Lyrics Quotes
-
Most of my lyrics are little stories about my experiences or those of my friends.
-
Listen to the words people say in their lyrics, and tell me, if that's some real shit, if that's real to you, you know what I mean. Listen to what they sayin', don't just bob your head to the beat, peep the game, and listen to what Im saying. Hold us accountable for it.
-
I'm totally into Taylor Swift. I think she has super-clever lyrics, and I love that she writes her own music. Some of the themes she writes about are stuff I wish was there for me when I was in high school, and I'm so happy she really cares about her female fans. She's not catering to a male audience and is writing music for other girls.
-
The one album I can't live without is called 'Cumbolo' by a band called Culture. Every song on their album is deep, but there's one in particular called 'This Train.' I have a tattoo of the lyrics on my left arm.
-
I do think the love-gone-wrong songs go over better, only because those melodies and those lyrics have a different feel that you can grasp on if you're a torch singer like myself.
-
I'm terrible remembering lyrics. Before a tour, I have to remind myself. I have to go through the songs.
-
I am always getting ideas for song lyrics and keep a notebook handy. Nowadays, I take a laptop with me everywhere, because I have a stock of handwritten lyrics in it.
-
I like collaboration because, first of all, I'm good at writing lyrics. I don't know how to make beats. I don't play instruments. I'm not a good singer. So even when you see a solo album of mine, it's still a collaboration.
-
The thing about Sondheim is that it does get very cerebral. You do need a faculty with words and a love for the lyrics to not just pull it off, but to have an appreciation for it.
-
I have a thing about inane lyrics - the world doesn't need them.
-
With my own material, I like maintaining lyric integrity. I like having sophisticated lyrics, and maybe that's not down-the-middle Top 40 pop, but it reflects my style, my life, the way I speak, and the way I tell what's happening with my life emotionally, so in that way, it's authentic to me.
-
Coming up, the music of my era was very conscious. I grew up on Public Enemy, and it was popular culture to be aware. People were wearing Malcolm X T-shirts and Malcolm X hats. It was a very cool thing to know who Malcolm X was. It was all in the lyrics. It was trendy to be conscious and aware.
-
Sometimes, I feel like my lyrics meander a little bit, and our songs are so big I need to write more words than are necessary.
-
In Korean, my lyrics are witty and have twists. But translated into English, it doesn't come over. I've tried writing in English, just for me, but it doesn't work. I've got to know everything about a culture, and I don't.
-
I can be stupid in my lyrics or say whatever I want without having to worry about anybody else's feeling or anybody being embarrassed by it or anything like that.
-
'Losing My Edge' was an anthem for the aging music nerd, with lyrics detailing a comically epic list of historical dates, bands and attended gigs: the anti-hipster's defence against 'the art-school Brooklynites in little jackets and borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered Eighties.'
-
Tori Amos had a major influence on how I craft words in a song. Until I heard 'Little Earthquakes' all my lyrics used really obvious analogies like rain for tears.
-
With 'Someone New', I was at my rawest, and I didn't want to cover it up. And same with 'You Should Know' and 'Under the Table.' I wanted it to be the lyrics and the chord progressions, and the intricacies of the guitar of 'Someone New' are so delicate, sometimes that's all you need.
-
You've got to make sure that you don't have an airbrushed picture making you look like a 15-year-old cherub when your lyrics suggest otherwise.
-
I would love to collaborate with Chance the Rapper. I love his lyrics and his sound and everything.
-
I realized in the early days I just didn't edit at all. But I think you become a little more cagey with your lyrics when you know more people are going to hear them and make assumptions about you as a person. Realizing that, you want to be a little more opaque.
-
Novelists get to say plenty in their massive tomes; rock singers only get four-minute songs with two verses and a chorus' worth of lyrics, and so there's a real pleasure in accessing the intelligence behind the music, even if it doesn't qualify as 'great literature.'
-
Music is first, lyrics are secondary.
-
I feel like artists and their lyrics are something that people can relate to when it comes to love and break-ups. I really want people to know how I felt when I went through a break up, when I really felt alive, and everything in between.
