Stephen Sondheim Quotes
Hit songs did not come out of musicals. Pop-rock was creating the hits. There were very few songs that made the charts out of any Broadway musical.
Quotes to Explore
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Tori Amos had a major influence on how I craft words in a song.
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It's always a live experience - anything that happens around you. It's so easy to just put it to a song.
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With technology now, you can go in and sing a song, and for $100,000, you will sound flawless.
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It took a long while for me to even put out a record because there were so many options of how to do a song, and in some respects, I'm never totally happy with the outcome.
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I fantasise about what the future could be in terms of aesthetic and psychology. It's the most difficult thing to do because you have to start from the past - your favourite architect, your favourite song - you take it all with you.
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I was in New York doing musicals in the theater and on Broadway before 'Orange,' so people always ask, 'Are you ever going to get to sing? Does she even sing?' But people who know me know I actually do sing.
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When I first start writing a song, I usually write the title first, then the song, and I'll sing the song in my head and think of a visual of the song. If I can't think of a visual behind the song, I'll throw the song away.
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I'm a pretty easygoing person, and it bleeds into the music. Even if I'm writing the most personal song, it's not going to come out totally serious; there's always a little tongue in the cheek.
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One of my favorite albums in the world is Bruce Springsteen's 'Nebraska.' Each song has this very distinct character who has something profound to say.
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It was a privilege to direct the music video for Adele's beautiful, heartbreaking song, 'Hello.' When I first heard it, all the images appeared clearly in my head - and her trust and generosity allowed me to work with abandon artistically and emotionally, like she always does. It made me extremely proud.
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'Can't Get Closer' I originally recorded in about half an hour, just on my bed with a microphone. I actually re-recorded the song with a cleaner vocal take, but I decided to leave the demo version on there, just because I felt that instant where it was created is what captured the most emotion.
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It might crush a lot of people, but I've never been in the room with an artist that I've written a song for.
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I'm scared of karaoke. I think if I did have a go to karaoke song, it would be 'Whatta Man' by Salt-n-Pepa.
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It's not just about getting a song on the radio or appearing on television. It really is about helping people change their lives one day at a time.
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When I write, I don't have any expectation of what kind of song it will become or who it might reach.
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Great music is its own movie, already. And the challenge, as a music fan, is to keep the song as powerful as it wants to be, to not tamper with it and to somehow give it a home.
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I don't want to have a song like 'My Humps' and it be sagging down, so I pay attention to that area. A lot.
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Our purpose is to educate as well as to entertain. Painless preaching is as good a term as any for what we do. If you're going to come away from a party singing the lyrics of a song, it is better that you sing of self-pride like 'We're a Winner' instead of 'Do the Boo-ga-loo!'
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We sing a little song before we eat, a little blessing before we eat, and it's really - we're thanking the Lord and the Earth for the food that we eat, and it really brings you together in a profound kind of way.
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I've been doing morning pages: the first thing I do when I wake up is sit down and write three pages of whatever comes into my head. The more I do them, the more creative I get and the smaller my problems seem. I can turn something that I hated a few days ago into a short story or a song.
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'The Sixth Sense' was a very enjoyable, successful movie despite the fact that there were plenty of people, including myself, who saw the ending coming.
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My pledge to myself is I will believe in my music, always. I stand behind everything I do. If I don't think it's amazing, how the hell is anyone else going to think it's amazing? But that's just me.
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I don't like balance. Balance is not a word you can use in Versace fashion.
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Hit songs did not come out of musicals. Pop-rock was creating the hits. There were very few songs that made the charts out of any Broadway musical.
