Song Quotes - Page 175

I want to say at once that I frankly believe that Irving Berlin is the greatest songwriter that has ever lived.... His songs are exquisite cameos of perfection, and each one of them is as beautiful as its neighbor. Irving Berlin remains, I think, America's Schubert.

When I went travelling around Europe there was the Eurovision song contest on, and I got a bit dunk and we missed our train to Budapest the next day. Anyway, when I got back I kind of realised how many songs there were about people giving up things for somebody, so I thought I'd make a song about giving up things I don't have. These elaborate things that I don't have that I could give up to somebody, and I kind of thought there was kind of some sweet sentiment in that.

Writing, madam, is a mechanic part of wit. A gentleman should never go beyond a song or a billet.

Some of the press who speak loudly about the freedom of the press are themselves the enemies of freedom. Countless people dare not say a thing because they know it will be picked up and made a song of by the press. That limits freedom.

You must know the story of how the race of ancient days reached the stars, and how they bargained away all the wild half of themselves to do so, so that they no longer cared for the taste of the pale wind, no for love or lust, nor to make new songs nor to sing old ones, nor for any of the other animal things they believed they had brought with them out of the rain forests al the bottom of time--though in fact, so my uncle told me, those things brought them

If your songs connect with the fans and they pump their fists in the air and go "Yeah!!" that's when a song really works. That's the electric church of it. The glory hallelujah of it.

When I would create a dance, I wouldn't have the luxury that ballet people do when they take a piece of music and impose a dance upon it. What we did in motion pictures was have a song and within that song try to elaborate. My usual method was to do what a writer does: get a plot.

I feel safe and comfortable to do that once I know that the song structure around the bass part is very interesting and it satisfies me in a compositional sense.

I could tell it was a popular move as a writer to walk down the bass lines while you were writing a song.

I'm not good at happy, lightweight kind of music. I'm not really good at pop music. "Cars" is probably the only true pop song I ever wrote. I wish I could write more, but I'm not very good at it.

Oh sure, the songs have all totally evolved. I mean, when you're playing the same songs night in night out, they take on a life of their own. I can't even remember what I wrote some of them about now!

Music is soaking up things that I see in other people or things that go on in my life, and I put it out there in the form of a song.

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.

What is that song that Willie Nelson sang? 'Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few.' I think of that. No big deal. I've reached a stage in my life where I am content.

The chorus-ending from Aristophanes, raised every night from every ditch that drains into the Mediterranean, hoarse and primeval as the raven's croak, is one of the grandest tunes to walk by. Or on a night in May, one can walk through the too rare Italian forests for an hour on end and never be out of hearing of the nightingale's song.

I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.

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.

If you write songs you have an idea how they're going to sound.

I won't deny a song or a melody. I can't deny it.

"Macarena" is a great song. If music is something you can remember - the worst crime music can do is to be forgettable.

The music takes on all different jobs and hopefully is part of telling the story. Each song has to be a story unto itself. It's a very different set of muscles.

Over a period of time, I think the popular will in Iran will prevail.

True popular ballads are the spontaneous products of nature.

To me the poets are closer than I am to the idea of voice, to a sort of primeval song that we all participate in.

I want him to see the flowers in my eyes and hear the songs in my hands.