Song Quotes - Page 276

I was really kind of miserable with myself personally and all of the things that you can be creatively, until someone said - and I don't know what about it made it click at this specific time - but they said, "You're not 18 anymore, and you're not writing songs in your old bedroom. It's work. You should get up every day and set a perimeter of time and start compartmentalizing your life."

I create my own schedule, so you start out each day and you say, "Okay, from 10 to 11 I'm going to write," and on the dot at 10, I went downstairs, got dressed like I was going to work, and at 11 I stopped. I don't know why, what kind of wizardry about that worked, but having the structure for a month, I was dishing out songs.

It was like those songs I'd heard as a child, each so familiar, and all mine. When i got older and realized the words were sad, the stories tragic, it didn't make me love them any less. By then they were already part of me, woven into my conciousness & memory

Whether it was a song, a person, or a story, there was a lot you couldn’t know from just an excerpt, a glance, or part of a chorus.

It was as familiar to me as a song I'd been hearing my whole life, covered by various people but the basic tune the same.

But for now, I just sat there on the bed and listened to my song. The one that had been written for me by a man who knew me not at all, now sung by the one who knew me best.

The first thing I did when I got inside was turn on the kitchen light. Then I moved to the table, putting my dad's iPod on the speaker dock, and a Bob Dylan song came on, the notes familiar. I went into the living room, hitting the switch there, then down the hallway to my room, where I did the same. It was amazing what a little noise and brightness could do to a house and a life, how much the smallest bit of each could change everything. After all these years of just passing through, I was beginning to finally feel at home.

There's so much more you can do with the dynamics of songs when they're simple... I think it was what I needed in my life - there was a lot going on, a lot of layers.

I guess it was this over-riding feeling I wanted people to get from the album - a kind of positivity. On the one hand it's quite a sad record, but I wanted the songs in essence to be about pulling yourself out of a difficult time. So I thought that the idea of day after a really long, difficult night, would be pretty appropriate... I think the album's about contrasts too - contrasts of emotion - so I thought the comparison was appropriate.

If someone says something good or bad, or whatever they have to say about your song, you've just got to embrace it.

We should write an elegy for every day that has slipped through our lives unnoticed and unappreciated. Better still, we should write a song of thanksgiving for all the days that remain-now that we know how to cherish them.

Other memories stick, no matter how much you wish they wouldn’t. They’re like a song you hate but can’t ever get completely out of your head, and this song becomes the background noise of your entire life, snippets of lyrics and lines of music floating up and then receding, a crazy kind of tide that never stops.

But what do I care, for love will be over so soon, Let my heart have its say and my mind stand idly by, For my mind is proud and strong enough to be silent, It is my heart that makes my songs, not I.

Make songs for Death as you would sing to Love -But you will not assuage him. He aloneOf all the gods will take no gifts from men.

With the backdrop of The Salvation Army's century and a half of service to the world's poor, these songs and reflections are born of meaningful engagement with a living Gospel

I feel like my songs are like diary entries for me. So I usually write about things that have happened to me specifically or sometimes it can be someone who's close to me.

Nobody ever thinks a song is about them. Well, not when it's mean. When it's a good song everybody thinks it's about them. And when it's mean, nobody thinks it's about them.

I'm a traditional singer-songwriter. I have a more organic sound.

I don't like karaoke very much. I like being around it, but I don't like singing it. If I had to sing a karaoke song, it's usually "Son of a Preacher Man" by Dusty Springfield.

I'd like to think I could physically manage doing that, but I don't think it feels authentic to the kind of performer that I am. I think that, for me, being stationary and just sort of singing the songs seems to be the most connected and authentic expression for me on stage.

I think it was the perfect gestation time for this particular piece [ Sounds Like Me: My Life (So Far) in Song]. One of the songs that I considered talking about was "Manhattan," because it was chronicling the end of a long relationship that was part of the reason why I moved from Los Angeles to New York, which was such a life-changing decision. I don't regret that it's not in there, but that's one that I considered diving into, and I have little piecemeal snippets of writing about that floating around

I used to sing songs from musicals all the time as a kid.

I think I have some anger-management issues, and they end up coming out in these passive-aggressive songs that sound happy.

You hear sounds and orchestration, it's ... the fastest way, I think, to your emotions, even if you don't understand the language of the song.

I have found words [in the Bible] for my inmost thoughts, songs for my joy, utterances for my hidden griefs, and pleadings for my shame and my feebleness.