Son Quotes - Page 54

I've always had mostly women come out to see me perform. That's the reason the guys show up; they know R. Kelly is going to draw the women. Most of the songs I'm singing are catering to women anyway.

To every separate person a thing is what he thinks it is – in other words, not a thing, but a think.

I'm a songwriter who's put my childhood memories and teenage angst into songs.

One of my biggest thrills for me still is sitting down with a guitar or a piano and just out of nowhere trying to make a song happen.

I have gotten more than I asked for. All that I ever wanted was to hear my voice on record and have a song among the Top 20.

It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame.

I think pop culture is the greatest subject matter out there - 'Other People's Lives,' as we wrote about on the last Duran Duran album. Most ideas for great songs come from real situations, something your friend said to you the night before, the girl that just left, or something traumatic in your life.

I hadn't played any music since freshman year of college, more than thirty years ago, so I had to relearn everything. I started writing songs. Some were dance and trance songs (I listen to them a lot while I'm writing), and some were love songs, because that after all is what music is about - dancing and trancing and love and love's setbacks.

Happy songs are very difficult to write. How many truly great upbeat songs are there?

My eldest son, Jack, grew up with me as a 'part-time' dad.

I heard Q-Tip on the Jungle Brothers' song 'The Promo.' It was very exciting. It was very new. The music and the culture around hip-hop was evolving. I think there's an emotional quality to their music and there's a vulnerability to the music. For me, A Tribe Called Quest was my Beatles.

I have taken your advice and the names used are anode cathode anions cations and ions the last I shall have but little occasion for. I had some hot objections made to them here and found myself very much in the condition of the man with his son and Ass who tried to please every body.

Like sweet morning dew I took one look at you And it was plain to see You were my destiny

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.

But, in fairness to them, too, the popular song per se is really a pretty shallow medium to perform in.

You know, that single girl life and that sense of isolation - that doesn't leave you just like that. And that's what that song is about. I remember that, and that is imprinted on me, that sense.

I am not a morning person. I like to sleep in.

From a very early age, my wife and I told our son that there are times and places for everything. I told him, look, when you're in class, you have to be quiet and listen to your teacher, but when you go out to the playground, you can scream and be silly.

I obsess everyday about everything. Not only about what we do well but what we can do better... In the end, the only reason I am motivated to do what I do is for the hedonistic pleasures of the table.

Most of our stuff was trial and error. You live with a tape recorder, you turn it on, you play the song and you listen to it.

I've woken up from dreams and the whole song is there. I'm listening to it in my dreams. I consciously have to wake myself up and get a tape recorder because I hear it like a record.

As a person, I do ascribe to a lot of magical thinking myself.

I see friends who are in different genres of music, and they say they're so burnt playing the same stuff every night. That's why you see a country act wanting to go out and play an old classic rock song. But what cracks me up is that they all want to be Jimmy Buffett. I can't figure that out.

What I'm doing is basically the same as Bob Dylan did with folk songs and Woody Guthrie songs, the same as folk music's always done. I'm not going to sing about ploughing, but I'll write a song that sounds like it should be about ploughing.

I subscribe to that school of thespian - to be a wandering minstrel or traveling player, a thing of rags and patches, of ballads, songs and snatches.