Song Quotes - Page 156

A song should have all the color and beauty of every rose.

I've never been the straight rapper that is going to stand in a cipher and battle all day. I started off battle rapping, but to me, making songs became more important than freestyles... I've met many rappers who can freestyle but can't make a record.

In 1999, I just came out of putting out the song 'Vivrant Thing' and 'Breathe and Stop' off the 'Amplified' album. Clive Davis signed me to Arista.

I cannot learn creation from other people; I've got to do it myself. Now, honestly, I regret not studying - I don't know about harmonies, or anything, so if I'm composing a song, it's really hard.

The first song I heard from me was Meek Mill ["I Don't Know"], it was his first single before he went (to jail). I remember the first time I heard it was like eleven thirty at night, and I was like, "Yo, this is crazy!" And, I was smiling from ear to ear.

I didn't even know the industry of songwriting existed. I thought everybody sang songs and they were only singing the songs that they wrote. So after I found out about songwriting in college, I was like, "Okay, I want to do that."

One thing I've found that I can do that I really enjoy is rereading my own writing, earlier stories and novels especially. It induces mental time travel, the same way certain songs you hear on the radio do ... the whole thing returns, an eerie feeling that I'm sure you've experienced.

Due to people's health, and certain things that have happened to people's physicality because of their healthy, that would probably keep us from touring per se. It doesn't mean that the original band wouldn't someday do a song. But our focus is on the current band, and moving into the future, as far as touring is concerned.

Many people think of me as a perfectionist, someone who polishes and shines each song and performance. I've always been bothered by that assumption.

'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.

Why did I like simpler songs? Just times change. This is one of the repeated things I hear: even though people will read different kinds of books, they don't read Lord of the Rings when they're 30 even though they did at 15.

My goal in this music business is to be here as long as I'm alive. I want my music to be here. I want to be the Michael Jackson and the Prince of hip-hop. I want to be a legend. I want to change the world. I want to give them songs that mean something.

I continue to believe, contrary to the given wisdom, that it's more interesting to have an album - or, indeed, an individual song - which has variety rather than homogeneity.

In an attempt to amuse my friends and family, I would do impressions of Dean Martin, singing Everybody Loves Somebody. I secretly really enjoyed singing the song.

I think one of the things about writing in the studio is that the song hasn't matured, if you like, so quite often the vocals are early attempts. Whereas once you've taken it out on the road a bit, you learn more about a song.

My song are more about the practical message of not wearing ourselves out just to get rich and looking at what life is really about and enjoying each and every day as opposed to the opposite of that. About living your life in a freer sense and not being bound by what people think of you and looking forward to seeing the grander scheme of who God is, what He's done and what He's doing and what He'd going to do.

I've written this song called 'Insania' - it's a mix of Insane and Mania, and even though it's a made up word you instantly know what it means!

In so far as I have any beliefs, I suppose I'm like that old Peggy Lee song, 'Is That All There Is?' I want to believe there's something else going on, but what that something else is I don't pretend to know.

My father urged Alan [Lomax] not to repeat the mistakes of the European folklorists who, a century ago, had collected these peasant songs and then arranged them for part choir and accompanied them on piano, and then told the young people of their country, "Don't change a note, this is our sacred heritage." Father said, whether it's a fiddle tune or a gospel song, learn it right off the record from the people who grew up with it. Don't just learn it from a piece of paper.

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.

Looking back, I think I tried to be too eclectic. Sometimes I'd sing thirty songs, and fifteen of them were not in English.

If I've got a talent, it's for picking the right song at the right time for the right audience. And I can always seem to get people to sing with me.

I always knew that sooner or later there would come somebody like Woody Guthrie who could make a great song every week. Dylan certainly had a social agenda, but he was such a good poet that most of his attempts were head and shoulders above things that I and others were trying to do. ... If I had an address, I'd send him a birthday card saying, 'keep on going.'

Now somebody will ask me, Pete, how can you prove these songs really make a difference? And I have to confess I can't prove a darn thing, except that the people in power must think they do something, because they keep the songs off the air.

RULERS should be careful about what songs are allowed to be sung.