Song Quotes - Page 143

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.

One of the things that I try to be conscious about in crafting a song is the concept of bringing it home. I like to bring it somewhere familiar, someplace that people feel it's resolved, it's settled.

I'm still more comfortable with standards than with my own songs.

The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood

I write with music. I write scenes in movies that hopefully can earn the use of some songs that are powerful to me.

When I found music I thought, that's what I want to do, but the idea of it being a job never crossed my mind. I just wanted to be good enough to pick up a guitar at a party, or if I saw a girl I liked, to work up the courage to play a song.

I always had wished somebody else would sing my songs, but there wasn't anybody who knew them, so I sang them myself and eventually became a better singer and guitar player.

A guy said to me, 'You're so lucky. You have people like Ray Charles, Barbra Streisand and The Beatles doing your songs.' I figured out, though, the harder I work the luckier I get. The secret of anything is to surround yourself with good people if you want a good product.

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.

My father's a musician and my mother's a singer. My dad's originally from Brooklyn and he was a Latin percussionist so I've always had instruments around the house. He used to have a show like a 1950s rock and roll show with Little Richard music. They would do doo-wop songs and stuff like that.

I can't even speak Hawaiian, but if you go there and listen to a Hawaiian song, you get captured because it's so beautiful, like the melody is just gorgeous and you know Bob Marley is on the radio every single day. It's very reggae-influenced down there. Basically, you haven't been to paradise if you haven't been to Hawaii.

I grew up with so many different songs that the ones that are fun to play are the ones I want to do.

Writing for other artists helped me figure out that magic you have to capture to make everyone connect with a song.

A lot of people are really quick to say, "That song sounds like this." Or you - "He's tryin' to sound like this." And I'm always like, "You're damn right I am. That's how - that's why we're all here." You know, we all grew up idolizing another musician. That's how this works. That's how music is created.

'Darkness on the Edge of Town' came out of a huge body of work that had tons of very happy songs.

Every rock song is some variation of 'Pull down your pants'

When I wrote the song, The Way It Is, I wanted to move people to take a stand on civil rights in this country.

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.

My favourite song is Someone To Love. That is more like me than the other stuff, as it was the only one I was actually able to create from the bottom up. I call it an homage, not a remake. It is an homage to Freddie Mercury, because I don't think people can really remake Freddie Mercury. That's why we did a gospel version.

All of the artists did such a beautiful job I can’t thank them enough. I’m just honored that 'God Only Knows' was chosen. 'God Only Knows' is a very special song. An extremely spiritual song and one of the best I’ve ever written.

Back in college, when I got kicked out of school, I was still in school, I'd just written the song that got me my record deal. If I hadn't gotten kicked out of school I wouldn't be where I am now. Three months after that, I got my record deal and the rest is history.

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.

Then when Gladys Knight came in to do my songs that was the straw that broke the camel's back.

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

I who once wrote songs with keen delight am now by sorrow driven to take up melancholy measures. Wounded Muses tell me what I must write, and elegiac verses bathe my face with real tears. Not even terror could drive from me these faithful companions of my long journey. Poetry, which was once the glory of my happy and flourishing youth, is still my comfort in this misery of my old age.