Song Quotes - Page 195

The music suddenly became important enough for me to build my own sound studio and start to prepare songs to possibly put out into the world.

I can't imagine ever not making music, making albums, writing songs, doing shows. That's all I really know, and that's all I really do.

I've got to be kind of careful because I've had good advice: "Don't sell yourself too short." I have to not be too available to everything that comes along. I've always been a people pleaser and now I'm upping the ante in terms of price so I can be more selective. I really enjoyed working on three tracks on Sara Groves' [parenthood-focused] album Station Wagon. I love playing on those songs and I love the heart in that album.

It was a matter of not seeing the woods for the trees. Glorious songs have been in Ireland forever, but a lot of these were so popular they were sung only by drunken men at weddings. They didn't have any regard for the song at all. So, I picked out 14 songs that I had grown up with, songs with great melodies. After 35 years as a songwriter, I appreciate the value of a good melody because I know how hard it is to write one. So I presented them in a new way, with piano, keyboards, strings, and a contemporary rhythm section. I just treated the melody with a bit of dignity and a bit of style.

As a kid, I always had a super vivid imagination, like "Man, I like those shoes, but they should've made them in purple" or like, "Man, I wonder how people make songs."

Original Monkees' songs were produced very thinly, on purpose.

Being used to scientific terminology and theory it was always natural for me to push this stuff into songs.

I still prefer to hear [Bob] Dylan acoustic, some of his electric songs are absolutely great. Electric music is the vernacular of the second half of the twentieth century, to use my father's old term.

I keep reminding people that an editorial in rhyme is not a song. A good song makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it makes you think.

Songwriting becomes a conscious attempt to delve into the unconscious. Even those writers who scoff at the concept of a spiritual source for their songs admit that the phenomenon of having them simply arrive feels magical.

I get bored quickly. I kind of take my hat off to bands who have been around for a long time and still do the same thing, because it's hard to keep a band together for decades. But I couldn't do that. I couldn't play the same songs night after night or just trade on my past glories, because it wouldn't interest me as a person.

I think I always had a musicality, and I think I could tell a good song from a bad song. And I would appreciate hearing something that was new to me.

Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs

Pete Ham in the group was a very good writer. He wrote the Nilsson song "Without You", which is a seriously good song. But the poor fellow topped himself. He was a lovely bloke, I can still see him now. It was a terrible loss.

I'm still looking to write a great song.... You always are. You know, you never think, 'Well, that's enough ... that's good enough.'

When I write songs I write for myself...I'm writing it as a form of expression, and hoping to find an audience, an audience that responds to music that is honest and lyrical and tells stories.

Bollywood has got this rare quality where it dances, but it still has a depth of a sad song at the same time. It's really strange. They kind of manage to do two things at once. We do a ballad, or a dance song, and it's very difficult. They kind of mix those two things together. It's pretty impressive, beautiful music.

Advice? Focus on the craft. Study the greats. Try and understand how and why they made the writing choices they did. Then, start by copying them...just as an exercise. See if you can do similar things. Learn how to write a song like so and so. Then, when you've done that, write a song like yourself. Learn to color within the lines before going outside them.

I thought of all the others who had tried to tie her to the ground and failed. So I resisted showing her the songs and poems I had written, knowing that too much truth can ruin a thing. And if that meant she wasn't entirely mine, what of it? I would be the one she could always return to without fear of recrimination or question. So I did not try to win her and contented myself with playing a beautiful game. But there was always a part of me that hoped for more, and so there was a part of me that was always a fool.

All music now, I think, is fair game for jazz musicians to interpret, and they have been. I would consider those songs standards now. "Norwegian Wood" is a standard; "Call Me" is a standard.

Some songs started from a bass line, some started from having the full lyric and Jim, my drummer, who's also the first guy I've been in the studio with him since 16, sometimes he'd have an idea and I'd put a lyric to it and then the track evolves, there's no set way to write a song.

When a lovely flame dies, Smoke gets in your eyes.

I wanted to have all the songs to be the strongest they could be and all the choruses to be catchy. One of those records you could put in your car and just drive and not have to change it.

Acting is a difficult profession, it really is. It's different than singing. With singing you may have one song and four people to record it - but they'll all do it differently and they'll all have that option. Whereas with actors there might be one part, and five hundred actors all want the same role - it's so much more competitive. It's an incredibly painful profession because you get so much rejection.

I have really been blessed in my career with some wonderful songwriters and in turn, songs.