Song Quotes - Page 403

When you listen to the music in this film [Despicable Me], it's working on the level of melody, but the other key element is lyrics. There are a number of songs in the film where the lyrics themselves are very much speaking to the essence of what Ted Geisel was setting out to do.

Songs give you incredible opportunity to convey a tremendous amount in a relatively short period of time. The first thing that John Powell, our composer, says is, "Is the song engaging you to tap your toe?" If you're not tapping your toe, it doesn't matter what you're doing in the song, it's not going to work. But, if you can get the audience to be engaged by the song, then it gives you the opportunity to accomplish so much, in a very concise way.

I certainly should have,' he agrees, smiling and thinking what an absurd and universally-accepted bit of nonsense it is, that your best friends must necessarily be the ones who best understand you. As if there weren't far too much understanding in the world already; above all, that understanding between lovers, celebrated in song and story, which is actually such torture that no two of them can bear it without frequent separations or fights.

The writers that I aspire to, like Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman, they'll tell you that the work gets harder, not easier. And they set that bar for us where we're always striving to do something better than the last time, whether it's the next song or just the next line.

An album for me as a teenager in the '70s was a fully formed concept. It was a body of work from an artist I liked or trusted or who excited me. Maybe one of the songs is really poppy and you listen to it on the radio as a hit single and then more of the world is about to find out about this artist by buying the record.

I'm someone who is pretty modest and doesn't like to talk about my love stories. Songs bring a lyrical quality to it, simply. It allows the audience to perceive the characters' love life in a way that is much more obvious than it might have been.

Some of the best songs I've written, I've written in 10 minutes.

The songs come along at their own pace when they are ready.

It is setting goals and trying to be a business person, but at the same time not losing sight of who you are writing songs for and what your goals are as a songwriter. So believe me, if you think I've got it down I don't it is a constant struggle.

Writing a song is like playing a series of downs in football: Lots of rules, timing is crucial, lots of boundaries, lots of protective gear, lots of stopping and starting.

Ah me, but where are now the songs I sang When life was sweet because you call’d them sweet?

It felt very natural to me to write a Christmas song, but at the same time I had to really put all sorts of pressure aside and just let the creativity flow and see what came out.

I am not greedy, so I would gladly give a song to someone else to sing if it makes more sense.

I love you," he writes again and again. "I can't bear to live without you. I'm counting the minutes until I see you." The words he uses are the idioms of popular songs and poems in the newspaper. And mine to him are no less cliched. I puzzle over the onionskin, trying to spill my heart onto the page. But I can only come up with the same words, in the same order, and hope the depth of feeling beneath them gives them weight and substance. I love you. I miss you. Be careful. Be safe.

We, as a band, are going to try to do a remix pack for some of our latest songs and do as much as we can. Every single that we release gets that. That's the thing that we enjoy. You meet a lot of talented producers and DJs, you revisit friends and ask them if they want to do a remix, that's one of the beauties in it right now: hearing different versions of our versions and just being able to put those out, as well.

We're all about exploring new sounds, so we don't have any limits whatsoever about how we go about finding them. We do tend to sample human vocals or sample sounds, which allows you to create your own sound. That's not our only way obviously, but that's a way you can use a sound no one's used before; it's not a sound in the synth. There's a lot of that going on in our songs in general.

I don't know if I could write songs if it wasn't for the female race, to be honest with you.

Of course I can appreciate the musicality of the pieces and sometimes the lyrics are generic enough to be listened to without reference, but I often feel cheated if I don't know what the hell is making this person burst out into song.

I find it difficult to fully enjoy musical theatre songs if I don't know the storyline of the show they are from as well as the context.

I hate it when you buy a record for the single and find out that is the only good song on the album.

Before we started writing we did feel pressure because of the success of the first record. One of the first songs that we wrote was "Out Of My Heart" which is the first single. As soon as we wrote that, we knew we just set the standard and every other song had to be as good if not better.

You try to be arrogant in songs because you can't be in real life.

I think when you write every song on your album - it's like having eleven or twelve children. It's hard to say I like this one song more or I like that one more. I love every song on the album. What's happening is that I'm hoping that everyone will be very satisfied. I think the single "Good Girl" will be adored by the people in the urban world and I think the "Best of Me" will be loved by people in the pop world.

It doesn't take a year to sing a song. Takes a year for people to figure out how to market it.

When you're an artist you're speaking about life, you're talking about your experience here on the planet. So essentially, that's what I do when I'm writing songs.