Song Quotes - Page 345

Some song ideas absolutely require a kind of rigid discipline, and others require absolute chaotic abandon. The form is only valid if you know how to un-form it. I don't mean to sound like an intellectual here!

There are some Rolling Stones songs that are just stunners.

I've been asked over the years to compile a list of desert-island discs. I couldn't do that. If I was trapped on a desert island, I don't think I'd want 10 songs to bring with me.

Most of the songs came from Europe and Africa and now they were coming back to us. Many of [Bob] Dylan's best songs came from Scotland, Ireland or England. It was a sort of cultural exchange.

There were very few real folk singers you know, though I liked Dominic Behan a bit and there was some good stuff to be heard in Liverpool. Just occasionally you hear very old records on the radio or TV of real workers in Ireland or somewhere singing these songs and the power of them is fantastic.

Today's folk song is rock and roll. Although it happened to emanate from America, that's not really important in the end because we wrote our own music and that changed everything.

'Revolution' . There were two versions of that song but the underground left only picked up on the one that said 'count me out'.

I felt an obligation even then to write a song that people would sing in the pub or on a demonstration. That is why I would like to compose songs for the revolution.

I must say the more interesting songs to me were the black ones because they were more simple.

I still don't know how to express the really delicate personal stuff. People think that Plastic Ono is very personal, but there are some subtleties of emotions which I cannot seem to express in pop music, and it frustrates me. Maybe that's why I still search for other ways of expressing myself. Song writing is a limiting experience in some ways - writing down words that have to rhyme.

I started being me about the songs, not writing objectively, but subjectively. I think it was Dylan who helped me realize that - not by any discussion or anything, but by hearing his work.

I don't know if I want to record together again. I go off and on it... In the old days, when we needed an album, Paul and I got together and produced enough songs for it. Nowadays, there's three of us writing prolifically and trying to fit it all into one album.

I'm always proud and pleased when people do my songs. It gives me pleasure that they even attempt them, because a lot of my songs aren't that doable.

It was very romantic. It's all in the song, The Ballad of John and Yoko. If you want to know how it happened, it's in there. Gibraltar was like a little sunny dream. I couldn't find a white suit -​ I had sort of off-white corduroy trousers and a white jacket. Yoko had all white on.

The whole Beatle thing was just beyond comprehension. When 'Help' came out, I was actually crying out for help. Most people think it's just a fast rock 'n roll song. I didn't realize it at the time; I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie. But later, I knew I really was crying out for help.

It ( In My Life ) was the first song that I wrote that was really, consciously about my life.... up until then, it had been all glib and throwaway.

Lack of feeling in an emotional sense is responsible for the way some singers do our songs. They don't understand and are too old to grasp the feeling. Beatles are really the only people who can play Beatle music.

Even if you can sing or even if you can write a song, it takes a lot of determination, it takes some kind of thick skin, because you got to persevere despite the fact that people tell you you shouldn't do this or you shouldn't do that or you're not good enough or your style's too different. I've heard all of that stuff.

I like songs that have like a little bit of quirkiness to them. What I like to do with songs, is kind of throw a little curveball in the lyrics or in the arrangement, to kind of give it a little twist to it.

There's a lot of hurry up and wait. But it gives you time to write a song.

I wrote the song "Show Me" as a prayer to God asking simple, honest questions about life and death and why there is so much suffering in the world. As I grew with the song I realized I shouldn't limit these questions solely to God; I should ask those questions of others and of myself.

Well, I like songs that have like a little bit of quirkiness to them.

That's the evergreen nature of a great song. They can be resurrected. They can be covered. They can find new relevance due to changing circumstances in history.

When I write, I don't really focus on duets or anything like that, or whether I'm going to feature this or that rapper. I just focus on just making a great song and figure out the rest later.

You have to be careful when it comes to copyrights, whether just sounding like or feeling like something is enough to say you violated their copyrights because there's a lot of music out there, and there's a lot of things that feel like other things that are influenced by other things. And you don't want to get into that thing where all of us are suing each other all the time because this and that song feels like another song.