you do have songs where you're going to say something, some kind of statement about cultural or social stuff, that in general people love it. People love to be challenged in that way."
- Catie Curtis
(Related: Love, People, Songs)
"The people at the record company had asked me if I could write a song about my life, my relationship with God, and where I'm from. Well, I can't write a song on purpose, my songs come in a moment of inspiration or desperation."
- Billy Ray Cyrus
(Related: God, Life, People, Inspiration, Purpose, Company, Desperation, Song, Songs)
"I have four shelves covered with journals that I've written. Dad and I are writing songs together. I've probably written 100 songs."
- Miley Cyrus
(Related: Dad, Songs, Writing)
"I wanted to put a sheet in explaining what all the songs are about, but they didn't do it."
- Dick Dale
(Related: Songs)
"Some guys record an album with songs that are filler. I recorded this album like it was my last."
- Dick Dale
(Related: Songs)
"I always wanted a guitar. I always wanted to be a cowboy singer because I also listened to Hank Williams, and he would always sing these neat romantic songs."
- Dick Dale
(Related: Guitar, Romantic, Songs)
"As a little kid I had a girlfriend, and her boyfriend used to beat me up, so then I used to sing these songs, and that's what it's all about. Country music is all about your heart and your people and things like that."
- Dick Dale
(Related: Music, People, Heart, Boyfriend, Girlfriend, Country, Country music, Songs)
"When I was nine, we'd take a bus to the seaside. Coming back, we'd take turns entertaining, singing songs and the like. I tried some stand-up comedy. I had a captive audience in that bus. Then I realized I wanted to do more than that."
- Jim Dale
(Related: Comedy, Singing, Songs)
"I love Sell Out, I think it's great. I love the jingles. The whole thing as an album is a wonderful piece of work. The cover. Everything about it. It's got humor, great songs, irony."
- Roger Daltrey
(Related: Love, Humor, Work, Irony, Songs)
"For Ripley I learned to play some songs on the piano, and I never really played them again."
- Matt Damon
(Related: Play, Songs)
"I don't write down my experiences, but I have a very decent memory. I have tons of books in which I write down phrases as they occur to me. That's how I write songs. I'll need a line and I'll go through the books and find it, the right rhyme and everything."
- Evan Dando
(Related: Books, Memory, Right, Songs)
"The best songs I write in 20 minutes."
- Evan Dando
(Related: Songs)
"My next project will be a Christian album, another one. I wrote the songs for the ones you're referring to, but I want to do some of my old gospel favorites. That's what my next album's going to be."
- Charlie Daniels
(Related: Christian, Old, Project, Songs, Want, Will)
"I don't like people telling me what to do, or trying to MAKE me write songs."
- Dave Davies
(Related: People, Songs, Trying)
"I've written so many songs about Englishmen, I have to go elsewhere."
- Ray Davies
(Related: Songs)
"The kids out there want something they can relate to, something that's real; most of that whiny stuff isn't real. The cheesy pop songs just bore me to death."
- Jonathan Davis
(Related: Death, Kids, Songs, Want)
"I don't have many easy songs."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Songs)
"Our albums just tend to be collections of songs really, because we all write in the group, all four of us."
- John Deacon
(Related: Songs)
"I went along and basically learned a few of the songs they were doing at the time, which were quite a few of the songs we ended up doing on our first album."
- John Deacon
(Related: Time, First, Songs)
"I like to write songs about what's happening, what I see around me and what I hear. Everyday life. Someone may be talking to me and I may take it from that."
- Desmond Dekker
(Related: Life, May, Songs, Talking)
"I feel like my music is just an extension of my acting. I treat the songs like scenes that tell a story... it's very similar. My favorite thing is when cartoon fans show up to my live gigs! They are always the most kick-butt audience members 'cause they're not trying to act all cool like a lot of the music fans do! It's refreshing!!"
- Grey DeLisle
(Related: Music, Act, Acting, Fans, Favorite, Songs, Trying)
"I never set out to write songs about the world around me... it just kind of came about as a result of paying more attention to things."
- Iris DeMent
(Related: Attention, Result, Songs, World)
"We have the capacity to receive messages from the stars and the songs of the night winds."
- Ruth St. Denis
(Related: Night, Songs, Stars)
"We must begin to make what I call "conscious choices," and to really recognize that we are the same. It's from that place in my heart that I write my songs."
- John Denver
(Related: Heart, Choices, Songs)
"We played all of the songs on the first Johnny Winter AND every day before we recorded them, so that when we got in the studio, it was totally easy, as we knew exactly what we wanted to do."
- Rick Derringer
(Related: Day, First, Songs, Winter)
"For me, I go in and play a few Christian songs for an audience, and now I have people come up and not tell me I'm great, but tell me that my music is helping save their lives, helping them in the Lord, and helping them end their vices."
- Rick Derringer
(Related: Music, People, Christian, End, Now, Play, Songs, Vices)
"There are some good songs, but not the kind of song-writing that I remember, that I like. Springsteen still does it. Paul Simon, and there are also good writers, but that doesn't dominate the charts."
- Jackie DeShannon
(Related: Song, Songs, Writers)
"No, I got my web site going and said I have the record out. People were just falling on the floor - they couldn't believe it - after all that time. You know, it wasn't a compilation, it was new songs."
- Jackie DeShannon
(Related: Time, People, Songs)
"I mean, I can sit down with a guitar, and in fact, we do two, three songs with just guitar and percussion."
- Jackie DeShannon
(Related: Fact, Guitar, Songs)
"Songs are life in 80 words or less."
- Neil Diamond
(Related: Life, Songs, Words)
"The main objective in any song, the songs that I write, has always been that it reflect the way I feel, that it touch me when I'm finished with it, that it moves me, that it can take me along with it and involve me in what its saying."
- Neil Diamond
(Related: Saying, Song, Songs)
"If it can affect me, if it has meaning to me, if I feel I can do it well, I will do it and record it and thats why I recorded these songs."
- Neil Diamond
(Related: Meaning, Songs, Will)
"When I write with Maiden, then I write only with the guys in Maiden, we don't do songs from outside people."
- Bruce Dickinson
(Related: People, Songs)
"Rather, I believe that it is very good, if, with the aid of his songs, we can be reminded, among other things, of the social conditions under which Schubert had to work."
- Dietrich Fischer Dieskau
(Related: Work, Songs)
"If you only do little clusters - three or four songs by one, and another, and then yet another - you lose the opportunity to think your way into the composer's mind, since, after all, most of these pieces are quite brief."
- Dietrich Fischer Dieskau
(Related: Opportunity, Mind, Songs)
"My songs are just little letters to me."
- Ani DiFranco
(Related: Letters, Songs)
"Truth is, you make albums, and some of those songs are hits, and some of the greatest hits albums have songs that weren't hits. You have a career, the reason why we're still around 10 years is that we do have successful songs."
- Adam Duritz
(Related: Truth, Successful, Career, Reason, Songs, Years)
"All my songs are where I am."
- Adam Duritz
(Related: Songs)
"The film is a romance with songs and dances, aimed at a family audience."
- Sanjay Dutt
(Related: Family, Romance, Film, Songs)
"I've never written a political song. Songs can't save the world. I've gone through all that."
- Bob Dylan
(Related: Song, Songs, World)
"Prince used to call me up 3am in the morning and invite me to hear some of his new songs."
- Sheena Easton
(Related: Songs)
"I've been doing musical theater since I was a kid. And look for a CD from me in the future. I want to write all the songs!"
- Zac Efron
(Related: Future, Theater, Want)
"There's so much talk about the drug generation and songs about drugs. That's stupid. They aren't songs about drugs; they're about life."
- Cass Elliot
(Related: Life, Drugs, Songs, Talk)
"How do I tell people who I am? Not being a writer, the only way is to sing songs that reflect my opinions."
- Cass Elliot
(Related: People, Being, Opinions, Songs, Writer)
"If there's not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something."
- Eminem
(Related: Life, Drama, Negativity, Songs, Will)
"People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words."
- Brian Eno
(Related: People, Meaning, Song, Songs, Words)
"The first eight songs we were using someone else's monitors and it is hard to follow the changes when you are jamming if you can't hear those who you are jamming with."
- John Entwistle
(Related: First, Songs)
"I got a couple on per album but my problem was that I wanted to sing the songs and not let Roger sing them."
- John Entwistle
(Related: Songs)
"The songs are inspired by my experiences. Sometimes they are more than my real-life and, conversely, my life is more than just my songs."
- Melissa Etheridge
(Related: Life, Songs)
"I like it when songs develop in some way. Four minutes usually isn't enough time for something to develop musically."
- Donald Fagen
(Related: Time, Songs)
"So I learnt a few country western songs, I bought a chord book, and right away I started writing my own stuff, which nobody else did that, I don't know why."
- John Fahey
(Related: Country, Right, Songs, Writing)
"I love to sing old Motown songs to myself, or some Patti Smith Edith Piaf or Billie Holiday. That gets me in the mood for singing."
- Siobhan Fahey
(Related: Love, Holiday, Old, Singing, Songs)
"I just can't seem to write songs about peace and love. Yeah right, how do you get that?"
- Siobhan Fahey
(Related: Peace, Love, Right, Songs)
"The way I choose to show my feelings is through my songs."
- Marianne Faithfull
(Related: Feelings, Songs)
"Maybe the most that you can expect from a relationship that goes bad is to come out of it with a few good songs."
- Marianne Faithfull
(Related: Songs)
"But when I started writing songs, I stopped painting completely, and the only art things I do are connected to the career, like album sleeves and, to some extent, posters and things like that."
- Bryan Ferry
(Related: Art, Career, Painting, Songs, Writing)
"The quality of the writing, really. Simple as that. Beautiful words. It's very nice as a singer to do great songs, which have wonderful lyrics and strong feelings underneath the song."
- Bryan Ferry
(Related: Quality, Feelings, Song, Songs, Words, Writing)
"I mean, there are so many of his songs that I like that I could easily do that one day."
- Bryan Ferry
(Related: Day, Songs)
"Hollywood and the recording industry argue that current law permits the copying of songs and movies, and sharing them on the Internet. This enables young people to grow up learning how to steal."
- Suzanne Fields
(Related: Movies, People, Hollywood, Internet, Law, Learning, Sharing, Songs)
"But actually just yesterday we raised the key of one of my songs two steps up, so my voice is obviously responding. It's a muscle, and the more you use it, the more you use it right, the more you should get out of it. So yes, I sing."
- Harvey Fierstein
(Related: Key, Right, Songs, Voice, Yesterday)
"But I'm not adverse to the idea of Torch Song as a musical. It would just be different. Because the play will always be there exactly as it was, and in a musical you could tell a lot of the story through songs."
- Harvey Fierstein
(Related: Idea, Play, Song, Songs, Will)
"The invention of Bob Dylan with his guitar belongs in its way to the same kind of tradition of something meant to be heard, as the songs of Homer."
- Robert Fitzgerald
(Related: Guitar, Invention, Songs, Tradition)
"I had to go into a studio and compose and write and press up 12 songs in 14 hours. When you're recording a song from scratch it takes you 14 hours to do just one song."
- Grandmaster Flash
(Related: Press, Song, Songs)
"One of my theme songs is that if you can't do it in a test tube, don't do it."
- Martin Fleischmann
(Related: Songs)
"One of the reasons we survive as a band is that we are seen as a band of today. We don't want to be seen as a band that tours and plays old songs. We feel that we are making the best music of our careers."
- Andrew Fletcher
(Related: Music, Careers, Old, Songs, Today, Want)
"People know me for up-tempo songs because of my hits."
- Eddie Floyd
(Related: People, Songs)
"I always try to give my songs as gifts."
- Dan Fogelberg
(Related: Gifts, Songs)
"I'm now comfortable playing a lot of the old songs, and I've gotten out a lot of the old equipment."
- John Fogerty
(Related: Now, Old, Songs)
"I work hard at that, but the fact that there are a lot of good songs means there are also a lot of really bad songs I've written that you never hear."
- John Fogerty
(Related: Work, Fact, Songs)
"I don't know that all the demons have been beaten, but I'm very, very proud of those songs."
- John Fogerty
(Related: Songs)
"I just play, and I'm always trying to write songs."
- Steve Forbert
(Related: Play, Songs, Trying)
"I was never encouraged to do it and I played the accordion, which I hated. I wish I had taken piano because I definitely would have written more songs of my own, but I didn't."
- Connie Francis
(Related: Songs)
"I just remembered songs my grandmother taught me, and songs that I learned for the recordings. But, then I learned to speak Italian. When I was there, I hired a professor who stayed with me 24 hours a day. She wouldn't let me speak a word of English."
- Connie Francis
(Related: Day, English, Songs, Word)
"A lot of times, I played bass on songs. Gene plays guitar on some songs."
- Ace Frehley
(Related: Guitar, Songs)
"I think the fans really wanna hear the songs the way they sound on the record."
- Ace Frehley
(Related: Fans, Songs, Sound)
"My songs grow on people - like warts."
- Glenn Frey
(Related: People, Songs)
"There is no seam between my songs and myself-they really are me. It's not like I'm performing; I'm just singing stuff that I really believe."
- David Friedman
(Related: Singing, Songs)
"I've written several deeply personal songs this year, which I really love. Some of them came out of intense sadness. This has been an extremely difficult year for me."
- David Friedman
(Related: Love, Sadness, Songs)
"It's an interesting line that I walk. The AIDS crisis has done a lot for my songs and made them proliferate, and my songs have contributed a lot to that cause as well."
- David Friedman
(Related: Cause, Crisis, Songs)
"As a person, I'm not that hopeful, but somehow the hopeful part of me reveals itself through my songs."
- David Friedman
(Related: Songs)
"As time goes by, I realize that I do trust the wind. And I often write my songs for myself."
- David Friedman
(Related: Time, Trust, Songs, Wind)
"I think of my songs as there to be something to move people emotionally."
- David Friedman
(Related: People, Songs)
"These days, there are many people around the world who listen to the songs that made me infamous and read the books that made me respectable."
- Kinky Friedman
(Related: People, Books, Songs, World)
"We play melodic music, we play songs, we play all kinds of things and when you improvise you don't just shut out different languages, you use all the languages that you have."
- Fred Frith
(Related: Music, Play, Songs)
"We went through this business of me writing out all the parts for these old songs from Gravity and Speechless and we'd been performing that, but we don't do that any more."
- Fred Frith
(Related: Business, Gravity, Old, Songs, Writing)
"If you write songs you have an idea how they're going to sound."
- Fred Frith
(Related: Idea, Songs, Sound)
"I just feel like the songs that come out are the songs that come."
- John Frusciante
(Related: Songs)
"Just because people play songs with great technique doesn't mean the records are better."
- Kenny G
(Related: People, Play, Songs)
"I think that you get the mood of a song stronger if you get it right that way. On the other hand, you put some songs out live and they don't catch flight. They just flop. It is hard to tell until they are out there."
- Peter Gabriel
(Related: Right, Song, Songs)
"I was a student at Columbia College, actually, in the Architecture school. Paul would drive in from Queens, showing me these new songs. I can't remember us working it out."
- Art Garfunkel
(Related: Architecture, College, School, Songs)
"I've always written songs, even when I wasn't doing anything with my personal life in music."
- Leif Garrett
(Related: Life, Music, Songs)
"Each song is a lifetime, it begins and ends, and there's a journey taken within the songs."
- Leif Garrett
(Related: Journey, Song, Songs)
"I guess for me what is more significant than success is the nature of each of the songs and of the words."
- Peter Garrett
(Related: Nature, Success, Songs, Words)
"Those songs are about getting out; they're not about getting out of family. It wasn't about how family life was curtailing because I didn't know family life."
- Bob Geldof
(Related: Family, Life, Songs)
"Songs don't just come out of the air. They take time, but it's good fun, too. Maurice gave me encouragement."
- Andy Gibb
(Related: Time, Encouragement, Fun, Songs)
"Before, I was terrified on stage. I only play guitar during the acoustic songs. After a while, you can elicit certain responses from the crowd, like Elvis."
- Andy Gibb
(Related: Guitar, Play, Songs)
"I'll have to get people to write songs for me right now until my own writing comes around."
- Andy Gibb
(Related: People, Now, Right, Songs, Writing)
"I love making records; I love making music; I love writing songs."
- Barry Gibb
(Related: Love, Music, Songs, Writing)
"I will always have my songs and I don't think I will ever dry-up."
- Barry Gibb
(Related: Songs, Will)
"I would be content if I had nothing but a tape-recorder. I could still write songs and record them."
- Barry Gibb
(Related: Content, Nothing, Songs)
"When we write, we complement each other. We wrote six songs, Barry and I, while Robin was ill during the American tour, and they were terrible until Robin came back, and then everything worked out."
- Maurice Gibb
(Related: American, Songs)
"We don't mind being ripped apart, but don't rip the songs apart. They're like our kids."
- Maurice Gibb
(Related: Being, Kids, Mind, Songs)
"One of my favorite songs from the album is a song called 'For Better or Worse,' and it's basically about unconditional love, which is, I'd say, an ongoing theme in my personal life."
- Debbie Gibson
(Related: Life, Love, Favorite, Song, Songs)
"When I wrote those two songs, I couldn't have been any closer to the bottom."
- Don Gibson
(Related: Songs)
"So I didn't have anything to do with picking the songs, but I got to musically take them in places I thought might be interesting, so it was a real neat collaboration among the three of us."
- Vince Gill
(Related: Thought, Collaboration, Songs)
"I can sit and analyze everything and beat myself up and say you don't quite sing as good as you used to, you're writing better songs maybe than you used to, but to me it's just the journey."
- Vince Gill
(Related: Journey, Songs, Writing)
"I had just lost my dad and I remembered all the songs we used to go and hear at concerts, and the records around the house and sometimes we'd play together."
- Vince Gill
(Related: Dad, Play, Songs)
"I had seventeen No. 1 songs and I didn't see anything like that kind of money."
- Mickey Gilley
(Related: Money, Songs)
"I didn't have a lot of overtly political songs. I think it was more the actions of the group that were threatening to the authorities, and also our political philosophies apart from the music."
- Greg Ginn
(Related: Music, Actions, Songs)
"A characteristic of older folksongs, in most cases, is that we don't know their composers or authors. Older folksongs were written often with no commercial purpose in mind. They were passed down by word of mouth, from generation to generation."
- Tom Glazer
(Related: Purpose, Composers, Mind, Word)
"When I am seriously composing, sometimes a phrase will come into my head, a catch phrase. When I was writing pop songs for a few years, as a career, separate from my folksinging career, I used to write songs for pop singers."
- Tom Glazer
(Related: Career, Songs, Will, Writing, Years)
"Technically, I've been retired for some time now. All I ever do is occasionally write songs for friends, such as one, for a friend who had just turned 80. I wrote a song for him called, The First 80 Years are The Hardest."
- Tom Glazer
(Related: Time, Friend, First, Friends, Now, Song, Songs, Years)
"Just this morning, out of a large memory for songs, and having been obsessed by them since childhood, suddenly, at the age of 84, I thought of a song I hadn't thought of in over 50 years. It came into my head unbidden."
- Tom Glazer
(Related: Age, Thought, Childhood, Memory, Song, Songs, Years)
"We are rich in the quantity of songs rather than in the quality. The singer has to go through hundreds of compositions before he finds one that really says something."
- Alma Gluck
(Related: Quality, Quantity, Songs)
"When the student has her voice under complete control, it is safe to take up the lyric repertoire of Mendelssohn, Old English Songs, etc. How simple and charming they are!"
- Alma Gluck
(Related: Control, English, Old, Songs, Voice)
"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."
- Delta Goodrem
(Related: People, Song, Songs)
"If part of the purpose of making an album is to get some radio play, then you might as well think about that. But that's not really how we picked the songs."
- Mike Gordon
(Related: Purpose, Play, Songs)
"I feel like I want to write some songs and I don't know how to go about doing it. Usually it's the lyrics that are a problem, and I think I am not really cut out to be a lyricist."
- Mike Gordon
(Related: Songs, Want)
"I haven't written enough songs to be able to say that I have a system. I've only written a handful."
- Mike Gordon
(Related: Songs)
"Actually, the funny thing is, after all these years, I've got all these new songs to learn for the show we're doing at Joe's Pub, so it's kind of fun to get down and rehearse new things, and also rethink some of the older songs, how we're going to do them."
- Lesley Gore
(Related: Funny, Songs, Years)
"It creates a conflict of interest - what songs would I use for me, and what would I use for the band."
- Martin Gore
(Related: Conflict, Interest, Songs)
"Once I'd chosen the songs, it seemed like it would just be a question then of recording them. But it's a case of trying to re-invent the songs; taking them in different directions."
- Martin Gore
(Related: Question, Songs, Trying)
"I tend to like songs that are very emotional, that strike a chord with me emotionally."
- Martin Gore
(Related: Songs)
"I always hate explaining away songs, because for me they mean something, and for other people, they'll mean something absolutely different."
- Martin Gore
(Related: People, Hate, Songs)
"I didn't write songs for a very long time."
- Martin Gore
(Related: Time, Songs)
"I can tell jokes. I can talk to the audience. I can relax. I can change my songs whenever I want. I can change the tempos. I can change the mood, because I'm in charge."
- Robert Goulet
(Related: Change, Jokes, Relax, Songs, Talk, Want)
"In high school, I was Mr. Choir Boy. I had solos, I was helping out the tenors with their parts and our choir teacher would ask me what songs we should do."
- Lucas Grabeel
(Related: School, Songs)
"We still play Foreigner songs. I play the songs that I was involved in writing."
- Lou Gramm
(Related: Play, Songs, Writing)
"I find singing some of Foreigner's older songs are a little reckless and not exactly who I am now."
- Lou Gramm
(Related: Now, Singing, Songs)
"But to make a holiday record that involves favorite American songs and then also get to sing about Jesus birth, it just seemed like a real easy, subtle way to combine a couple of things that I love."
- Amy Grant
(Related: Love, American, Favorite, Holiday, Songs)
"The divergence of songs in the new population away from those in the progenitor population would only be prevented if these processes were balanced by repeated immigration and subsequent breeding: song flow."
- Peter R. Grant
(Related: Population, Song, Songs)
"Species can be recognized by their morphological characteristics and songs."
- Peter R. Grant
(Related: Songs)
"It's what the Pixies always said about music - they were writing songs and just trying not to be boring. That was their main motivation and it worked for them. I remember reading that and thinking that was the way to do it."
- Jonny Greenwood
(Related: Music, Motivation, Reading, Songs, Thinking, Trying, Writing)
"Right now my mind is on the people who stole our instruments, and, specifically, the person with my guitar, which will no doubt end its days having Green Day songs worked out on it. A better fate was deserved - and while the reverence given to guitars annoys me, I shall miss it."
- Jonny Greenwood
(Related: People, Day, Doubt, End, Fate, Guitar, Mind, Now, Right, Songs, Will)
"Steve produced Girls Grow Up Faster Than Boys and one more. Then he and I wrote a few songs together and became good friends. He was a talented producer."
- Jimmy Griffin
(Related: Boys, Friends, Girls, Songs)
"Even though my songs may sound very personal, to me most of them are fiction. It is a great way for me to be able to live a fantasy life as a writer because I get to be someone else, someplace else for three and a half minutes, just like the listener."
- Nanci Griffith
(Related: Life, Fantasy, Fiction, May, Songs, Sound, Writer)
"I decided it was time to pay tribute to my own songs, to give them the opportunity to mature and be adult."
- Nanci Griffith
(Related: Time, Opportunity, Songs, Tribute)
"Our songs touch people, and take them back to a time when there was no threat of terrorism, when you didn't have to lock your doors and when Mom and Dad took care of everything."
- George Grove
(Related: Dad, Mom, Time, People, Care, Songs, Terrorism)
"With Whitney she has such a unique sound and powerful instrument that she made those songs her own. She might as well have written them because she brought such a power and passion to them that were very unique. She has a great gift."
- Justin Guarini
(Related: Power, Passion, Songs, Sound)
"Even though other people wrote my songs I put my stamp on them. I have a connection, but there is no truer connection than an artists and their own song."
- Justin Guarini
(Related: People, Artists, Connection, Song, Songs)
"We would turn everything into songs in those days."
- Arlo Guthrie
(Related: Songs)
"I am going to sing lesbian love songs and support gay rights no matter what. The rest is public relations."
- Jasmine Guy
(Related: Love, Rights, Gay, Lesbian, Public, Rest, Songs, Support)
"I've got a collection of songs that I've had, I keep adding to and they're all great American composers. I wanted to showcase American composers and I've done that on a lot of my records and played things by American composers that I really respect."
- Charlie Haden
(Related: American, Composers, Respect, Songs)
"Sometimes if you get 'em too drunk they don't pay no attention to what you're doin' anyways, so you might as well just do old songs. But if you get one that's paying attention, sometimes we'll do some new material."
- Merle Haggard
(Related: Attention, Old, Songs)
"I think I'm most proud of my family right now. I'm more into that then I've ever been. It also gives a new area to draw from in creativity with my songs."
- Merle Haggard
(Related: Family, Creativity, Now, Right, Songs)
"I play keyboards and sing. I've written a couple of songs too."
- Corey Haim
(Related: Play, Songs)
"David Lee Roth had the idea that if you covered a successful song, you were half way home. C'mon - Van Halen doing 'Dancing in the Streets'? It was stupid. I started feeling like I would rather bomb playing my own songs than be successful playing someone else's music."
- Eddie Van Halen
(Related: Music, Home, Idea, Successful, Feeling, Song, Songs)
"The same music is playing on the radio in San Francisco, New York, Washington DC and Annapolis. Everywhere you go there's the same artists and same songs by them, over and over again. At some stations they play the same songs 50 to 60 times a week."
- John Hall
(Related: Music, Artists, Play, Songs, Washington)
"The way you look for songs, you find yourself looking for little signals and clues about life and how things are."
- Tom T. Hall
(Related: Life, Songs)
"Each time I've gone to the studio, the songs have got better and I've got more confident."
- Natasha Hamilton
(Related: Time, Songs)
"Being used to scientific terminology and theory it was always natural for me to push this stuff into songs."
- Peter Hammill
(Related: Being, Songs, Theory)
"Marc Almond has done a couple of covers, a few people in Europa have done them. I own all the publishing. It's never really been addressed, as I haven't had the time to go out and tout the songs."
- Peter Hammill
(Related: Time, People, Publishing, Songs)
"Working with Yahoo! allows us to give our fans a chance to listen to our songs, check out the video, purchase our new album, win tickets to our show, and chat with us all in one place."
- Isaac Hanson
(Related: Chance, Fans, Songs)
"So it's not so much that I set out to do something different, it's just that the songs themselves require their own individual voice and attention."
- Ben Harper
(Related: Attention, Songs, Voice)
"As long as the songs are strong, I think you can express yourself in any style and have it be soulful and have it be your own voice."
- Ben Harper
(Related: Songs, Style, Voice)
"I like to think about stringing songs together like a string of pearls, or a string of beads, but ultimately it has to be stuff that really works with the band, and gives a spin to the older material."
- Emmylou Harris
(Related: Pearls, Songs)
"Richard Chamberlain on The Slipper and the Rose was lovely to work with. He wore the clothes so beautifully and sang his songs so well."
- Julie Harris
(Related: Work, Clothes, Songs)
"I loved Rent when I first heard it, but it grew on me and so did Tick, Tick... Boom. Some songs are more interesting than others and sometimes the ones that never stood out at first end up being the best to perform."
- Neil Patrick Harris
(Related: Being, End, First, Songs)
"I remember seeing the song in some diners on the selection gadget that plays records at the table while you were eating. We were never told if the songs ever got on any charts."
- Phil Harris
(Related: Eating, Song, Songs)
"He asked my girlfriend if we could come over and sing some of the songs that we had written, which we did. After he heard the songs, he said that he knew someone in the record business by the name of Bob Shad."
- Phil Harris
(Related: Business, Girlfriend, Name, Songs)
"The skit was very successful based on the applause. After that show, the three of us decided to get together and try and come up with some songs that we could all participate in."
- Phil Harris
(Related: Successful, Applause, Songs)
"Honestly, when I got to Hollywood I was trying to sell my songs."
- Gregory Harrison
(Related: Hollywood, Songs, Trying)
"But I always held my music up and protected it from compromise. So I just do it for my friends. I've written hundreds of songs, and I'm sure I have a few albums worth of songs."
- Gregory Harrison
(Related: Music, Compromise, Friends, Songs, Worth)
"I learned to play guitar at a young age and converted poems and stuff that I had written to songs."
- Gregory Harrison
(Related: Age, Guitar, Play, Poems, Songs)
"My other advice is to start writing songs and singing right away."
- Jerry Harrison
(Related: Advice, Right, Singing, Songs, Writing)
"I really, really like writing songs."
- Debbie Harry
(Related: Songs, Writing)
"I'm singing background on one of Blondie's songs on her new album."
- Melissa Joan Hart
(Related: Singing, Songs)
"I thought the '60s was the most exciting time and the most vital music, and we were really together as one mind then. Then afterwards, the songs and the bad drugs, that took its toll."
- Mickey Hart
(Related: Time, Music, Thought, Drugs, Mind, Songs)
"Some people come to our shows and think they're gonna spend the night just listening to love songs, and they're pretty much surprised cause we do a lot of rock and roll."
- Bobby Hatfield
(Related: Love, People, Cause, Listening, Night, Pretty, Songs)
"Some of the songs are so crazy, the words are so crazy... it's hard to believe I was so crazy."
- Juliana Hatfield
(Related: Songs, Words)
"Although I'm a huge fan of Ben Kweller, I don't think I'd cover one of his songs, simply because there's just so much of my own stuff I wanna do."
- Juliana Hatfield
(Related: Songs)
"There's a lot of people out there who have seen us once somewhere in a pub or heard our songs late night on radio. We'd done four years of it before we'd even released a single. It's put us in good stead."
- Dan Hawkins
(Related: People, Night, Songs, Years)
"My songs form a kind of biography or diary of my life as they are about people I have loved and people I only knew in my heart, places I have seen only for a moment and places I have lived all my life."
- Justin Hayward
(Related: Life, People, Heart, Biography, Songs)
"I sometimes don't know what songs are about for several years after I've written them."
- Justin Hayward
(Related: Songs, Years)
"Forever Young, by Dylan, is one of my favorite songs."
- Levon Helm
(Related: Favorite, Songs)
"I don't mind doing two or three Eagles songs and playing the drums. I'm not one of those artists who's going to sit here and deny the past."
- Don Henley
(Related: Artists, Eagles, Mind, Past, Songs)
"I could stand out front and sing Eagles songs that I sing in my set, but I think people enjoy watching me sing and play the drums. It seems to fascinate people. I don't know why."
- Don Henley
(Related: People, Eagles, Play, Songs)
"When we were making vinyl records we had a lot of time limitations for each record so songs were left off for a number of reasons. Now, with CDs, much more music can be included."
- Ken Hensley
(Related: Music, Time, Limitations, Now, Songs)
"The songs keep on writing themselves, and I really love them. It's as close as I get to a religion."
- Kristin Hersh
(Related: Love, Religion, Songs, Writing)
"The songs become the show, which is how it should be."
- Kristin Hersh
(Related: Songs)
"That's my dream job, to be able to mail songs out to people who want to hear them. Paste my face on them and not travel all over the world trying to sell them."
- Kristin Hersh
(Related: Travel, People, Dream, Job, Mail, Songs, Trying, Want, World)
"Men are allowed to write songs about people and women are allowed to write songs about women."
- Kristin Hersh
(Related: Men, Women, People, Songs)
"And it really is a good feeling to get up there and make that sound. I'm not stuck in a time warp, because I can use as many of the old songs as I want to, just the favorites."
- Dan Hicks
(Related: Time, Feeling, Old, Songs, Sound, Want)
"Since I was doing all of it myself, I had to decide where I wanted to go with the songs, how to proceed with the chords, if the sound was alright, and all that detail on my own."
- Utada Hikaru
(Related: Detail, Songs, Sound)
"I love TV. I know all the theme songs from the shows I watch. I'm not one of those who'd rather be a movie star. I prefer TV because of the rushed way of working-on a movie set, you sit around and wait and wait to do a scene because they're adjusting the lights."
- Dana Hill
(Related: Love, Songs)
"Most songs are somewhere between love and death, and mine are no exception."
- Robyn Hitchcock
(Related: Love, Death, Songs)
"In this world of doubt, one thing is certain for me; that I will go on writing songs up to and - I hope, through heavenly means or diabolical - beyond the day I die."
- Robyn Hitchcock
(Related: Hope, Day, Doubt, Songs, Will, World, Writing)
"Singing songs like 'The Man I Love' or 'Porgy' is no more work than sitting down and eating Chinese roast duck, and I love roast duck."
- Billie Holiday
(Related: Love, Work, Eating, Man, Singing, Songs)
"Then when Gladys Knight came in to do my songs that was the straw that broke the camel's back."
- Brenda Holloway
(Related: Knight, Songs)
"The truth is, I initially became a singer-songwriter while still in my teens because it was the only way to guarantee that somebody on earth would sing the songs I was writing. Since then, I've performed just about everywhere: rock clubs, concerts halls, arenas, TV."
- Rupert Holmes
(Related: Truth, Earth, Songs, Writing)
"There are seven songs finished and on par with any that are on Siren's."
- Peter Hook
(Related: Songs)
"I really enjoy the therapeutic value of writing songs."
- Shannon Hoon
(Related: Songs, Value, Writing)
"I don't think of them as teenage songs. The things that happen to you in high school are the same things that happen your entire life. You can fall in love at 60; you can get rejected at 80."
- Mark Hoppus
(Related: Love, Life, School, Songs, Teenage)
"A lot of songs you write are just for exercise - just pencil sharpeners."
- Harlan Howard
(Related: Exercise, Songs)
"I love the art form of songwriting. I get to carry a lot of vibes to a lot of people. My songs are all about the human condition, and people will be able to find themselves in my songs."
- Glenn Hughes
(Related: Art, Love, People, Songs, Will)
"We'd have to suck away at oxygen canisters between songs just so that we could keep playing."
- Michael Hutchence
(Related: Songs)
"I've done lots of songs for film soundtracks and things like that - stuff I'm not ashamed of, but that doesn't represent my legacy with the Pretenders."
- Chrissie Hynde
(Related: Film, Songs)
"I don't think any of our lyrics have ever been erotic in a sexual term, because I haven't really written, touched on, that subject too often. But, uh... I mean, I suppose they could point the finger at us for violence maybe in certain songs."
- Scott Ian
(Related: Songs, Violence)
"Music and songs are written at different periods of time, at different times in your life. They reflect the feelings you have and to be honest, I quite like having positive emotions."
- Scott Ian
(Related: Music, Life, Time, Feelings, Positive, Emotions, Songs)
"To me, the musical is best when it's a musical comedy. So if you have a very, very funny show, and very good, funny songs, that's what the musical does best."
- Eric Idle
(Related: Funny, Comedy, Songs)
"If you put all the songs together that I've written on band records, and put it up next to my solo record, there's definitely a different kind of feel than Billy's songs."
- James Iha
(Related: Songs)
"Happy songs are very difficult to write. How many truly great upbeat songs are there?"
- Natalie Imbruglia
(Related: Songs)
"So we used to look for funny songs, and learn them and play them. And we used to play them in pubs."
- Neil Innes
(Related: Funny, Play, Songs)
"But mostly, I wrote songs and Viv wrote songs."
- Neil Innes
(Related: Songs)
"I think I'm in a really nice position, where I'm sure I could do another show if I wanted to do one, but right now the main thing in my mind is writing songs."
- Chris Isaak
(Related: Mind, Now, Right, Songs, Writing)
"I think I had actually served my apprenticeship as a writer of fiction by writing all those songs. I had already been through phases of autobiographical or experimental stuff."
- Kazuo Ishiguro
(Related: Fiction, Songs, Writer, Writing)
"If you look at my last songs and first short stories, there is a real connection between them."
- Kazuo Ishiguro
(Related: Connection, First, Songs)
"I could have done a hundred songs, really. It was hard to narrow them down, because I tried to pick songs for the most part that actually did have some effect on me or influenced me in the past."
- Alan Jackson
(Related: Effect, Past, Songs)
"He's written some great songs. I thought that "Blues Man" was a perfect song for me to do as a tribute."
- Alan Jackson
(Related: Thought, Song, Songs, Tribute)
"Probably some of the songs I never even really listened to the lyrics. Half of them I'd hear off the radio and was probably singing the wrong words and didn't even know it."
- Alan Jackson
(Related: Singing, Songs, Words, Wrong)
"All those songs reflect all the people that live within me."
- Janet Jackson
(Related: People, Songs)
"When I finally decided to do the show, I only had two weeks to learn the choreography and the songs in French."
- LaToya Jackson
(Related: Songs)
"I hope to bring people to God with my songs."
- Mahalia Jackson
(Related: God, People, Hope, Songs)
"Do you know most of the Jewish songs have the same trend of sadness as Negro spirituals?"
- Mahalia Jackson
(Related: Sadness, Songs)
"Blues are the songs of despair, but gospel songs are the songs of hope."
- Mahalia Jackson
(Related: Hope, Despair, Songs)
"I must be careful not to get trapped in the past. That's why I tend to forget my songs."
- Mick Jagger
(Related: Forget, Past, Songs)
"A lot of times songs are very much of a moment, that you just encapsulate. They come to you, you write them, you feel good that day, or bad that day."
- Mick Jagger
(Related: Day, Songs)
"Most of the songs I sing have that blues feeling in it. They have that sorry feeling. And I don't know what I'm sorry about. I don't."
- Etta James
(Related: Feeling, Songs)
"This is an album of songs that I've always loved, tunes that I heard. For the first time in 53 years of recording, I really had control over an entire album, start to finish."
- Etta James
(Related: Time, Control, First, Songs, Years)
"You can't fake this music. You might be a great singer or a great musician but, in the need, that's got nothing to do with it. It's how you connect to the songs and to the history behind them."
- Etta James
(Related: History, Music, Nothing, Songs)
"That's where it begins and ends for me and these songs were the ones that touched me the deepest. It was like I was laying hold of some part of me that I didn't even know was there until I let it out."
- Etta James
(Related: Songs)
"I sing the songs that people need to hear."
- Etta James
(Related: People, Songs)
"It's not about battling the original artists when I record these songs, it's about paying tribute to them."
- Etta James
(Related: Artists, Songs, Tribute)
"I've been saying for almost 20 years that I need to do a jazz project and it ought to be either big band or I should do some jazz songs with a trio or quartet."
- Al Jarreau
(Related: Jazz, Project, Saying, Songs, Years)
"These songs are old friends I have entertained myself with when I'm washing the dishes, driving to the store and walking down the aisles. The ones that you sing when you're driving in the car and as a singer you always go back to them."
- Al Jarreau
(Related: Car, Driving, Friends, Old, Songs, Walking)
"My songs are really never titled. Sometimes I call it one thing. then I change it."
- Wyclef Jean
(Related: Change, Songs)
"I think there's nothing better than seeing a three-chord straight up rock 'n' roll band in your face with sweaty music and three minute good songs."
- Joan Jett
(Related: Music, Nothing, Songs)
"My songs are like my kids."
- Billy Joel
(Related: Kids, Songs)
"I'm probably writing music now for the same reason as I started writing songs when I was 14 - to meet women."
- Billy Joel
(Related: Music, Women, Now, Reason, Songs, Writing)
"Any musical person who has never heard a Negro congregation under the spell of religious fervor sing these old songs has missed one of the most thrilling emotions which the human heart may experience."
- James Weldon Johnson
(Related: Experience, Heart, Emotions, May, Old, Religious, Songs)
"As yet, the Negroes themselves do not fully appreciate these old slave songs."
- James Weldon Johnson
(Related: Old, Songs)
"Many of the songs on Undertow were written at the time Opiate came out."
- Adam Jones
(Related: Time, Songs)
"My approach is to be part of a band that makes music, not hit songs."
- Adam Jones
(Related: Music, Songs)
"When we played with the Rollins Band, we'd keep songs going until we felt like ending it."
- Adam Jones
(Related: Ending, Songs)
"I mean, Tool has a style, but we try to make all our songs sound different from each other."
- Adam Jones
(Related: Songs, Sound, Style)
"I heard the Bloc Party record Japan before it came out in the UK as they are on the V2 record label. I think it has a great vibe and has great songs. I also think the Kings of Leon are right up my street."
- Kelly Jones
(Related: Kings, Party, Right, Songs)
"I don't have a special place or ritual for writing songs, basically I write songs whenever an idea hits me, in my hotel room, on the road, in the plane."
- Kelly Jones
(Related: Idea, Ritual, Road, Songs, Writing)
"In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing."
- Franz Kafka
(Related: Love, Argument, Nothing, Songs)
"We sing these songs for the everyday occasions of life, and they are very close to the hearts of our people."
- Kiri Te Kanawa
(Related: Life, People, Songs)
"Interestingly, songs used to be short, then they became longer, and now they're getting shorter."
- Casey Kasem
(Related: Now, Songs)
"Songs used to be short, then they became longer, and now they're getting shorter. But otherwise, music is about a beat and a message. If the beat gets to the audience, and the message touches them, you've got a hit."
- Casey Kasum
(Related: Music, Now, Songs)
"My place in Scotland is in the middle of nowhere, so you've just got a keyboard, guitar, a little drum machine and you know if you can work stuff out like that, if you can hammer out songs that sound good just with those three things and a voice, you're on your way."
- Jay Kay
(Related: Work, Guitar, Machine, Scotland, Songs, Sound, Voice)
"It's not until I hear songs that I've done, that I realize how much of an inspiration music from the '60s and '70s has been."
- Alicia Keys
(Related: Music, Inspiration, Songs)
"A Minor is one of my all-time favorite keys to play in. It's a very moody key, and also 'A' is the first letter of my name. It just represents the songs through my eyes."
- Alicia Keys
(Related: Eyes, Favorite, First, Key, Name, Play, Songs)
"One of the album's songs features Mary J. Blige, but I don't want to talk too much about it yet. I think you will hear the music that's been playing in my head when it comes out."
- Chaka Khan
(Related: Music, Songs, Talk, Want, Will)
"Everyone in my family sang, and we would always sing these songs."
- Chaka Khan
(Related: Family, Songs)
"But then when he left, I realized that it was harder to write songs and feel spiritually connected to art and music as a band. When he came back I felt it again, instantaneously."
- Anthony Kiedis
(Related: Art, Music, Songs)
"I sang the songs in 'The Doors'."
- Val Kilmer
(Related: Songs)
"It doesn't take me long to write songs."
- Ben E. King
(Related: Songs)
"Even though there's these songs and whoever the hell put it in the internet, if there's any good riffs in them, we raped the songs and put in the new ones."
- Kerry King
(Related: Hell, Internet, Songs)
"John Lennon and Ringo Starr liked my songs. I used to write songs and they heard me sing songs on stage in London."
- Ben Kingsley
(Related: London, Songs)
"After a while, though, the group just wasn't a good vehicle for the songs I'd written."
- Mark Knopfler
(Related: Songs)
"You know, I've sung a lot of emotional songs in my life, but when you're writing it yourself, it's very difficult to decide what to reveal."
- Diana Krall
(Related: Life, Songs, Writing)
"The album is a definite departure. I haven't written original material before, except for one song on my first album, but Elvis and I did six songs together on this one."
- Diana Krall
(Related: Departure, First, Song, Songs)
"That's why these songs have lasted as long as they have because they're just about feelings that don't change. They are love songs, they are not specific, those kinds of feelings don't change."
- Diana Krall
(Related: Change, Love, Feelings, Songs)
"When we first started playing in the early days, none of us really had any idea about writing our own songs yet. We were struggling how to learn our instruments and play songs to be able to perform for people."
- Wayne Kramer
(Related: People, Idea, First, Play, Songs, Writing)
"You get on the radio by writing your own songs. But we had the dilemma of not being able to play anywhere because we weren't able to play anything that anyone wanted to hear. So we learned songs that we thought that we could do without puking."
- Wayne Kramer
(Related: Thought, Being, Play, Songs, Writing)
"As time went on, we formed a number of different bands. We played in rival, neighborhood bands. We learned more songs and we learned how to play Chuck Berry music and we learned Ventures songs."
- Wayne Kramer
(Related: Music, Time, Play, Songs)
"I don't think about the styles. I write whatever comes out and I use whatever kind of instrumentation works for those songs."
- Lenny Kravitz
(Related: Songs)
"The flattery is nice, but awards don't add up to writing quality songs."
- Chantal Kreviazuk
(Related: Quality, Awards, Flattery, Songs, Writing)
"Once I got a record contract, and I took my songs which weren't quite finished, or maybe they were a good idea, maybe they weren't. I took them into the studio and developed them. They came to life and they evolved... and they're great."
- Chantal Kreviazuk
(Related: Life, Idea, Songs)
"If certain songs become popular enough to the point where I'll be playing them the rest of my life, I don't want them all to dwell on the same down moment that I'll have to keep reliving."
- Chantal Kreviazuk
(Related: Life, Popular, Rest, Songs, Want)
"Hi-Tek is on three or four songs on the new record."
- Talib Kweli
(Related: Songs)
"I'm 60, and I did 60-year-old women songs. I'm not trying to be the Hip-Hop Queen, although I am the original Hip Hop Queen."
- Patti LaBelle
(Related: Women, Queen, Songs, Trying)
"I can't do some of the songs that younger girls like Mary J. Blige and Beyonce are doing. They have their own place and I have my own place."
- Patti LaBelle
(Related: Girls, Songs)
"I translated Beatles songs for my English class."
- Christian Lacroix
(Related: Class, English, Songs)
"It is setting goals and trying to be a business person, but at the same time not losing sight of who you are writing songs for and what your goals are as a songwriter. So believe me, if you think I've got it down I don't it is a constant struggle."
- Christine Lavin
(Related: Business, Time, Goals, Losing, Sight, Songs, Struggle, Trying, Writing)
"I don't know what makes a guy want to write songs and sing, but if you've got a message, you want to get it across. When I come up with an idea about the way I feel, I can really state it strongly in a song."
- Chris LeDoux
(Related: Idea, Song, Songs, State, Want)
"I remembered their songs but I had never owned a Beatles album."
- Sheryl Lee
(Related: Songs)
"I'm not claiming divinity. I've never claimed purity of soul. I've never claimed to have the answers to life. I only put out songs and answer questions as honestly as I can... But I still believe in peace, love and understanding."
- John Lennon
(Related: Love, Life, Peace, Soul, Answers, Divinity, Purity, Questions, Songs, Understanding)
"I like songs and film because you can turn your life into a sort of myth or dream."
- Sean Lennon
(Related: Life, Dream, Film, Myth, Songs)
"I like songs that go to different places and then come back."
- Sean Lennon
(Related: Songs)
"I like songs that have lots of different parts in them, an intro, an outro and a bridge."
- Sean Lennon
(Related: Songs)
"And that format was - we'd been using that format, I guess, since the late '70s, and it was starting to get very predictable. In other words, certain songs would surface in the same points in the set every so often; it was like rotation."
- Phil Lesh
(Related: Songs, Words)
"My mother carried on and supported us; her ambition had been to write poetry and songs."
- Philip Levine
(Related: Poetry, Mother, Ambition, Songs)
"Today, it's very tempting to create songs by cutting and pasting in the studio."
- Huey Lewis
(Related: Songs, Today)
"We were interested in this notion of compression- a lot of the songs were really short so that you'd absorb them in memory rather than when you're actually hearing them."
- Arto Lindsay
(Related: Hearing, Memory, Songs)
"In the Top 40, half the songs are secret messages to the teen world to drop out, turn on, and groove with the chemicals and light shows at discotheques."
- Art Linkletter
(Related: Teen, Light, Songs, World)
"I don't wanta do any Blues or any sad songs."
- Bob Livingston
(Related: Songs)
"When I'm old I shall give up writing the big stuff and shall wander round the park thinking of songs."
- George Lloyd
(Related: Old, Songs, Thinking, Writing)
"My overnight success was really 15 years in the making. I'd been writing songs since I was 6 and playing in bands and performing since I was 14."
- Lisa Loeb
(Related: Success, Songs, Writing, Years)
"A friend of mine once told me that I can't screw up when I play my own music. I also take voice lessons, play other peoples' songs out of music books, and occasionally figure out how to play other people's music from records. This keeps my ears, fingers, and mind working."
- Lisa Loeb
(Related: Music, People, Friend, Books, Mind, Play, Songs, Voice)
"Dweezil and I are going on tour with the band probably starting in the middle of February for a month probably playing a few songs from my new record and then I'll continue on after that tour."
- Lisa Loeb
(Related: February, Songs)
"I write most of my own lyrics for my album and I am helping to produce some of the songs as well."
- Lindsay Lohan
(Related: Songs)
"I knew Bobby Dylan back in the days when he lived in the village. He used to come and see me and sing songs for me, saying they ought to go into my next collected book on American folk music."
- Alan Lomax
(Related: Music, American, Folk, Saying, Songs)
"He learned through the way that my father and I felt about his songs, his country songs, that they were great songs. And then he went out and sang them for the audiences that we found, and he found a tremendous reaction to that."
- Alan Lomax
(Related: Father, Audiences, Country, Songs)
"Puffy produced four of the tracks on the album. Those are the four songs that are collaborations between Puffy and me. And he gives me my space to work even when we work together, like with my producer and my vocal coach."
- Jennifer Lopez
(Related: Work, Coach, Songs, Space)
"I'm not going to hurt anybody other than that dick who keeps writing songs about me."
- Courtney Love
(Related: Hurt, Songs, Writing)
"I've been lucky to be able to make the records I've wanted to make. The record company has never pressured me to cut certain songs."
- Lyle Lovett
(Related: Company, Songs)
"Singing your own songs is all about individual expression."
- Lyle Lovett
(Related: Expression, Singing, Songs)
"I enjoyed hearing people do their own songs. I became attracted to singer-songwriters. I became interested in them as people; was curious about what they wanted to say."
- Lyle Lovett
(Related: People, Hearing, Songs)
"We'd have made more, but I kept forgetting to write songs down."
- Chris Lowe
(Related: Songs)
"I work very hard on getting the songs as direct and examined as I can before I go in the studio."
- Nick Lowe
(Related: Work, Songs)
"They tell me I produced songs. I just stood in the back, wore a good suit and said, Yeah, that's happening."
- Nick Lowe
(Related: Songs)
"We have always wanted to write songs and be experimental in that way."
- Mike Lowry
(Related: Songs)
"We wanted to sit down and conceptually work out songs."
- Mike Lowry
(Related: Work, Songs)
"There are so many songs that we just don't play anymore."
- Mike Lowry
(Related: Play, Songs)
"I think a lot of it is that we used to tour so much that we never really had time to write songs."
- Mike Lowry
(Related: Time, Songs)
"It was awesome because we were doing Ramones songs."
- Mike Lowry
(Related: Songs)
"I'm always in that mode - whenever I have a little free time, I'm always recording songs, writing, whatever I gotta do. It's like my job is my vacation."
- Ludacris
(Related: Time, Job, Songs, Vacation, Writing)
"The type of music I like to sing is really those classic songs, those Barbara Streisand, Celine Dion, Frank Sinatra, classics."
- Jacob Lusk
(Related: Music, Songs)
"Every battalion has its marching songs."
- Patrick MacGill
(Related: Songs)
"Yeah, if someone's selling downloads and collecting money for our songs I would be unhappy about that but if they're trading it I don't mind, obviously if I make a thousand records or CDs or whatever, I like to sell a thousand."
- Ian MacKaye
(Related: Money, Selling, Mind, Songs)
"The lyrics are different from Nick Cave songs and lyrics. His songs are very narrative."
- Stephen Malkmus
(Related: Songs)
"Well, yeah, I sang to some songs on the radio or in the shower."
- Stephen Malkmus
(Related: Songs)
"Lou Reed is something like a personal favorite of mine, but you could always put me into that drawer of singers who can't really sing, who speak their songs."
- Stephen Malkmus
(Related: Favorite, Songs)
"I was totally involved in Bobby's World from the time we started the idea to sitting with the artists on how he would look, to the script meetings, the music, the lyrics, the songs."
- Howie Mandel
(Related: Time, Music, Idea, Artists, Meetings, Songs, World)
"I didn't want to play these people any more songs and have them say that they weren't good enough. So my response was to just not be able to write anymore. I know that's not the healthiest of responses."
- Aimee Mann
(Related: People, Play, Songs, Want)
"I wanted to try to write songs on the piano to get a different flavor."
- Aimee Mann
(Related: Songs)
"I looked through our catalog year by year, and I saw that there were pockets of time when we wrote some terrific songs. Then all of a sudden, we'd go for another two or three months and there weren't great songs."
- Barry Mann
(Related: Time, Months, Songs)
"I've written songs sober and I've written songs high."
- Barry Mann
(Related: Songs)
"We became the songs we wrote."
- Barry Mann
(Related: Songs)
"We lived, ate, and breathed pop songs."
- Barry Mann
(Related: Songs)
"We've written something like 900 songs in all."
- Barry Mann
(Related: Songs)
"I just think it's a blessing that I was able to have the gift of words and to be able to put them into music. I was given a great gift all the way around. I didn't ever have to really go out and look for songs, you know."
- Teena Marie
(Related: Music, Songs, Words)
"I write in all keys. I've always written in all keys. I've probably written a lot of songs in A."
- Teena Marie
(Related: Songs)
"There were times I used to go to parties when I was, you know, like 15-, 16-years-old, and I'd always bring my guitar, and all my friends would be like, sing one of the Smokey songs. And everything I sang was his music, and I could sound just like him."
- Teena Marie
(Related: Music, Friends, Guitar, Songs, Sound)
"People want to listen to a message, word from Jah. This could be passed through me or anybody. I am not a leader. Messenger. The words of the songs, not the person, is what attracts people."
- Bob Marley
(Related: Leader, People, Songs, Want, Word, Words)
"In my songs, the sex is all subliminal. It's subliminal, spiritual."
- Ziggy Marley
(Related: Sex, Songs, Spiritual)
"If you listen to a lot of the songs that are popular now, there's very little melody in there. People love the beat. But to musicians, it's melody, because we understand how elusive it is and how hard it is to hold."
- Branford Marsalis
(Related: Love, People, Musicians, Now, Popular, Songs)
"You hear it in your brain. Whatever makes sense. Some songs work well as quartet songs, sometimes they don't."
- Branford Marsalis
(Related: Work, Sense, Songs)
"We played it as long as we could play it on that CD and I think it might be 50 minutes, maybe. What you have to do is play a couple of songs and then get off the stage because everything that trails it sounds stupid."
- Branford Marsalis
(Related: Play, Songs)
"There's a certain kind of motion and pacing that our music has, and this just doesn't have that. We just kind of rushed to the conclusion of most of the songs. I just would've preferred to done them over."
- Branford Marsalis
(Related: Music, Songs)
"I keep a lighter in my back pocket all the time. I'm not a smoker, I just really like certain songs."
- Demetri Martin
(Related: Time, Songs)
"I love when people get songs wrong. I love when people take something from a song that's totally not what I intended!"
- Richard Marx
(Related: Love, People, Song, Songs, Wrong)
"But I'm just having fun playing and giving Botox injections to the older songs."
- Richard Marx
(Related: Fun, Giving, Songs)
"I don't think I've ever laid out a batch of songs that pick myself apart the way that these do."
- Richard Marx
(Related: Songs)
"I didn't want my last chapter to be the guy who sits at the piano and sings love songs."
- Richard Marx
(Related: Love, Songs, Want)
"I can't wait to front my band with these new songs and play for fans, but I've decided to keep my day job too."
- Richard Marx
(Related: Day, Fans, Job, Play, Songs)
"People take songs so literally."
- Richard Marx
(Related: People, Songs)
"It's funny; Luther and I have written many songs together, but we've never written songs in the same room."
- Richard Marx
(Related: Funny, Songs)
"So it was just a case of getting a bunch of songs that I had been writing for years but hadn't recorded together, and the result was My Own Best Enemy."
- Richard Marx
(Related: Enemy, Result, Songs, Writing, Years)
"My songs always speak of love, that's the way I like them."
- Mireille Mathieu
(Related: Love, Songs)
"I've come to understand my role. On some level, I provide the context for them to shine. I also know my role is the steward of the songs, and the center point, the artist that the stuff all revolves around. But I really try to honor that."
- Kathy Mattea
(Related: Artist, Honor, Songs)
"You have to pack as much as you can in an hour or 70 minutes. This time around it was 15 songs, so it was a challenge to get them all the right length so you could get them all on."
- John Mayall
(Related: Time, Challenge, Right, Songs)
"I always make it a point to pick songs on which players really shine."
- John Mayall
(Related: Songs)
"I write songs about real things... The subject dictates the mood and it goes from there, really."
- John Mayall
(Related: Songs)
"I really just tried to make a record full of great songs, which is the goal I always have."
- Martina McBride
(Related: Goal, Songs)
"I am happy that women can relate to my songs, and hopefully men can too."
- Martina McBride
(Related: Men, Women, Songs)
"I knew the words to 25 rock songs, so I got in the group. Long Tall Sally and Tutti-Frutti, that got me in. That was my audition."
- Paul McCartney
(Related: Songs, Words)
"They gave me four weeks, and I asked if the first week could be just music with the two main conductors. So, the conductors came over to my home, and we worked in the music room, and I learned my two little songs."
- Rue McClanahan
(Related: Music, Home, First, Songs)
"Thank God for beautiful songs about feeling despair when you yourself are in despair. They really get us through."
- Susannah McCorkle
(Related: God, Despair, Feeling, Songs)
"I live again the days and evenings of my long career. I dream at night of operas and concerts in which I have had my share of success. Now like the old Irish minstrel, I have hung up my harp because my songs are all sung."
- John McCormack
(Related: Success, Dream, Career, Irish, Night, Now, Old, Songs)
"My favorite music to sing would be my own songs, my original songs, just because I know them, you know I write the tunes, so my favorite songs are the newest ones that I write. That's what I like to sing the most, because it means something, it's real, it comes from me."
- Paul McDonald
(Related: Music, Favorite, Songs)
"You know, I get a lot of people pitching songs to me."
- Reba McEntire
(Related: People, Songs)
"To me, there's two types of songs, good and bad. And I just like to stick with the good ones."
- Reba McEntire
(Related: Songs)
"For me, singing sad songs often has a way of healing a situation. It gets the hurt out in the open into the light, out of the darkness."
- Reba McEntire
(Related: Darkness, Healing, Hurt, Light, Open, Singing, Songs)
"I was singing a lot of waltzes. And I was with Jerry Kennedy, my producer, and he was playing me some songs, and he said, hey, I want to play you this song that I'm going to get Jackie Ward to record."
- Reba McEntire
(Related: Play, Singing, Song, Songs, Want)
"It's not that I don't love the song. My songs are like my children: some you want around and some you want to send off to college as soon as possible."
- Bobby McFerrin
(Related: Love, College, Song, Songs, Want)
"I prepared five songs, I sang them, and he hired me. I started working about a month later at the piano bar."
- Bobby McFerrin
(Related: Songs)
"Everybody would grab a guitar and listen to somebody else and call themselves a folk singer. When they didn't know no more songs, they'd run out of them."
- Brownie McGhee
(Related: Folk, Guitar, Songs)
"Of course, we wrote the songs accordingly and performed and recorded them that way. At that time, we really thought it was right, but you know, seen in retrospect, it made the album sound forced, and not really great."
- Mark McGrath
(Related: Time, Thought, Right, Songs, Sound)
"But in my imagination this whole thing developed and I started mixing up old folk songs with the Beatles beat and taking them down to Greenwich Village and playing them for the people there."
- Roger McGuinn
(Related: Imagination, People, Folk, Old, Songs)
"I play a couple basic folks songs and break them down. I did that on a six string. I can't recall all the songs on it. There's some finger picking on it."
- Roger McGuinn
(Related: Play, Songs)
"My buddies worked with me for weeks, and I went up to take my test, and started crying because I couldn't remember the words. I can remember songs. If you put it to a melody, I would have sung it to 'em in a minute."
- Barry McGuire
(Related: Songs, Words)
"It was really fun. Well, Bobby was just basically a folk singer. He didn't play with any bands or anything, like all the rest of us. Just played his guitar and sang his songs."
- Barry McGuire
(Related: Folk, Fun, Guitar, Play, Rest, Songs)
"The process depends on the situation, and I don't think there are any two songs that have gone exactly the same way... well, actually, that's not true."
- Michael McKean
(Related: Songs)
"Sometimes we drop in and do an acoustic set somewhere, and that's really fun to take all these insanely loud songs, and to do them quiet. It's really a sight to see... or to hear!"
- Michael McKean
(Related: Fun, Quiet, Sight, Songs)
"You can't listen to what people who aren't musical have to say. When Anytime was released, I had bad reviews, and at first I was hurt. Your songs are like your children. You don't want to hear, 'Your kid is ugly.' But I knew the record was good and it would sell."
- Brian McKnight
(Related: People, Children, First, Hurt, Songs, Ugly, Want)
"I keep these songs in my head until I get behind the microphone. I never spend more than 30 or 40 minutes singing the vocal or it will sound mechanical. There are always mistakes, but it's about feeling more than being perfect."
- Brian McKnight
(Related: Being, Feeling, Mistakes, Singing, Songs, Sound, Will)
"They are very personal, emotional songs - people react to them very strongly."
- Sarah McLachlan
(Related: People, Songs)
"'Time after Time' is one of the best pop songs ever written, in my opinion. It's an incredible, beautiful, timeless song."
- Sarah McLachlan
(Related: Time, Opinion, Song, Songs)
"I think often sadness is a great place to get songs from."
- Sarah McLachlan
(Related: Sadness, Songs)
"Nowadays it seems to me nobody takes trouble about anything, especially writing songs."
- Marian McPartland
(Related: Songs, Trouble, Writing)
"Some of the best songs I've written, I've written in 10 minutes."
- Christine McVie
(Related: Songs)
"My songs are self-explanatory... somebody pointed out to me that... my songs pretty much speak for themselves."
- Christine McVie
(Related: Pretty, Self, Songs)
"There's a whole bunch of unfinished stuff. Then I've got books of lyrics. I find it frustrating to finish a song and not be able to record it... so I don't write a million songs."
- Christine McVie
(Related: Books, Song, Songs)
"The type of music that I love to sing would have to be more bluesy and jazzy and more soul-like 'cause I love to belt when it comes to singing, so I guess bigger songs are what I lean more towards."
- Thia Megia
(Related: Love, Music, Soul, Singing, Songs)
"This is not a rock opera. This is not Tommy. I can write songs that emote, and that's it."
- John Mellencamp
(Related: Opera, Songs)
"A lot of Woody Guthrie's songs were taken from other songs. He would rework the melody and lyrics, and all of a sudden it was a Woody Guthrie song."
- John Mellencamp
(Related: Song, Songs)
"Bob Dylan's first couple of records in the 60's weren't considered cover records, but he only wrote one or two original songs on each album."
- John Mellencamp
(Related: First, Songs)
"I don't have to worry about any pop sensibility. I can write adult songs, and I don't have to worry about choruses and hook lines."
- John Mellencamp
(Related: Sensibility, Songs, Worry)
"I want to sell to people my own age, because that's the way I write songs."
- John Mellencamp
(Related: Age, People, Songs, Want)
"I couldn't have recorded this record 15 years ago. My voice didn't have the depth to pull these songs off."
- John Mellencamp
(Related: Songs, Voice, Years)
"I was never too keen on the British music press. They've called us a supermarket hype, and they used to suggest that we didn't write our own songs."
- Freddie Mercury
(Related: Music, Press, Songs)
"I was lucky enough to have the songs in my first show written by George and Ira Gershwin. Then Cole Porter wrote five shows for me."
- Ethel Merman
(Related: First, Songs)
"I give bird songs to those who dwell in cities and have never heard them, make rhythms for those who know only military marches or jazz, and paint colors for those who see none."
- Olivier Messiaen
(Related: Cities, Colors, Jazz, Military, Songs)
"We recorded several of Kenny's songs in the living room of my home."
- Jim Messina
(Related: Home, Living, Songs)
"You know, songs often have a very coloured past. They might have something about them but it still doesn't work, so someone else adds a bit, and someone else adds a bit so perhaps one day I'll know its full history."
- Kylie Minogue
(Related: History, Work, Day, Past, Songs)
"There have always been poets who performed. Blake sang his Songs of Innocence and Experience to parties of friends."
- Adrian Mitchell
(Related: Experience, Friends, Innocence, Poets, Songs)
"You have this mounting aggressive ignorance with the rabbit's foot of their particular religion. You don't really have any kind of spiritual law, just a kind of a rabid mental illness. The songs are a little slice of life."
- Joni Mitchell
(Related: Life, Religion, Ignorance, Illness, Law, Songs, Spiritual)
"We managed to put together a compilation that had some creativity to it. In the meantime I was listening to the free radio stations and I noticed that during their war coverage they were playing these songs born out of the Vietnam War that were all critical of the soldiers."
- Joni Mitchell
(Related: War, Creativity, Listening, Soldiers, Songs, Vietnam)
"The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Barbra Streisand, Bruce Springsteen, these are just some of the people who threatened to sue if we used their songs."
- Colin Mochrie
(Related: People, Songs)
"Attempting to write vocal oriented songs to me felt like going through the motions and if you are going to go through the motions you might as well just do any gig that caused you to do repetitive motions like banging a hammer or serving fries."
- Ronnie Montrose
(Related: Songs)
"At intervals between the songs, more especially after the trances have begun, the dancers unclasp hands and sit down to smoke or talk for a few minutes."
- James Mooney
(Related: Songs, Talk)
"I wanted to hear the songs in the way that I had written them, which was very basic. All I wanted was drums and another guitar, and I was just going to sing."
- Thurston Moore
(Related: Guitar, Songs)
"About a year ago, out of the blue, I just wrote a bunch of songs."
- Rick Moranis
(Related: Songs)
"I'll keep evolving and put that into my songs."
- Alanis Morissette
(Related: Songs)
"The thing I always default to is that I'll always be here to write songs."
- Alanis Morissette
(Related: Songs)
"When I start writing songs and it turns into an overly belabored intellectual process, I just throw it out."
- Alanis Morissette
(Related: Songs, Writing)
"I love songs that are very autobiographical."
- Alanis Morissette
(Related: Love, Songs)
"I guess what people forget sometimes is that when I write songs, I write them sometimes in about 20 minutes."
- Alanis Morissette
(Related: People, Forget, Songs)
"I could write six songs in one day with everything that's going on."
- Alanis Morissette
(Related: Day, Songs)
"I achieved something specially different with Love To Love You Baby and I Feel Love. These songs will endure."
- Giorgio Moroder
(Related: Love, Baby, Songs, Will)
"If you're a pop singer, you don't need to evolve. You just get a set together, have some hit songs and play them over and over."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Play, Songs)
"You've got to separate the singer and the songs."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Songs)
"I don't feel comfortable doing interviews. My profession is music, and writing songs. That's what I do. I like to do it, but I hate to talk about it."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Music, Hate, Profession, Songs, Talk, Writing)
"I write songs. Then, I record them. And, later, maybe I perform them on stage. That's what I do. That's my job. Simple."
- Van Morrison
(Related: Job, Songs)
"When I heard his first songs, Dylan was answering certain questions that I had all my life been asking myself."
- Nana Mouskouri
(Related: Life, First, Questions, Songs)
"With my songs I tried to prove that there is love."
- Nana Mouskouri
(Related: Love, Songs)
"My friends gave me the first songs which was the first food in my soul for me."
- Nana Mouskouri
(Related: Food, Soul, First, Friends, Songs)
"Our shows are packed with laughter and light-hearted songs to lift the listener from their everyday life. We encourage the audience to participate in any way."
- Jason Mraz
(Related: Life, Laughter, Light, Songs)
"The easiest songs to write are pure fiction. There is no limit to how you can tell the story. I find it difficult when I'm replaying an event through a song."
- Jason Mraz
(Related: Fiction, Song, Songs)
"It was a very bizarre experience for me, to get the songs together, go in there, and try to deliver them as I would perhaps in a live setting. But I realized that I couldn't take on that coffeehouse style that I came from and go in there and burn it up."
- Jason Mraz
(Related: Experience, Bizarre, Songs, Style)
"I basically had the idea when I was 18 that I wanted to write my own songs. I knew it was going to be a long, tough road, and I was like, if I just begin now, by the time I'm 40, I'll be good at it."
- Jason Mraz
(Related: Time, Idea, Now, Road, Songs)
"A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease."
- John Muir
(Related: Enthusiasm, Now, Songs, Trees, Worship)
"Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays."
- Gerry Mulligan
(Related: Songs)
"The most despairing songs are the most beautiful, and I know some immortal ones that are pure tears."
- Alfred de Musset
(Related: Songs, Tears)
"Europe is weird songs that would never make it in America."
- Mike Myers
(Related: America, Europe, Songs)
"Sing the songs of joy to the Lord, serve the Name of the Lord, and become the servant of His servants."
- Guru Nanak
(Related: Joy, Name, Songs)
"All the signs were right. And when I mean all the sings were right, the only signs that we care about when we start a project of making a record is, do we have the songs - it's that simple."
- Graham Nash
(Related: Care, Project, Right, Songs)
"I only do solo albums when songs are screaming at me to be let out of my mind."
- Graham Nash
(Related: Mind, Songs)
"I wasn't thinking of the longevity of any of my songs, but I am extremely pleased with the lasting effect."
- Graham Nash
(Related: Effect, Longevity, Songs, Thinking)
"Language is like songs, like food, like dance-it is the expression of what we think."
- Holly Near
(Related: Food, Dance, Expression, Language, Songs)
"To come to a concert and hear a lot of songs from a female perspective should not make men say, 'Oh well, that's for women'."
- Holly Near
(Related: Men, Women, Perspective, Songs)
"When an audience comes to one of my concerts, I hope they'll see themselves, somewhere, in one of the songs."
- Holly Near
(Related: Hope, Songs)
"I think the world is ready for some rock 'n' roll. Some real time guys that play their own instruments, write their own songs, and sing the music and have a good time doing it."
- Vince Neil
(Related: Music, Time, Play, Songs, World)
"To reminisce with my old friends, a chance to share some memories, and play our songs again."
- Ricky Nelson
(Related: Chance, Friends, Memories, Old, Play, Songs)
"There's this notion that allows people to create their own collection of songs, so it rewrites what a song is. They may only want 10 seconds of something, or they may only want this particular song, or they want this group of songs. It becomes much more user-controlled."
- Michael Nesmith
(Related: People, May, Song, Songs, Want)
"I started recording because I was always complaining about the records that I was getting of my songs. At least if I did them and messed them up, I wouldn't have anyone else to blame."
- Randy Newman
(Related: Blame, Complaining, Songs)
"I wanted to write songs which I think is a different thing. I wanted to write music that is informed by folk music. The chord progressions are obvious references."
- Joanna Newsom
(Related: Music, Folk, Obvious, Songs)
"Well, yeah, I wanted to resist the urge to thicken everything up with instrumentation, because I just felt like I was interested in seeing how the songs did on their own."
- Joanna Newsom
(Related: Songs)
"I recorded harp first or singing first. I recorded it all together. Part of the reason is that I don't know how to play the songs without also singing. I forget how they progress. I don't think that any of them are verse, chorus, verse, and so on. They are not simple."
- Joanna Newsom
(Related: Progress, First, Forget, Play, Reason, Singing, Songs)
"I can understand someone not liking the voice or the songs."
- Joanna Newsom
(Related: Songs, Voice)
"I can't play my songs on the smaller harp. I have a Celtic harp. I can't do the key changes."
- Joanna Newsom
(Related: Key, Play, Songs)
"I have a recording that I did of instrumental songs."
- Joanna Newsom
(Related: Songs)
"I have writing songs on my own for about six years."
- Joanna Newsom
(Related: Songs, Writing, Years)
"It all has to do with art - writing, painting, things I've done for a long time but just never had enough time to pursue. I have poetry - things that are designed for songs, but they're always poems first."
- Jason Newsted
(Related: Art, Poetry, Time, First, Painting, Poems, Songs, Writing)
"Songs like the Buck Owens tune, for example, are very simple and straightforward, and recording it really gave me a chance to get into and get a sense of Buck's personality, a feel for that whole Bakersfield sound."
- Juice Newton
(Related: Chance, Example, Personality, Sense, Songs, Sound)
"It was my 16th birthday - my mom and dad gave me my Goya classical guitar that day. I sat down, wrote this song, and I just knew that that was the only thing I could ever really do - write songs and sing them to people."
- Stevie Nicks
(Related: Birthday, Dad, Mom, People, Guitar, Song, Songs)
"For 70 nights, right across America, I've been getting out there with two ex-lovers and we've been playing songs which are so specific about each of us, you just wouldn't know. We're friends now but we can't forget what happened between us."
- Stevie Nicks
(Related: America, Forget, Friends, Now, Right, Songs)
"'Evil men have no songs.' How is it that the Russians have songs?"
- Friedrich Nietzsche
(Related: Men, Songs)
"There's an element of tongue-in-cheek in every one of our songs. Walking off into the sunset, holding hands, and being married forever was not exactly a brand new idea."
- Peter Noone
(Related: Idea, Being, Songs, Sunset, Tongue, Walking)
"What's really fun is seeing mothers bringing their daughters to the shows. And the best part is the mothers know they don't have to worry about sexual innuendo in the songs. The shows are family shows."
- Peter Noone
(Related: Family, Daughters, Fun, Mothers, Songs, Worry)
"Gospel songs to me are about the mansion in the sky, and washed in the blood of Christ's crimson blood, songs that are filled with biblical wording that's no longer understood by a lot of people."
- Larry Norman
(Related: People, Blood, Christ, Sky, Songs)
"Our idea is simply to play the songs and to emphasize our musicianship."
- Krist Novoselic
(Related: Idea, Play, Songs)
"I don't know about the time those songs were written. But he was jamming with someone in Colorado or San Francisco, and I'm sure he was working on the lyrics right up to the show because they were really relevant for the situation."
- Krist Novoselic
(Related: Time, Right, Songs)
"So, through all that early professional career I would occasionally do a musical, a pantomime or a play with songs. The next stop would be a Shakespeare, or an Ibsen, or a play by a brand new writer who had never done anything in the theater before."
- Trevor Nunn
(Related: Career, Play, Shakespeare, Songs, Theater, Writer)
"If you look over the years, the styles have changed - the clothes, the hair, the production, the approach to the songs. The icing to the cake has changed flavors. But if you really look at the cake itself, it's really the same."
- John Oates
(Related: Clothes, Hair, Production, Songs, Years)
"Of the 25 songs we've recorded there were 24 that we wanted to have on an album. That wouldn't have worked. So when one of our wise managers suggested the idea of considering two different album, it cleared the way for us."
- Ed O'Brien
(Related: Idea, Managers, Songs)
"There was this discussion to know how long the human ear was really receptive to the music. A 74 minute CD is too long. We thought about making two CDs, 35 minutes each... But the songs need to breathe."
- Ed O'Brien
(Related: Music, Thought, Songs)
"But we will play 6, 7 new songs each evening, approximately a third in the concert. I think it's a good balance. It will be very interesting to see the public's reaction. But i think when we'll play the very first new piece, we will be scared."
- Ed O'Brien
(Related: Balance, Evening, First, Play, Public, Songs, Will)
"The new album is a childhood dream come true. Got to sing with Ronnie Spector, got to cover a bunch of songs that were influential in drawing a line between the punk form and original rock and roll."
- Jerry Only
(Related: Dream, Childhood, Punk, Songs)
"Music shouldn't be based around money or politics. Music should be a bunch of people that really do great songs together doing them together for the pursuit of having a good time."
- Jerry Only
(Related: Money, Music, Time, Politics, People, Pursuit, Songs)
"Danny and I wrote 10 songs in seven days, which I thought might be close to the record until you probably look at some of the Beatles statistics."
- Jerry Only
(Related: Thought, Songs, Statistics)
"Why do they cover Paul's songs but never mine?"
- Yoko Ono
(Related: Songs)
"As far as spiritual influences in Christian music, I would say Crystal Lewis - a lot of her songs especially. The ministry she has through her songs has really hit me."
- Stacie Orrico
(Related: Music, Christian, Songs, Spiritual)
"When the songs pop out, that's like the climax of us building."
- John Otto
(Related: Building, Songs)
"I'd like just to be remembered as a guy that came along and did his music, did his best and showed up on time, clean and ready to do the job, wrote a few songs, and had a hell of a time."
- Buck Owens
(Related: Time, Music, Hell, Job, Songs)
"I found a sound that people really liked - I found this basic concept and all I did was change the lyrics and the melody a little bit. My songs, if you listen to them, they're quite a lot alike, like Chuck Berry."
- Buck Owens
(Related: Change, People, Songs, Sound)
"I got to realizing that I wanted to record, I wanted to experiment. And doing those same old songs the same old way - I said, 'I think it's time for me to have some fun.'"
- Buck Owens
(Related: Time, Fun, Old, Songs)
"I will be singing primarily all the songs from the musicals that I have been in from over the years."
- Elaine Paige
(Related: Singing, Songs, Will, Years)
"I like to look at the songs like they're little movies."
- Brad Paisley
(Related: Movies, Songs)
"I'm delighted about the track's success in the sports world, but the frustrating thing is, I don't think I got rich on it. The labels and publishers did very cheap deals on our songs."
- Alan Parsons
(Related: Sports, Success, Deals, Songs, World)
"I write a lot of music in my time off and I compose most of the songs on guitar. I've actually gone into the studio and recorded a few things, but it's tough trying to sell a song. It's all about finding that hook, that melody."
- Scott Patterson
(Related: Music, Time, Guitar, Song, Songs, Trying)
"If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now."
- Richard Perle
(Related: War, Vision, Children, Diplomacy, Now, Songs, Wage, Will, World, Years)
"Stephen Sondheim told me that Oscar Hammerstein believed everything that he wrote. So there's great truth in the songs, and that's what was so wonderful to find."
- Bernadette Peters
(Related: Truth, Songs)
"I listened to Billie Holiday a lot in order to learn to sing. She remains one of the extraordinary jazz singers. But my intent is to become my own voice, to be able to interpret these songs in my own way."
- Madeleine Peyroux
(Related: Holiday, Jazz, Order, Songs, Voice)
"I'm very conscious of developing my singing, technically and stylistically. I want it to become more individual, express more of me. That's my goal. These songs are steps along that way."
- Madeleine Peyroux
(Related: Goal, Singing, Songs, Want)
"It seems to me like the Internet allows you to break that structure a little bit. You know, here's your CD that's going into stores, here's your EP that you offer online, here's a subscription for songs you recorded on the road, here's your live stuff streaming."
- Liz Phair
(Related: Internet, Road, Songs)
"I knew that collaborating on songwriting would be difficult for a lot of people, because I was known very much, for my independence and the fact that I wrote these quirky songs that were not typical structure, not typical sound - you know, really original stuff."
- Liz Phair
(Related: People, Fact, Independence, Songs, Sound)
"I sure lost my musical direction in Hollywood. My songs were the same conveyer belt mass production, just like most of my movies were."
- Elvis Presley
(Related: Movies, Direction, Hollywood, Production, Songs)
"I do like to write nasty songs. It's a useful weapon to have, and it's cathartic as well, because I create art out of anger, something positive out of something negative."
- Lisa Marie Presley
(Related: Art, Anger, Negative, Positive, Songs)
"I'm more prone to his '70s material, which is what I was around for and watched a lot. I listen to a lot of that stuff. It probably influenced me quite a bit. I'm more drawn to the darker, sadder songs."
- Lisa Marie Presley
(Related: Songs)
"It was more that his career was going down again and he was tired of the songs. He was tired of the routine. And there was a point where he just kind of gave up. He couldn't face being 40. And he resorted to stimulants. There's a dark side there, a really dark side."
- Priscilla Presley
(Related: Being, Career, Routine, Songs)
"I quite like childlike songs, which sometimes cross over."
- Alan Price
(Related: Songs)
"The Stones were nasty and ugly and doing songs I was familiar with."
- Robert Quine
(Related: Songs, Ugly)
"When I finished a song that I thought was good, I thought, I don't know where that came from, so I have no idea if I can do that again. I'm talking like, a hundred and fifty songs down the line. I still feel that."
- Trevor Rabin
(Related: Thought, Idea, Song, Songs, Talking)
"Every year we celebrate the holy season of Advent, O God. Every year we pray those beautiful prayers of longing and waiting, and sing those lovely songs of hope and promise."
- Karl Rahner
(Related: God, Hope, Longing, Promise, Songs, Waiting)
"That's what I find with any good song, you just have to let it happen. Out of about twenty songs you might write, one of any significance. It might be thirty or forty, but I just keep churning them out and churning them out in hope that one of them will stick."
- Mick Ralphs
(Related: Hope, Song, Songs, Will)
"We just sang real simple songs in a simple way that got to people. We didn't try to tart them up with orchestral arrangements and all the stuff. We were all blues fanatics. We like R+B and blues and simple, gut-feeling music."
- Mick Ralphs
(Related: Music, People, Fanatics, Songs)
"It's funny, when I'm not on the road or doing stuff with Bad Company - or whatever- I've always written songs galore... a lot of stuff people don't even hear."
- Mick Ralphs
(Related: Funny, People, Company, Road, Songs)
"The main issue was deciding what to play: Should it be old Ramones material or new material? I had about three albums worth of new material, but I knew that people would rather hear the Ramones songs."
- Dee Dee Ramone
(Related: People, Old, Songs, Worth)
"I started listening to and playing other music in the '90s. It was after hearing other bands, like Bad Religion, cover Ramones songs that I started to like our songs again."
- Dee Dee Ramone
(Related: Music, Religion, Hearing, Listening, Songs)
"My favorite album would have to be Rocket To Russia. I feel this album has the most classic Ramones songs."
- Johnny Ramone
(Related: Favorite, Russia, Songs)
"As far as my favorite songs to perform live, most of the songs we did live were my favorite. If they weren't, I would have gotten rid of them."
- Johnny Ramone
(Related: Favorite, Songs)
"And I used to think that proof that I had religion was whether I knew how to sing all of the songs."
- Bernice Johnson Reagon
(Related: Religion, Proof, Songs)
"Well, the first day we went through three songs, very basically."
- Noel Redding
(Related: Day, First, Songs)
"Well, I'd had the Fat Mattress earlier as a writing outlet for songs and that."
- Noel Redding
(Related: Songs, Writing)
"Not really interested in covering other bands songs to be honest."
- Michael Reed
(Related: Songs)
"The movie business is very difficult but the music business is just impossible. So I'll play in bands and record and play songs with other people, but for me it's a form of expression that all I need is me. I don't need cameras or agents, I can just have a piano and sing and feel totally verified."
- Jeremy Renner
(Related: Business, Music, People, Expression, Play, Songs)
"Then l learned to play guitar and l started writing songs and my mother formed for me a publishing business, so we started publishing and managing artists."
- Tommy Rettig
(Related: Business, Mother, Artists, Guitar, Play, Publishing, Songs, Writing)
"I appreciate the additional additives and preservatives that help sell a project, but I'm sticking to what works best for me. I gotta sell the album live on stage and make people believe in the songs."
- Busta Rhymes
(Related: People, Help, Project, Songs)
"We really try to make sure that the band writes the songs, not just one person."
- Adam Rich
(Related: Songs)
"I think people who don't believe in God are crazy. How can you say there is no God when you hear the birds singing these beautiful songs you didn't make?"
- Little Richard
(Related: God, People, Birds, Singing, Songs)
"I find the greatest songs in the world come out of pain, and I don't like it! Here's what it does: It strips away all of your facade. It makes you so honest. It's cleansing."
- Lionel Richie
(Related: Pain, Songs, World)
"I don't do any songs that I'm sick of now - sometimes even songs that I request. If I'm sick of 'em I don't do 'em even for myself."
- Jonathan Richman
(Related: Now, Songs)
"Even though there are some great keyboard players on the album, there are a number of songs with no keyboard on them and the backing is all guitar oriented. This is first time I've ever done this actually."
- Lee Ritenour
(Related: Time, First, Guitar, Songs)
"Guys like Otis Blackwell and Bobby Darin, and all the guys who were writing songs for Elvis at the time, just hanging around, writing songs, talking about music."
- Johnny Rivers
(Related: Music, Time, Songs, Talking, Writing)
"But I always loved songs with great lyrics."
- Johnny Rivers
(Related: Songs)
"The great songs just come out. If it comes quick, just leave it that way."
- Marty Robbins
(Related: Quick, Songs)
"Originally I was not writing songs for myself."
- Smokey Robinson
(Related: Songs, Writing)
"When someone picks up one of my songs and records it, I'm a flattered man, it's a blessing to me."
- Smokey Robinson
(Related: Man, Songs)
"And I can say this, most of the people who have recorded my songs are songwriters themselves."
- Smokey Robinson
(Related: People, Songs)
"Had I not come out with an inspirational CD, you perhaps would have never known that I feel like I feel, that all songs, all the music I've ever done is a gift from God."
- Smokey Robinson
(Related: Inspirational, Music, God, Songs)
"I had been stockpiling Gospel songs for other artists, and had planned to submit them to Gospel artists."
- Smokey Robinson
(Related: Artists, Songs)
"I know every Skynyrd and about all Johnny Cash songs."
- Kid Rock
(Related: Songs)
"I think I'm going to put together a compilation under Disney's name of my songs that I've done for them - because I've done six or seven by now! The latest was for the Princess Diaries 2 soundtrack. So that's the next thing that's coming out."
- Christy Romano
(Related: Diaries, Disney, Name, Songs)
"We would make songs, and the producers said we should play it for my dad. I was kind of scared, I didn't know what to think cuz we were just joking around."
- Lil' Romeo
(Related: Dad, Play, Songs)
"I'm not really a songwriter - I'm an interpreter. So in a sense I am an actress first and foremost. I act out the songs, and I lead with my heart."
- Diana Ross
(Related: Heart, Act, First, Sense, Songs)
"I try to choose the songs that really are basically coming from my heart. I think that through the songs that I select, people know what's going on in my life."
- Diana Ross
(Related: Life, People, Heart, Songs)
"I have always been fascinated by dark and mysterious stuff. I guess I have a pretty dark and gloomy side. Writing songs saves me from going completely gonzo."
- Gavin Rossdale
(Related: Pretty, Songs, Writing)
"I don't see myself as the boss. I sing and write the songs, and it would feel strange if somebody else wrote the lyrics I sang."
- Gavin Rossdale
(Related: Boss, Songs)
"My music, my songs are 100 percent inspired by girl power."
- Paulina Rubio
(Related: Power, Music, Songs)
"Most people didn't have the bandwidth to download whole albums. And so it brought back this cherry picking idea that the audience would focus on certain songs and possibly be the impetus behind what eventually got on AM radio: the single or whatever."
- Todd Rundgren
(Related: People, Idea, Focus, Songs)
"I like kind of varied songs, not just the same song all the time. And I thought things like "Too Sentimental" is a different thing for us, but it works and we love the way they all came out. There's definitely varied songs on there."
- Graham Russell
(Related: Love, Time, Thought, Song, Songs)
"And this one I wanted to do some covers. So I just really sang some of my favorite songs."
- Katey Sagal
(Related: Favorite, Songs)
"Some songs are just like tattoos for your brain... you hear them and they're affixed to you."
- Carlos Santana
(Related: Songs)
"There's a whole lot of songs that men just can't do. The words are from another time and represent too much of an emotional commitment, whereas women can say that because of who they are."
- Boz Scaggs
(Related: Men, Time, Women, Commitment, Songs, Words)
"Christ himself wrote nothing, but furnished endless material for books and songs of gratitude and praise."
- Philip Schaff
(Related: Gratitude, Books, Christ, Nothing, Praise, Songs)
"No, we've been performing our old songs a little differently each performance."
- Fred Schneider
(Related: Performance, Old, Songs)
"No matter how long you play rock n roll songs might change just as the balls are there, the rock balls. And that's what's important to us."
- Bon Scott
(Related: Change, Play, Songs)
"All the songs we do are basically about one of three things: booze, sex or rock n roll."
- Bon Scott
(Related: Sex, Songs)
"With this new album, I prepared for it a long time, and I was happy with the songs and the production. I felt that I proved myself with the first album, and with this new album, I just want to share some of my music. And that was always my feeling and my intention."
- Jon Secada
(Related: Music, Time, Feeling, First, Intention, Production, Songs, Want)
"If you write songs and if you write music that's very sincere and very honest, it's pop music, but it is pop music with a lot of honesty and a lot of heart."
- Jon Secada
(Related: Music, Heart, Honesty, Songs)
"I decline to discuss, under compulsion, where I have sung, and who has sung my songs, and who else has sung with me, and the people I have known."
- Pete Seeger
(Related: People, Songs)
"Again, I say I will be glad to tell what songs I have ever sung, because singing is my business."
- Pete Seeger
(Related: Business, Singing, Songs, Will)
"I write a lot of songs people don't hear. I really just enjoy the process. I finish 'em all. I don't think there's a whole lot of difference between the bad ones and the good ones."
- Bob Seger
(Related: People, Difference, Songs)
"Young people don't want to be second to anyone. Everyone wants to be an overnight star. Look how many years I had to wait, how many roads I had to travel, how many songs I had to sing. And now I'm just beginning, never ending."
- Compay Segundo
(Related: Travel, People, Beginning, Ending, Now, Songs, Want, Years)
"With the Stray Cats at least, we really took the music somewhere else. First, we wrote our own songs. That's a real weak point in modern classics if you do rockabilly or blues."
- Brian Setzer
(Related: Music, Cats, First, Songs)
"I put a metronome up to all the songs, and I tried to really keep it true to the original tempos."
- Brian Setzer
(Related: Songs)
"I have written some songs, but I would really call what I've done poetry at the end of the day, because I'll sit with my guitar for hours and hours on end for, like, a week and then I won't touch it for a month. I also just have no confidence. And you know what? I don't have time, because I'd rather be doing other things, like knitting."
- Amanda Seyfried
(Related: Poetry, Time, Confidence, Day, End, Guitar, Songs)
"Writing songs has a therapeutic effect, and it either kills off love or wins the heart of the lover."
- Shakira
(Related: Love, Heart, Effect, Songs, Writing)
"Writing in English was a major challenge. I didn't want other songwriters to write for me. I wanted to preserve the spirit of my songs in Spanish. I am the same Shakira in English as I am in Spanish."
- Shakira
(Related: Challenge, English, Songs, Spirit, Want, Writing)
"My songs are the reflection of how I think and how I feel in that moment. But I'm conscious of the fact that artists have a responsibility before the masses and they have to take care with their words."
- Shakira
(Related: Artists, Care, Fact, Reflection, Responsibility, Songs, Words)
"A lot of Irish people perform. They perform in drawing rooms. They sing songs and they play piano."
- Fiona Shaw
(Related: People, Irish, Play, Songs)
"When I was about 3, my grandfather used to give me and my sister a nickel to sit out on the front porch with him and sing songs."
- Tommy Shaw
(Related: Sister, Songs)
"I wrote songs all my life, where anyone wanted to hear them or not."
- Tommy Shaw
(Related: Life, Songs)
"I had 25 or 30 songs. Sequencing the record, I left that to the producer. I'm not into doing that stuff."
- Jules Shear
(Related: Songs)
"Every one of the songs was based around picking an acoustic guitar. That was part of the concept from the beginning, that the tempos were going to go from slow to almost mid-tempo."
- Jules Shear
(Related: Beginning, Guitar, Songs)
"I don't know too many people because I stay at my house, I write songs, I go to the store."
- Jules Shear
(Related: People, Songs)
"I tend to think of all the songs the same - I give them all kind of equal rights."
- Jules Shear
(Related: Rights, Songs)
"I also wanted to make a record that was about other things than romance, yeah, after two years on the road singing all the songs from the first album, I got kind of tired of that."
- Duncan Sheik
(Related: Romance, First, Road, Singing, Songs, Years)
"And frankly, when I made that record, hit songs were not what I was trying to achieve."
- Duncan Sheik
(Related: Songs, Trying)
"Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Thought, Songs)
"We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Thought, Laughter, Pain, Songs)
"And we just went with Julie because that name hadn't been used in any other popular songs at the time."
- Bobby Sherman
(Related: Time, Name, Popular, Songs)
"I'd written songs with lots of people, from one spectrum to the other."
- Billy Sherwood
(Related: People, Songs)
"I wrote songs with the guys from Air Supply for their record... So I was just writing songs."
- Billy Sherwood
(Related: Songs, Writing)
"I mean, Beatles songs were two and a half minutes long, and they're fantastic."
- Billy Sherwood
(Related: Songs)
"I always sang standards because the songs I wrote for myself weren't as easy to sing."
- Carly Simon
(Related: Songs)
"I think that I've got some pretty bad reviews on albums or songs that later proved themselves."
- Carly Simon
(Related: Pretty, Songs)
"I'm still more comfortable with standards than with my own songs."
- Carly Simon
(Related: Songs)
"Sometimes, but the year I lived in France I started to write songs."
- Carly Simon
(Related: France, Songs)
"I think Bridge Over Troubled Water was a very good song. Artie sang it beautifully. The Boxer was a really nice record. But I don't think I've written any great songs."
- Paul Simon
(Related: Song, Songs, Water)
"When I began making my own albums, the songs became funkier. They were more about the streets."
- Paul Simon
(Related: Songs)
"Artie is a singer, and I'm a writer and player and a singer. We didn't work together on a creative level and prepare the songs. I did that."
- Paul Simon
(Related: Work, Songs, Writer)
"I have those songs as well. It depends on what I'm going through in my life but I'm a huge fan of Bjork. Sometimes I get so emotional because she's so amazing."
- Ashlee Simpson
(Related: Life, Songs)
"Dad really had little to do with the songs, except to perform them."
- Nancy Sinatra
(Related: Dad, Songs)
"I hate negative songs; I won't sing them. It doesn't matter if it's sold 2 million more albums."
- Ricky Skaggs
(Related: Negative, Hate, Songs)
"It's part of the calling to at least do a few songs in the show that give people some hope. There's so much hurt in this world and... music is such a great healing balm and a great way to forget your troubles."
- Ricky Skaggs
(Related: Music, People, Hope, Forget, Healing, Hurt, Songs, World)
"We always feel pretty creative as far as writing songs. We write them together; we just get in a room, or on occasion in Flea's garage. We just sort of improvise, like jazz musicians."
- Chad Smith
(Related: Jazz, Musicians, Pretty, Songs, Writing)
"Up till now I wrote the songs on my acoustic guitar alone with the Lord. Then I would take the song and share it with my family and then we all would figure out instrumentation together."
- Daniel Smith
(Related: Family, Guitar, Now, Song, Songs)
"And I'm not trying to write heavy songs."
- Elliott Smith
(Related: Songs, Trying)
"I'm just writing songs about how I feel or about how people I know feel."
- Elliott Smith
(Related: People, Songs, Writing)
"My girlfriend at the time convinced me to send these songs to Cavity Search. When they wanted to put out my record I was totally shocked."
- Elliott Smith
(Related: Time, Girlfriend, Songs)
"It's just that a lot of songs that are popular right now, they don't have any meaning."
- Elliott Smith
(Related: Meaning, Now, Popular, Right, Songs)
"In 29 years, I had recorded over 2,200 songs. I was amazed."
- Kate Smith
(Related: Songs, Years)
"I learn my songs by ear."
- Kate Smith
(Related: Songs)
"There are a lot of bad worship songs, in my opinion, but there are a lot of good ones, too."
- Michael W. Smith
(Related: Opinion, Songs, Worship)
"I always enjoyed doing transgender songs."
- Patti Smith
(Related: Songs)
"When we started I wasn't the singer. I was the drunk rhythm guitarist who wrote all these weird songs."
- Robert Smith
(Related: Songs)
"If any of our songs ever did make it on the top ten, I'd disband the group immediately."
- Robert Smith
(Related: Songs)
"I hardly ever listen to any of our old stuff now. Once the songs have been recorded and put on to vinyl they become someone else's entertainment, not mine."
- Robert Smith
(Related: Entertainment, Now, Old, Songs)
"I could write songs as bad as Wham's if I really felt the urge to, but what's the point?"
- Robert Smith
(Related: Songs)
"We learned a verse of this and that and we were having fun with the songs. Tommy would make up stories to go along with them and I would yell at him, 'Hey, stupid, that's not right,' and he was like a silly kid trying to impress."
- Dick Smothers
(Related: Fun, Right, Silly, Songs, Trying)
"So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work."
- Stephen Sondheim
(Related: Work, Songs)
"I don't listen to recordings of my songs. I don't avoid it, I just don't go out of my way to do it."
- Stephen Sondheim
(Related: Songs)
"After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes."
- Stephen Sondheim
(Related: Comedy, Revolution, Songs)
"People thought me a bit strange at first; a blond haired, blue-eyed Norwegian who sang Mexican folk songs, but I used it to my advantage and got a job. And so the music became my ticket to education."
- David Soul
(Related: Education, Music, Thought, People, First, Folk, Job, Songs)
"I had deeper, more reflective songs on the first album."
- Bubba Sparxxx
(Related: First, Songs)
"So don't get me wrong, I love my songs, and I still love hearing them. That's history, baby."
- Ronnie Spector
(Related: Love, History, Baby, Hearing, Songs, Wrong)
"I love my songs, let's not get crazy here."
- Ronnie Spector
(Related: Love, Songs)
"I love the fact that 35 years later, I still hear my songs on the radio."
- Ronnie Spector
(Related: Love, Fact, Songs, Years)
"I just like simplicity. I like simple songs, I like simple chords, simple vocals, simple lead guitar. I just like simplicity. That's just the way I like it."
- Jeremy Spencer
(Related: Guitar, Simplicity, Songs)
"I've been writing songs since I was 14 years old, and that's my true love."
- Rick Springfield
(Related: Love, Old, Songs, Writing, Years)
"Being a songwriter does not rely on an audience or other band members or a camera. I can just sit in a room and write songs."
- Rick Springfield
(Related: Being, Songs)
"In the past, some of the songs that were the most fun, and the most entertaining and rocking, fell by the wayside because I was concerned with what I was going to say and how I was going to say it."
- Bruce Springsteen
(Related: Fun, Past, Songs)
"Songs suffer at the mercy of the performer."
- Jo Stafford
(Related: Mercy, Songs)
"The songs are about things that we were thinking and we wrote 'em down, and when you listen to 'em, whatever you think it's about... THAT'S what it's about!"
- Layne Staley
(Related: Songs, Thinking)
"Our perception of songs that we've written... the meaning changes from day to day... to whatever stage we're at in our life and careers."
- Layne Staley
(Related: Life, Perception, Careers, Day, Meaning, Songs)
"There's no huge, deep message in any of the songs. We recorded a few months of being human."
- Layne Staley
(Related: Being, Deep, Months, Songs)
"Sometimes, I write '60s or '80s style pop songs."
- Peter Steele
(Related: Songs, Style)
"Instead of slashing my wrists, I just write a bunch of really crummy songs."
- Peter Steele
(Related: Songs)
"I stay way from that area, and there's only so many songs you can write about love, sex and death."
- Peter Steele
(Related: Death, Love, Sex, Songs)
"Writing songs is super intimate. It's a bit like getting naked."
- Gwen Stefani
(Related: Songs, Writing)
"The words of the songs speak for themselves."
- Cat Stevens
(Related: Songs, Words)
"The spiritual quest was always the predominant aspect of my life. It's always been there. But there's also an incredible passion connected to it; it's not just a dry investigative process. I have been extremely emotional about it, and that comes out in the songs."
- Cat Stevens
(Related: Life, Passion, Quest, Songs, Spiritual)
"Songs like Reach and S Club Party are pop classics. I'm really proud that I had a part in them."
- Rachel Stevens
(Related: Party, Songs)
"I've just built a studio in my mama's old bedroom, which I thought was fitting; she died last year. We've recorded nine songs recorded in there already; we're sort of just chipping away."
- Stephen Stills
(Related: Thought, Old, Songs)
"That sense of failure, I don't know where people put it who don't write songs and aren't able to emote physically. It must go somewhere."
- Sting
(Related: People, Failure, Sense, Songs)
"Yoga introduced me to a style of meditation. The only meditation I would have done before would be in the writing of songs."
- Sting
(Related: Meditation, Songs, Style, Writing, Yoga)
"I see songs not as a commodity used up when the album goes off the charts, which is often the case with pop songs. I see them as a body of work. Life should be breathed into them."
- Sting
(Related: Life, Work, Body, Songs)
"My iPod that was programmed by Peter Buck. It has 7,000 songs hand-picked for me by him."
- Michael Stipe
(Related: Songs)
"I didn't write those songs, but I can relate to every one of them... I have."
- Joss Stone
(Related: Songs)
"I loved old black and white movies, especially the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals. I loved everything about them - the songs, the music, the romance and the spectacle. They were real class and I knew that I wanted to be in that world."
- Sharon Stone
(Related: Movies, Music, Romance, Class, Old, Songs, World)
"There is nothing in the world of art like the songs mother used to sing."
- Billy Sunday
(Related: Art, Mother, Nothing, Songs, World)
"I'm not afraid to write my feelings in songs."
- Taylor Swift
(Related: Feelings, Songs)
"I write songs that are like diary entries. I have to do it in order to feel sane."
- Taylor Swift
(Related: Order, Songs)
"I think I first realized I wanted to be in country music and be an artist when I was 10. And I started dragging my parents to festivals, and fairs, and karaoke contests, and I did that for about a year before I came to Nashville for the first time. I was 11 and I had this demo CD of me singing Dixie Chicks and Leanne Rimes songs."
- Taylor Swift
(Related: Music, Time, Artist, Country, Country music, First, Parents, Singing, Songs)
"I wish all teenagers can filter through songs instead of turning to drugs and alcohol."
- Taylor Swift
(Related: Alcohol, Drugs, Songs, Teenagers)
"I probably belong to a type of composer of songs who keeps thinking about melody... I am old fashioned."
- Toru Takemitsu
(Related: Old, Songs, Thinking)
"I really get inspired by songs. Like, if I hear a thug "Want to kill ya" song, I'm ready to go out and get crazy. Or if you hear this really sexual, sensual slow song, I want to go have sex. I'm very animalistic when it comes to stuff like that. Very basic emotions."
- Channing Tatum
(Related: Sex, Emotions, Song, Songs, Want)
"Melodic songs that people can relate to has always been our thing."
- Andy Taylor
(Related: People, Songs)
"To passively get up and play a bunch of old songs wouldn't have really motivated us. So we are bringing the new material into the set and it goes down really well."
- Andy Taylor
(Related: Old, Play, Songs)
"I don't think you need a record deal to write songs. You don't need any other reason than you want to do it. It's a far cry from why some people do music today. They make it to order, which is pretty horrible."
- Andy Taylor
(Related: Music, People, Order, Pretty, Reason, Songs, Today, Want)
"Some of those songs, you really have to bite them. You challenge yourself, you challenge the audience, you do something different. People weren't expecting it."
- Andy Taylor
(Related: People, Challenge, Songs)
"I don't know much about God. But if everything does originate with God, then certainly songs do as well."
- James Taylor
(Related: God, Songs)
"It is a process of discovery. It's being quiet enough and undisturbed enough for a period of time so that the songs can begin to sort of peek out, and you begin to have emotional experiences in a musical way."
- James Taylor
(Related: Time, Being, Discovery, Quiet, Songs)
"I've written lots of songs on the piano. My mother had a piano and it was the first instrument I played."
- Mick Taylor
(Related: Mother, First, Songs)
"I play the piano a lot at home. I write songs on the piano and guitar. I would like to actually play piano on stage. I don't think I'll get the chance for a while."
- Mick Taylor
(Related: Home, Chance, Guitar, Play, Songs)
"I do remember actually learning chords to Beatles songs. I thought they were great songwriters."
- Mick Taylor
(Related: Thought, Learning, Songs)
"It's not rubbish to say that I was a bit peeved about not getting credit for a couple of songs, but that wasn't the whole reason. I guess I just felt like I had enough. I decided to leave and start a group with Jack Bruce."
- Mick Taylor
(Related: Credit, Reason, Songs)
"By the end of it, you never know how it's going to turn out. Hopefully if I pick the right songs and put the right melodies on it and all the collaboration works out. it's a win-win situation."
- Paul Taylor
(Related: Collaboration, End, Right, Songs)
"I like to do cover songs if I really love them, I have to love the song first."
- Paul Taylor
(Related: Love, First, Song, Songs)
"Tom would bring in songs, Mike would engineer, and we recorded about 30 songs."
- Benmont Tench
(Related: Songs)
"At one time musical theater, particularly in the '40s and '50s, was a big source of pop songs. That's how musical theater started, really - it was just a way of linking several pop songs for the stage."
- Neil Tennant
(Related: Time, Songs, Theater)
"If you have a recital to do, you have to memorize the songs. I never use music when I do recitals. It produces an instant barrier, both for yourself and the audience."
- Bryn Terfel
(Related: Music, Songs)
"After playing so many songs in churches for eight or nine years, I've learned what songs people react to. Then I just had fun with the arrangements. That's how this album came together."
- John Tesh
(Related: People, Churches, Fun, Songs, Years)
"Those worship songs on the Christmas project will air on PBS television. That's highly unusual."
- John Tesh
(Related: Christmas, Project, Songs, Television, Will, Worship)
"I think music needs to be presented in a way so that kids can grasp songs, dances, simple music that's associated with some particular defining moment in human experience."
- Michael Tilson Thomas
(Related: Experience, Music, Kids, Needs, Songs)
"In earlier times, so many people sang much more. You know as a kid you'd go to some kind of religious training and or summer camp or whatever it was and you'd learn to sing a lot of songs."
- Michael Tilson Thomas
(Related: People, Religious, Songs, Summer, Training)
"It's amazing what some people read into songs."
- Richard Thompson
(Related: People, Songs)
"It's fun to sing sad songs. And it's fun to listen to sad songs. Enjoyable. Satisfying. Something."
- Richard Thompson
(Related: Fun, Songs)
"I just like to entertain myself by sitting down and writing songs."
- Richard Thompson
(Related: Songs, Writing)
"I probably wrote three-quarters of the songs without an instrument in my hands."
- Richard Thompson
(Related: Songs)
"I try to make songs visual and tactile to kind of put you into the action."
- Richard Thompson
(Related: Action, Songs)
"I want people to come to my music without prejudice. I want them to get the music first. And who I am isn't that important. If they like the songs to me that's a good thing."
- Richard Thompson
(Related: Music, People, First, Prejudice, Songs, Want)
"This music has been around since before the beard on Moses. I happed to do it very well and I happen to have a lot of groovy songs that I know people are going to dig. I know more about it than you do."
- George Thorogood
(Related: Music, People, Songs)
"There are now grandmothers and grandfathers coming to see us because they are of that age, they grew up in the '50s and '60s and they bring their sons and their daughters to hear the songs they heard when they were young."
- George Thorogood
(Related: Age, Daughters, Now, Songs, Sons)
"I wanted to write songs that were as good as the covers."
- George Thorogood
(Related: Songs)
"Every time the guys were knocked out by my guitar playing and the girls were knocked out by the type of songs I did. That set us apart from the average blues band."
- George Thorogood
(Related: Time, Girls, Guitar, Songs)
"Me and Jerry left because we felt we weren't getting anywhere playing our old songs in tiny clubs. The group was getting stale and staying behind the times."
- Johnny Thunders
(Related: Old, Songs)
"You know, being an entertainer is partly being on the road, and a lot of your songs come from the road."
- Mel Tillis
(Related: Being, Road, Songs)
"But I've got a lot of ideas, I bought me a ranch in Florida and I still have my farm in Ashland City, Tennessee so I'm gonna spend a little time at each one of those places and you'll probably hear some more songs out of me."
- Mel Tillis
(Related: Time, Ideas, Songs)
"My biggest challenge was to make sure that the songs I did were who I am."
- Justin Timberlake
(Related: Challenge, Songs)
"Senorita was fun to sing, but I don't really have a favorite. When you write a bunch of songs, they're like your babies. You don't pick favorites."
- Justin Timberlake
(Related: Babies, Favorite, Fun, Songs)
"Then I decided I couldn't just crawl in the corner and die, so I started putting pen to paper and wrote some songs. I had no idea what for or who I was going to work with. I tried to find my way and direction."
- Glenn Tipton
(Related: Work, Idea, Direction, Pen, Songs)
"Yeah, but on the U.S Tour we threw a new song into the set almost every night. Ofcourse, you can't do too many new songs every night as they've never heard it."
- Glenn Tipton
(Related: Night, Song, Songs)
"My vocal ability is very limited, but I'm fortunate in that I can write the songs around my vocal limitations."
- Glenn Tipton
(Related: Ability, Limitations, Songs)
"It'll be basically a live album, but it will also include songs, Judas Priest songs, the audience have never heard before, because we felt we wanted to give the kids something else, something they haven't already bought."
- Glenn Tipton
(Related: Kids, Songs, Will)
"I've got the luxury to tailor make the songs so I can sing them."
- Glenn Tipton
(Related: Luxury, Songs)
"Original Monkees' songs were produced very thinly, on purpose."
- Peter Tork
(Related: Purpose, Songs)
"There isn't a dearth of it, but I will confess that it's harder for me to find songs on which I'm willing to invest anything from ten to fifteen hours writing an arrangement than it was in times past."
- Mel Torme
(Related: Past, Songs, Will, Writing)
"I didn't really have an act per se - a theatrical performance, as opposed to just: here I am, folks, and you're all supposed to be dead quiet while I sing eight or nine songs, then get off the stage."
- Mel Torme
(Related: Performance, Act, Quiet, Songs)
"And I ask why am I black, they say I was born in sin, and shamed inequity. One of the main songs we used to sing in church makes me sick, 'love wash me and I shall be whiter than snow."
- Peter Tosh
(Related: Church, Sin, Snow, Songs)
"Most of my songs are about Jesus. Most of my songs are about the idea that there is salvation, and that there is a Savior. But I won't mention his name in a song just to get a cheap play."
- Peter Townsend
(Related: Idea, Name, Play, Salvation, Song, Songs)
"It wasn't just about flashing lights and pinball machines blowing up and things like that. It was about using encores, bringing back the good songs and using techniques that I knew about from rock performance."
- Pete Townshend
(Related: Performance, Machines, Songs)
"I think I probably would have enjoyed to keep my own private pain out of my work. But I was changed by my audience who said your private pain which you have unwittingly shown us in your early songs is also ours."
- Pete Townshend
(Related: Work, Pain, Songs)
"The saddest songs are written when a person is happy."
- Merle Travis
(Related: Songs)
"Downloading songs is not good."
- Obie Trice
(Related: Songs)
"My songs are more arrangements than they are songs."
- Robin Trower
(Related: Songs)
"It's so funny because I listen to songs that I recorded that I didn't really know anything about at the time. Later on I'm starting to feel the songs. Sing them first, feel them later."
- Tanya Tucker
(Related: Funny, Time, First, Songs)
"Greatest hits is easy because one has nothing to do - except that we both, Roger and I, felt that new songs should be there because I've been away for awhile."
- Tina Turner
(Related: Nothing, Songs)
"It was just like a dream. I could have ended up with an album that's not all that different from anything else coming out of Nashville. Mutt made the difference. He took these songs, my attitude, my creativity, and colored them in a way that is unique."
- Shania Twain
(Related: Dream, Attitude, Creativity, Difference, Songs)
"I go through a thousand songs to find ten for a new record."
- Conway Twitty
(Related: Songs)
"Some people try and tell you what the songs are about and it bores me to death."
- Lars Ulrich
(Related: Death, People, Songs)
"It can get a little costly if you try and leave it until then to write songs. But you're writing all the time. You're collecting songs. I've had songs that have been collected over a two-year period for my next record."
- Keith Urban
(Related: Time, Songs, Writing)
"It's not the case of turning in a bunch of songs and recording the next month. I think you're looking for songs all year long and you're writing all year long."
- Keith Urban
(Related: Songs, Writing)
"So I concentrated on the rhythmic side of things, and therefore left a lot of holes. I didn't want to use big pad chords everywhere. All of the songs are built up of small melodies and counter melodies all played very rhythmically."
- Midge Ure
(Related: Songs, Want)
"I don't want to be 35 years old and still popping out songs in miniskirts and la-la-la."
- Holly Valance
(Related: Old, Songs, Want, Years)
"I'm not doing contemporary songs unless something comes along that really knocks my socks off."
- Frankie Valli
(Related: Songs)
"I'd like to be remembered as a premier singer of songs, not just a popular act of a given period."
- Luther Vandross
(Related: Act, Popular, Songs)
"I like to sing. I write music. Country songs. You have to if you're in Nashville. It's part of the lease. You sign a lease that says, I will write country songs and pay my rent on time."
- Jim Varney
(Related: Time, Music, Country, Songs, Will)
"I did a couple songs with this hip-hop guy named Tim Dark. He was working in the same studio I've been working in, he heard my music and he said, aw man, I've got to do something with you."
- Alan Vega
(Related: Music, Man, Songs)
"Sometimes I listen to songs by very smart writers who assume that the world is a civil place with certain formalities that people follow, but I don't see things that way. My own experience tells me that life is not like that."
- Suzanne Vega
(Related: Experience, Life, People, Songs, World, Writers)
"Times were changing. Clothes were changing. Morals were changing. We went from romantic loves songs like I used to do to rock 'n roll. Now that has changed to rap. So, there's always a new generation with new music."
- Bobby Vinton
(Related: Music, Clothes, Morals, Now, Rap, Romantic, Songs)
"All my songs were solo voices. Just me singing. In fact, that was the gimmick - no gimmick. Just singing straight with not too much background."
- Bobby Vinton
(Related: Fact, Singing, Songs)
"When I was five my parents bought me a ukulele for Christmas. I quickly learned how to play it with my father's guidance. Thereafter, my father regularly taught me all the good old fashioned songs."
- Tony Visconti
(Related: Father, Christmas, Guidance, Old, Parents, Play, Songs)
"I always used to look at books and wonder how anybody could come up with so many words. But my divorce and then falling in love with somebody else has released in me an ability to write in other ways apart from songs."
- Roger Waters
(Related: Love, Ability, Books, Divorce, Songs, Wonder, Words)
"Either you write songs or you don't. And if you do write songs like I do, I think there's a natural desire to want to make records."
- Roger Waters
(Related: Desire, Songs, Want)
"Yes, threadbare seem his songs, to lettered ken - they were worn threadbare next the hearts of men."
- William Watson
(Related: Men, Songs)
"The people who are making money are the ones who are writing and singing their own songs."
- Jimmy Webb
(Related: Money, People, Singing, Songs, Writing)
"We had been working. We had a bunch of songs written and it came time to make the record, so we had our lawyer make the call to Elektra and ask for our advance. Then, we got dropped. It was actually exciting."
- Gene Ween
(Related: Time, Songs)
"I wrote most of these songs right before the end. A lot of these songs are about that. Even if it's not direct, you can feel the beginning of the end of the breakup in these songs."
- Gene Ween
(Related: Beginning, End, Right, Songs)
"A lot of those songs are actually about Sarah, who I was recently divorced from about five or six months ago. I'd been seeing her off and on since I was about nineteen, so a lot of those songs are about her."
- Gene Ween
(Related: Months, Songs)
"On the other hand when you are someone who records their own songs you are basically stuck writing for one voice and for one style that can stifle you a bit. It's a real trade off."
- Cynthia Weil
(Related: Songs, Style, Trade, Voice, Writing)
"When I first started to get into writing, it was via music. I'd generate ideas for songs that would turn into stories, then they'd turn into novels. I was biased toward music."
- Irvine Welsh
(Related: Music, Ideas, First, Songs, Writing)
"So I figured in keeping with the record, I'd do something off the wall which is show up for free and wing it... I don't know, I'm just going to play some songs. I think it'll be fun."
- Paul Westerberg
(Related: Fun, Play, Songs)
"I think some people record songs and make records a certain way to cater to radio. If you're born to make commercial music that's cool. But if you're born to not make commercial records, maybe you're meant to cater to another market."
- Bryan White
(Related: Music, People, Songs)
"When the bus or the plane rolled or flew through the night, they sang songs of their own composition about Mr Nixon and the Republicans in chorus with the Kennedy staff and felt that they, too, were marching like soldiers of the Lord to the New Frontier."
- Theodore White
(Related: Night, Nixon, Republicans, Soldiers, Songs)
"We teach young kids from 8 to 14 or 15 about their musical heritage through great songs written by American songwriters. We don't do too many modern composers, although we include songs from Billy Joel and other writers like him."
- Margaret Whiting
(Related: American, Composers, Kids, Songs, Writers)
"I mean, whose songs don't focus on tragedy and loss?"
- Lucinda Williams
(Related: Focus, Loss, Songs, Tragedy)
"I feel a lot more comfortable being me these days. I'm constantly told that my work is good. A lot of fans and a lot of other artists say my songs and albums mean a lot to them. Isn't that what's important?"
- Lucinda Williams
(Related: Work, Artists, Being, Fans, Songs)
"Some of their best songs don't have bridges and choruses. So that made me think I should trust my instincts. My songs were okay, I figured. I didn't need to change anything."
- Lucinda Williams
(Related: Change, Trust, Songs)
"Quit shouting those rerun songs at me."
- Wesley Willis
(Related: Songs)
"I don't really think about having had a hard life. It was just my life, and it's all I knew. It made me who I am - all the good and bad - and it's where all of the songs on Here For The Party came from. I've lived them all."
- Gretchen Wilson
(Related: Life, Party, Songs)
"I like 'Bewitched' off the first album because it's one of the happiest songs I've ever written and, as any writer will tell you, happy songs are a million times more difficult to write than sad songs."
- Malcolm Wilson
(Related: First, Songs, Will, Writer)
"The songs were really complicated. I used to meet people in bar bands who were trying to play our songs and they were really struggling with it. Technically it was really difficult stuff."
- Kip Winger
(Related: People, Play, Songs, Trying)
"There's a bootleg album that was recorded when I was 14 or 15, a compilation of things live at different clubs. Songs like Girl from Ipanema and Cry Me A River. I don't know what the title of it is."
- Edgar Winter
(Related: Songs)
"We started out when I was 6 years old. We played ukuleles and sang Everly Brothers songs."
- Edgar Winter
(Related: Brothers, Old, Songs, Years)
"I compose my own stuff. I've been writing songs with words. I've been playing more on the keyboard because I can transpose it to sheet music on the computer."
- Alicia Witt
(Related: Music, Computer, Songs, Words, Writing)
"People shout out for songs and I don't even remember writing them."
- Bobby Womack
(Related: People, Songs, Writing)
"Unfortunately, most of the songs that I write I don't write them with guitar in mind. I just write it as a song and that was probably one of the ones that left an opening for it. The song's all right, I wouldn't choose to sing it now."
- Roy Wood
(Related: Guitar, Mind, Now, Right, Song, Songs)
"There's a guy at the record company who's 30, and he says, I would not listen to these songs except in this context. Somehow the recording process, the arrangements, make it more accessible."
- Tom Wopat
(Related: Company, Songs)
"When you're doing the traditional musicals, singing songs that are 40 and 50 years old, you realize there's a reason why those musicals are hits. These are amazing songs!"
- Tom Wopat
(Related: Old, Reason, Singing, Songs, Years)
"Yeah, I might remaster it, in fact I'm sure I would. But all the songs will be the same."
- John Wozniak
(Related: Fact, Songs, Will)
"All I ever wanted to do was write songs and get on a bus and go play them for people."
- Chely Wright
(Related: People, Play, Songs)
"Even if you're specific about the character of the song, it's more exciting to place them, juxtapose them in such a way as to make an adventure out of the sequence of the songs."
- Robert Wyatt
(Related: Character, Adventure, Song, Songs)
"I find writing songs hard, because it does not come naturally to me. I never set out to be a songwriter or a singer."
- Robert Wyatt
(Related: Songs, Writing)
"If you are any competent musician, if you have creative ideas, ideas of songs, of arrangements, in a band like the Stones, where these 2 people do all the things, there is no freedom."
- Bill Wyman
(Related: People, Ideas, Freedom, Songs)
"With the Rhythm Kings, I can involve myself in arranging and producing the music as well as the choice of songs."
- Bill Wyman
(Related: Music, Choice, Kings, Songs)
"Fortunately any of the songs we've recorded can be extremely fulfilling to perform depending on the variety of circumstances that surround any given show."
- Dwight Yoakam
(Related: Circumstances, Songs, Variety)
"My songs are my kids. Some of them stay with me, some others I have to send out, out to the war. It might sound stupid and it might even sound naive, but that's just the way it is."
- Thom Yorke
(Related: War, Kids, Songs, Sound)
"We toyed with the idea of making it a double album, but I think that would only have confused everybody even more, so we decided to stick with the songs we picked."
- Thom Yorke
(Related: Idea, Songs)
"Being in a rock band is about touring. It's about writing songs and it's about making records but it's also about taking a wonderful smile onto that stage and making the people feel good about themselves."
- James Young
(Related: People, Being, Smile, Songs, Writing)
"With a lot of songs on this record, one verse doesn't relate to the next verse. I don't think that one day really relates to the next day in life."
- Neil Young
(Related: Life, Day, Songs)
"I didn't really know what I was doing when I started. I just started writing songs. After two songs I just continued to explore it."
- Neil Young
(Related: Songs, Writing)
"I actually started singing those songs six or seven years ago, when I was an opening act for Frank Sinatra."
- Pia Zadora
(Related: Act, Singing, Songs, Years)
"We will have close to 3 months of rehearsals to learn about 30 songs. Frank usually rehearsed a band for at least 3 months. If it took him that long to be comfortable we probably would need double the amount, but It's just not financially possible to do so."
- Dweezil Zappa
(Related: Months, Songs, Will)
"I mean, no offense, but I don't really see why, like guitar players from Creed, or something like that, are on the cover of guitar magazines. Almost anybody can sit down and learn to play those songs."
- Dweezil Zappa
(Related: Guitar, Play, Songs)
"For me, the most difficult thing is that I am learning melodies on guitar from some songs whose melodies were not meant to be played on guitar. Ever. They were intended mostly for keyboards or melodic percussion."
- Dweezil Zappa
(Related: Guitar, Learning, Songs)
"There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another."
- Frank Zappa
(Related: Love, Songs)
"I understand why some kid in his bedroom in Wisconsin thinks downloading songs couldn't hurt anyone. True fans will buy the CD or go see the movie after downloading, but to say it doesn't affect anyone - come on."
- Rob Zombie
(Related: Fans, Hurt, Songs, Will)
"Well, in Japan, I have got a group of musicians that I have worked with a lot, that concentrate just on the hardcore stuff, say, that Naked City has been working on. We have like a repertoire of sixty songs now."
- John Zorn
(Related: Musicians, Now, Songs)