Hamilton Leithauser Quotes
You look back and see pictures of yourself, or hear an old song, and you know where that came from or why you were working on that - but you don't want to do that again. You don't necessarily hate it, but you're a very different person now, so, in that way you do.
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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There was this song I was working on called 'Swing.' It was almost finished, but there was something missing, and I couldn't for the life of me figure it out. And then this little piece of information - this little tweet - came to the forefront of my mind.
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I'm no actor, and I've got 64 pictures to prove it.
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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 way in which 'Friends' did resemble 'Seinfeld' is that it really found its audience over the summer of 1995 in reruns. That's when the main title song, 'I'll Be There for You', by the Rembrandts, exploded, too.
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I did a song in eight minutes. I thought everybody could write songs that fast. But working with a lot of them, they don't.
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If it weren't for the rocks in its bed, the stream would have no song.
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The pictures I make come from every blink of my lashes.
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Sometimes I have a melody in my head; sometimes it's just a verse. I read lines from a book or movies that I watch and grab a few quotes and start writing on paper. From there, I record a really rough version and work on the song.
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And since discriminating fans can pick and choose exactly what they want to buy, artists and their labels are more conscious than they've ever been of making sure that every song on a new album is as good as can be.
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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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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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If Mozart were around now he would write a killer rock song.
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'Wuthering Heights' was not your normal type song - but that's why it was so brilliant. It was something out the norm. When something like that comes along, they don’t come along that often. When does the next Kate Bush come along, after Kate Bush? There hasn’t been one.
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I decided a handful of years ago that I just want to write songs that you can understand as soon as you put the record on. There’s no need to veil what’s happening in the song the way I used to. My goal as a songwriter now is to simply write some memorable turns of phrase.
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Tell me who's the queen standin' over by the record machine Lookin' like a model on the cover of the magazine She's too cute to be a minute over seventeen Mean while I was still thinkin'If it's a slow song we'll omit it If it's a rocker, that we'll get it And if it's good, she'll admit it C'mon Queenie, let's get with it
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I learned it was crucial to play right on the edge of the beat... It makes you drive the song more. You're ahead of the beat, but you're not.
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I've been through almost every type of obsession as far as music genres go, so I usually say I just like a good song, but the songs that are the most universal that a person on the other side of the world knows and can relate to is a very powerful entity.
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There have always been jokes all over our songs; I originally started writing lyrics to make my friends crack a smile, which is difficult.
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The roads of life are strewn with the wreckage of run-down and half-finished loves.
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It’s dangerous to assume that because a person is drawn to holiness in his study that he is thereby a holy man. There is irony here. I am sure that the reason I have a deep hunger to learn of the holiness of God is precisely because I am not holy. I am a profane man—a man who spends more time out of the temple than in it. But I have had just enough of a taste of the majesty of God to want more. I know what it means to be a forgiven man and what it means to be sent on a mission. My soul cries for more. My soul needs more.
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You look back and see pictures of yourself, or hear an old song, and you know where that came from or why you were working on that - but you don't want to do that again. You don't necessarily hate it, but you're a very different person now, so, in that way you do.
