Song Quotes - Page 130

I write songs from the point of view I had at a time;I'm not tryingto write songs from a young person's point of view.That only ends in disaster.

I don't like those songs where you have to listen to a story to get into them. I don't want to have to pay attention to music in that way, I just want it to hit me in the heart and do what music's supposed to do.

There's that kind of song, "Whoah baby, I love you," which doesn't have a visual element, but a very strong emotional element, and these are the great songs to me - those ones that you put them on and they just make you feel great, or whatever.

You're not supposed to totally know what's happening. The songs are supposed to give you clues so you can fill in the blanks.

Said the condor to the preying mantis, we're gonna lose this place just like we lost Atlantis.

I don't play an instrument - I just write in my head, and I usually hear fully formed songs. 'We Are Young' turned out so much like it was in my head. But it also exceeded all my expectations.

Write your own songs. It helps you to mean what you're singing, which will then make it mean something to listeners.

A lot of my songs are about taking whatever life throws at you and making the most of it.

I wasn't born with a natural talent for songwriting.

Morrissey wrote to me and said, I have a song for you and if we release it as a single, you'll be on the charts for the first time since 1972, I said, what time, where?

The one hit song that I have tremendous gratitude for is Boots, because it has a life of its own. It's like being identified with a brand name.

My favorite track from the album Independent is Hold On. Everyone at some point fights battles or has struggles, and in moments of doubt or defeat, this is the song coming from a place of never giving up. It makes me think of the angel on the shoulder voicing understanding but guiding you in the right direction to take you out of that dark place.

A great song is a great song, whether it's on vinyl or CD or cassette or reel to reel or mp3. Then again, that might be an overly optimistic view, but I do think that great music will transcend the medium in which it is delivered.

I don't think there's anything wrong with not knowing how to play an instrument, but the rise of the non-musical producer has done away with musicianship and focused attention purely on the song's hook.

Irony is the disparity between what you expect will happen, and what does happen. So raining on your wedding day isn't ironic, it's just crappy. It would have been ironic if she had lived in a place like Seattle, and traveled to the desert of Mexico for a wedding and it ended up raining there, but not in Seattle. Alanis always gets the last laugh though. We all sit here, saying her song isn't ironic, but in fact, that's pretty ironic that she wrote a song called Ironic that wasn't really ironic. Those Canadians are pretty crafty.

A true friend is someone who is always there during the ups and downs, I actually have a song called 'True Friend'.

If I hear a song like "Time After Time." I'm sittin' there lookin' at video and Cindy Lauper comes on singin' this song. I said, "God damnnnnn!"

When people start writing songs for award shows, there's a very limited palette you can use. You end up not sounding like you. You end up sounding like somebody else. You end up getting what the record company thinks they can market.

I've written lots of songs on the piano. My mother had a piano and it was the first instrument I played

Captive people have a need for song.

We were the best team in the world: European champions in 1984, we qualified without a hitch and 86 was to be the swan song for a very experienced side.

My iPod that was programmed by Peter Buck. It has 7,000 songs hand-picked for me by him.

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.

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!

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