Eunice Kathleen Waymon (Nina Simone) Quotes
"Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," a song that was written for Simone, she confronted the band's lead singer, Eric Burdon. "So you're the honky," she said, "who stole my song and got a hit out of it?
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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Even in the beginning, when we knew there was a legal argument about how much our song sounds like his song, as one songwriter to another, I wasn't sure that Cat Stevens would take that as bad.
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There was a film called 'FM,' and we were asked to do the title song. And I said, 'Does it have to have any specific words?' And they said, 'No, it just has to be about FM radio.' It took a day or two to write.
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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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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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If I waited for inspiration every time I sat down to write a song I probably would be a plumber today.
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That's my favorite part about songwriting, the way you write a song, and someone else might hear it a different way.
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I've had writing sessions with people, but I've never had one where you're just there, and you start making a song, and then it's too good to be true that something really cool will come out of this.
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I made a living being a background singer for years.
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I've been doing this career for a really long time, but there was not a lot of reason, at the time when I wrote 'Fight Song,' to believe that I should keep going.
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If you can make the song a soundtrack to what you're living at the time, I think that's the most important part of a song.
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If I had my choice, I'd pick a song that tells a story every time. There is a great deal of pleasure in doing the vocal on a number that you can put feeling into.
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When I feel comfortable, I just like to sing and hum, and I don't even know I'm doing it. But sometimes someone will come over to me like, 'I love that song you were singing, but it's distracting.'
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Sometimes the song title comes with the songs, other times you just sorta make something up afterwards.
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Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I'm really not worth being called an artist at all.
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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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One of my real goals was to hear someone whistling a song I'd written.
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At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.
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Who travels far will often see things Far removed from what was believed as Truth.
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I've seen many of my contemporaries become superstars, and the way fame and fortune starts to really affect the way they treat other people, and I think it's ugly.
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"Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," a song that was written for Simone, she confronted the band's lead singer, Eric Burdon. "So you're the honky," she said, "who stole my song and got a hit out of it?
