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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Well, once I did 'Grease,' everyone was offering me studio pictures in a similar vein – you know, popcorn movie.
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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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You are an eternal being now on the pathway of endless unfoldment, never less but always more yourself. Life is not static. It is forever dynamic, forever creatingnot something done and finished, but something alive, awake and aware. There is something within you that sings the song of eternity. Listen to it.
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I do feel fortunate to have some knowledge of the great Latin American writers, including some that are probably not that well known in English. I'm thinking of Jose Maria Arguedas, whom I read when I was living in Lima, and who really impacted the way I viewed my country.
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It's the way you play that makes it. What I say is, for Christ's sake, you don't have to kill yourself to sing. Play like you play. Play like you think, and then you got it, if you're going to get it. And whatever you get, that's you, so that's your story.
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The only discipline that lasts is self-discipline.
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Hypocrisy, false labels, can create slogans but no poems; propaganda but not life: there are no roots, there are no realities to nurture creative work.
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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.
