Stephen Sondheim Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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There's something different that happens when you're writing a song for your own record that you know you're going to sing.
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I wouldn't want to cover a Hank Williams song in a country-western way. It doesn't occur to me instinctually to re-create productions. I'm interested in re-creating songs. Putting different clothes on them.
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'Paper Planes' was an accident. It wasn't a song we made for the masses. It took two years to get popular, and there were many fights about censoring the gunshot sounds.
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Personal relationships are usually my biggest inspirations for writing my songs. The best way for me to write a song is to visualise the story in my head, and I start humming a melody, and before you know it, a song is born.
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I think that kids need to grow up watching what I grew up watching - great entertainment; you know, Judy Garland and all these musicals that bring song and dance and acting all together in a polished way.
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The buzz you get when you're playing a song and everyone is screaming and dancing and what have you and singing along is incredible.
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It usually takes me 20 to 90 minutes to write a song because once I start, I don't stop. If I start writing a song, and you try to have a conversation with me, you're a bad person.
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To write a love song that might be able to make it on the radio, that is something that is terrifying to me. But I can definitely write a song about that chair over there. That I can do, but to sit and write a pop song out of the clear blue sky, that is very difficult and I admire the people that can do it.
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Both my grandmothers had upright pianos, and I just knew how to play since I was a child. Nobody taught me. I sounded like a grown-up, and then I learned how to read music. I played so well by ear I could fool the teacher to believe I could play the notes. She'd make the mistake of playing the song once, and I could play it.
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I didn't used to do shows, because I used to be so shy. We'd perform, and I'd be at the back, thinking of another song. I was so shy, I ain't never getting in front of the camera; I would never get on stage.
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For me, a perfect pop song is something like 'This Year,' by the Mountain Goats.
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'God Made Girls' was such a success for me. I'm so blessed to have over half a million downloads on that song. I was the highest-charting new female in 2014, and I couldn't have done that without Big Machine and their support.
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I was once sitting on a tube, and someone was playing my song so loudly through their ear phones next to me. I just stayed silent and chuckled to myself.
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The one hit song that I have tremendous gratitude for is Boots, because it has a life of its own. It's like being identified with a brand name.
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If Mozart were around now he would write a killer rock song.
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She’s a nice girl – I just feel very honoured that she wanted to sing my song. I used to scream for her in Times Square and now I work for her. When I was 13 she was the most provocative performer of my time. I love her so much! Britney certainly doesn’t need any freakin’ tips from me! Britney Spears is the queen of pop. I was learning from her.
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When we did that album (Vol. 4) it was like one big Roman orgy-we'd be in the Jacuzzi all day doing coke, and every now and then we'd get up to do a song.
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I try to find little things that you can do to move the song along and things that serve the song.
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When you do not know of a thing say so plainly.
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Even if all the world were to combine forces, they could not bring about the conception of a single child in any woman's womb nor cause it to be born; that is wholly the work of God.
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It was about being wanted, it was about winning, and it was about my passion for the game. I just loved it. I absolutely loved to compete and to step out onto that football field with my teammates.
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Almost every Marine I've met says I portray a Marine dead-on, which is really, really flattering.
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Kirk Kerkorian has not been through the design dome.
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So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work.
