Song Quotes - Page 326

Some people take pictures, I write songs.

I'm not afraid to go out on a limb, style-wise or with lyrics. I don't ever want to be afraid to cut those types of songs because radio might not play it.

It takes so many people to make a success story like that. It starts with the song and the songwriters, then Mark Wright's producing, all of the players that played on it, me singing, the marketing department, the promotion department at the label... It takes a lot of people to make a hit like that.

I love opera so much. I would never go back to doing it, but I love to listen - I'm grateful for it. I studied diction, breathing control, phrasing, why the song means something. You want to bring that across to your listeners.

I'll get into conversations with other people, and all of a sudden they will say something that sparks that... either the titles to me, or just the conversation itself will spark an idea for a song.

Janis Joplin is definitely one of my biggest influences. She taught me how to feel music, and I don't think there's anyone like her that could bring such pain and emotion to a song.

I was 5 when I won my first song and dance competition, and my parents asked me if that is what I wanted to do, and I said, "Yeah." At 5, how can you know that? On some level, I knew that was my gift.

Am I missing something because of my lack of education? Being an intellectual - I'm not. So I hire him as a corner man, like a boxer; he watches me and tells me what I do wrong before I go in for the next round. Barry thought he was going to write what became Executioner's Song, and I told him he wasn't going to. And Barry's closest friend was Joan Didion.

We live in a world with "free" content, and this freedom is not an imperfection. We listen to the radio without paying for the songs we hear; we hear friends humming tunes that they have not licensed. We tell jokes that reference movie plots without the permission of the directors. We read our children books, borrowed from a library, without paying the original copyright holder for the performance rights.

We have to make sure the music and the message and the words and all the elements come through in our songs and every time we appear in public.

For the introvert, conversation can be a very limited forum for self expression. When a song moves you, a writer gets you or a theory enlightens you, you and its creator are connecting in a realm beyond sight or speech.

To write a book is for all the world like humming a song.

To write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it.

My angel-boy is close now, as in five-feet-away close. There's no way I'm going to burst into song in front of him. But then the contrary part of me says, you're going to let a boy keep you from singing out loud? Sing, sister! Sing! So I do, and my angel-boy turns his head.

Everyone's [ me, Iain Cook and Martin Doherty] equally involved in all the writing. Normally we'll start with a sample or a drumbeat, or a synth sound or something like that, and that will spark the initial idea. And then we'll write an instrumental sketch of a song, and then we put on a nonsense vocal melody, which is always my favourite bit because it obviously sounds amazing.

I've definitely read interviews with people where they've explained exactly what they wrote something about and I've been like: "Oh no, I was thinking that was a really beautiful love song or a really sad thing."

I think I have a vested interest in thinking that the lyrics are important, but I think for us it's important that we all write things that mean something to us, and I think we're not really in the business of writing la-la-love-you chart pop songs. It needs to have a personal pulling in the gut for me, to want to write anything about it.

The songs that you work and work and work on sometimes are just forced and not as good.

The best songs that I write usually come in, like, two minutes, and I think a lot of songwriters would probably say those kind of songs that come just like that are the good ones.

The way that I write songs is pretty simple. I hear music first, much like you would when you're scoring a film. I usually hear a soundtrack in my head, and after I get that soundtrack, it tells me what it's about, what it feels like, what the emotion is, and the words come after.

Song: Heloise and Abelard by Elizabeth Devlin. Beyond the a propros subject matter, this lady can really play the Autoharp. This song sounds like something you'd find on a gramophone record.

Do you know what my father used to say?" I ask her. "He used to say that songs had a heart. A crescendo that can make all your blood rush from your head to your toes.

and I've always known it, the way I love a song I hear for the first time, even before I know all the words, the way I love my favorite color, and the way that the train would speed past my bedroom when it was very quiet and I'd feel it in my stomach rushing through me. I love you in a way that I've never felt needed to be said.

No one knew what Rococode was "supposed" to sound like. Now we have a sound and we have a good idea of what we want to create and the type of songs we want to present to people. I think it's really exciting, actually.

Taxi drivers used to ask me what kind of music I did and I'd say, well, it's kind of jazz, soul, classical - but that makes no sense to anyone. Now I say I just write my own songs. I thought I had to help people get me, but I don't think they need to be spoon-fed. If you connect with me that is cool. I don't need the whole world to feel like I am a soul angel.