Song Quotes - Page 306

I was quite surprised when I started looking at the lyrics for 'Punk Prayer'. Given its brutal style, I did not expect the lyrics to be so well written and thought through. But the more I understood of it, the more I realised that this was not only a protest, it was brilliant art as well. So I decided I would try to strip away the layers that made me sceptical in the first place, and focus on the desperate beauty Pussy Riot have conceived in this song.

I don't consider myself very principled. As a travelling musician, you have to adapt and adjust to different contexts every day. It is always difficult to connect preach and practice. For instance, I fly more in a year than I had hoped to do in my whole life. I eat what people serve me, not what I think is right. I tried writing songs that were principled, but always ended up contradicting myself when trying to convert the principles into practice. In fact, these days I try not to be too principled, but rather be pragmatic.

The Eurovision Song Contest is by definition apolitical - unless your song criticises Russia, of course.

There are certain songs that if people come up to me and tell me how much that song meant to them, I think, You should have better taste, then, because I don't really like that song.

If I'm walking down the street and someone stops me and says, "Oh! A song that you wrote meant a lot to me, and I listened to it after I went to my sister's funeral," that's when it hits me.

A lot of people do talk about the demise of the album, but I still believe that if an artist tries hard to make a great album, people will buy it and listen to it as an album, rather than just a collection of random songs.

When playing big festivals, I tend to play big, over the top techno tracks, like hands in the air songs that make sense being played in front of 30,000 people. I steer away from subtlety in the interests of big bombastic dance music.

Some of the songs I've made, I'm really disappointed in how I mixed them.

In the course of my life, I've made some happy songs but it's the more sort of like pathos-laden, emotional, melancholic music that either I make or that other people make that really resonates with me.

Bob Altman got nothing from the TV series 'M*A*S*H,' and the royalties for the theme song went to his oldest son, Michael, who wrote it as a 15-year-old poet!

It was really different this time, because we did everything in the studio and thought out the writing and song structures. Before this album ["The Black Crown"], we used to just write riff after riff and then worry about the rest of it later.

I always look for a "rhythm" in my writing. A cadence to the sentences. Sometimes I think of pieces I write in a song writing infrastructure - i.e., a verse, a chorus that I return to, a bridge that's something differenct, a chorus that I return to.

Nobody's favorite movie is some dark, dysfunctional slasher story. Everybody's favorite song is a sentimental song. So why all of a sudden is it bad to be sentimental in books?

When he went blundering back to God, His songs half written, his work half done, Who knows what paths his bruised feet trod, What hills of peace or pain he won? I hope God smiled and took his hand, And said, "Poor truant, passionate fool! Life’s book is hard to understand: Why couldst thou not remain at school?" A poem by Charles Hanson Towne

God sings, we hum along, and there are many melodies, but it's all one song - one same, wonderful, human song.

Research is always a high priority in my fiction. Songs, fashion, politics, television, movies, trends - I try to get those details right.

I really enjoy writing and producing for other artists. Some people save their best songs for their own albums. I'd rather give another artist one of my songs. At the end of the day, it still represents me.

In New York I heard A Piece of Ground, written by a white South African, Jeremy Taylor. I modified it a little and sang it myself. That song is very special to me because it deals with the land question in southern Africa. We were dispossessed of our land.

We Gonna Win' is a song of triumph, It represents my personal belief that with hard work, talent and dedication, everything is possible. It's a one of a kind marriage between rap and classical music, where the music doesn't accompany the vocalist, but rather stands on its own.

Not a specific song. What I do maybe love above all about Nick Cave is how he's created this universe, this world, where there are all these characters and songs and themes. It's very unique, and I appreciate it. It's very hard to say that I have a specific favourite; I just actually love everything that he does.

My songs always speak of love, that's the way I like them.

I think the more emotional you are, the better. I'm sort of writing [songs] as I go and I can never tell how it's going to be or how it's going to feel until I get into the studio. But I definitely think it will. I probably can't help but have the emotions in my voice.

We write so many songs, it is difficult to narrow them down.

I can reach the mass audience if I come from different perspectives on every song.

Falling in love is awesome, but I'm never drawn to happy songs per se, so whenever you sit down to write a heartbreak song and you're happily in love, it's like, 'OK, now I have to go back to a sad place to get something good.'