Song Quotes - Page 416

In the meantime [1965-67], [Bob] Dylan was again writing some of the best love songs in the genre, like "Visions of Johanna," "Just Like a Woman," and "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands."

[Bob] Dylan's broken-heart songs are so much better. Like "Simple Twist of Fate".

Along with some of the worst music of Bob Dylan's career ("Self-Portrait," 1970), this period produced some gems - including many songs recorded with The Band in '67 but not released until years later.

"Tangled Up in Blue," shifts perspective several times during the song to tell a "tangled" version of [Bob] Dylan's marriage and dissolution.

A song is like a dream, and you try to make it come true. They're like strange countries that you have to enter.

If you don't have to write songs, why write them? I've got enough where I don't really feel the urge to write anything additional.

Lay down the song you strum, And rest yourself 'neath the strength of strings No voice can hope to hum.

If I made records for my own pleasure, I would only record Charley Patton songs.

You just don't wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

The highlight of my career? That's easy, Elvis recording one of my songs.

I just wanted a song to sing, and there came a point where I couldn't sing anything...nobo dy else was writing what I wanted to sing. I couldn't find it anywhere. If I could I probably would never have started writing.

I don't write the songs; I just write 'em down.

And I'll know my song well before I start singing

And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’ But I’ll know my song well before I start singin

"Like a Rolling Stone" [of Bob Dylan] is a kiss-off song like none before or since.

I was never a topical songwriter.

A brilliant 1989 album, Oh Mercy; some career retrospectives; and two albums of American folk songs, with just Bob Dylan and his guitar and harmonica. All that culminated in the Grammy-winning comeback album, Time Out of Mind (1997). Once again, just as Dylan seemed to be out of it, he was back at the top of his game.

There would be brilliant songs, but, as [Bob] Dylan admitted on the recent Martin Scorsese documentary about him (No Direction Home), the specific muse that inspired "It's Alright Ma" would not return.

I started writing songs after I heard Hank Williams.

What's that? My six song album entitled Bo Fo Sho is currently available on iTunes? With three songs that have never been heard on the internet? Uh, and if I try to pirate it for free I'll get AIDS? I would have guessed scurvy. Well, see you later ghost of Dr.Martin Luther King Jr.

I don't want to try to recreate for no reason. Like, me in my bedroom, singing songs to a camera was a special thing that was at that time in my life. But I'm just not that kid. I like the format of it, but I want to be able to release things for free.

I'd like to teach kids how to write songs. This will be my first year so I'm just as green as some of the rest of the folks. It's like a music camp and I get to hang out with some of the past contestants.

I picked and co-wrote the songs that if I was a guy who would be spending my hard-earned money buying an album I would want to hear.

The judges say, make it your own, so I just remixed a song if I felt like the piece needed it

There is a certain standard of grace and beauty which consists in a certain relation between our nature, such as it is, weak or strong, and the thing which pleases us. Whatever is formed according to this standard pleases us, be it house, song, discourse, verse, prose, woman, birds, rivers, trees, room, dress, and so on. Whatever is not made according to this standard displeases those who have good taste.