My attitude these days is, if you write a bad song, what are they gonna do, throw you in songwriter jail?
Blow, bugles of battle, the marches of peace; East, west, north, and south let the long quarrel cease; Sing the song of great joy that the angels began, Sing the glory to God and of good-will to man!
I'm now comfortable playing a lot of the old songs, and I've gotten out a lot of the old equipment.
I wrote a thirty-second song that I couldn't finish for a year.
The studio's a collaborative environment. I just try to let people bring their own ideas to the songs and see what happens.
I can pinpoint the moment when my first band recorded, when I was 14 and 15 years old. I always enjoyed writing songs and playing, but there was something about going in and capturing it that felt very Zen and perfect for me. A light switch went on and I just realized that's where my musical capacity was the most suited. I just followed on blind faith that that was like a calling for me.
Loud is the summer's busy song The smallest breeze can find a tongue, While insects of each tiny size Grow teasing with their melodies, Till noon burns with its blistering breath Around, and day lies still as death.
The government did a lot of things to us in terms of sending pictures to my house. If I had to go to a school to give a speech and the sorority wanted to sign a song, they would send [a person] to my house and tell my wife that I had sex with this woman or that woman.It got to the point where my wife didn't know what to believe anymore, and the fact that I didn't have a job, I couldn't support my bills, the fact that I was getting ready to go through maybe a mental setback in terms of depression, we just had a tremendous amount of things on us.
One ought, everyday, to hear a song, read a fine poem, and, if possible, to speak a few reasonable words.
You explore beautiful songs & create your own interpretation of them.
I wanted to write a song that's known to the world as a classic, stadium-rock anthem.
I would like to be able to do a song with Ray Charles, before we both get too old.
"Nasty Man" isn't a laughing matter, but you have to laugh anyway. The song, itself, becomes something of a laughing matter because we'd go crazy if we didn't keep laughing.
The hardest song to write is a protest song, a topical song with meaning.
I wasn't popular in school, I was Mexican, I was all these inappropriate things. I started playing the ukulele and taking it to school, and I realized people liked listening to it. I would play it to comfort myself at home, and I'd play rhythm and blues songs that had four chords. That's how it started.
My mother bought a piano, put it in the front room, and I just started writing my songs.
Dialogue is generally the worst choice for exposition. When you're writing lines you need to focus on the way people actually talk. And when we talk to each other we never actually explain our terms. We don't say 'Sweetheart, would you pass me the sugar bowl, which we picked up for a song at that antique stall in Munich.'
Robert Burns enriched Scottish song with his genius and is mainly responsible for the rich treasure house of song that we enjoy today. He collected folk songs, retained the melodic line, kept what words were usable and rewrote the rest. He didn't claim ownership.
There are too many heavy songs out nowadays. music has been getting too heavy, almost to the state of unbearable.
I realized, "Gee, you're making the same film over and over here." I just kept making them for my own amusement, but also with this thought in my head that I could collect enough songs to make an album out of it. I am attracted to non-dramatic moments in life. The idea of a coffee break is not something you'd think of as being an important part of your day, so these shorts were like little free zones in which we could just play around.
Before I had my daughter I actually wanted to do something that I could put out for free, like a mixtape, but it wasn't going to really be a mixtape, it was just going to be songs that I wrote and release for free.
I'm friends with [exes] and they hear the songs. I can honestly say I don't have any exes I hate. They're artists in some fashion so they understand.
Give us Direction; the best of goodwill; Put us in touch with fair winds. Sing to us softly, hum the evening's song. Tell us what the blacksmith has done for you.
People love music, they love songs and they love movies. I just don't understand how, along the way, a musical become something that was less than both of those, instead of being something that is an incredible merge of two things that people love.
The beauty of the collage technique is that you're using sounds that have never met and were never supposed to meet. You introduce them to each other, at first they're a bit shy, clumsy, staring at their shoes. But you can sense there's something there. So you cut and paste a little bit and by the end of the song you can spot them in the corner, holding hands.
