Lyrics Quotes
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'In My Hands,' the title track, is my very first vocal attempt, and I'm not a singer as such. But I've always wanted to express myself vocally on my albums, and I don't really have much of a capability for singing. The strength is in, I think, the lyrics and just speaking. It just comes from inside.
Natalie MacMaster
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Our purpose is to educate as well as to entertain. Painless preaching is as good a term as any for what we do. If you're going to come away from a party singing the lyrics of a song, it is better that you sing of self-pride like 'We're a Winner' instead of 'Do the Boo-ga-loo!'
Curtis Mayfield
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I would be too self-conscious if I just thought of writing lyrics for a song. I have to trick myself into doing it.
Kim Gordon
Sonic Youth
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I started writing my own songs from the time I was a little kid. I would write my own lyrics to other people's songs that I heard on the radio and take whatever song and make it about fairies and angels - whatever little girls sing about.
Bonnie McKee
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My interest in the theater led me to my first writing experience as an adult. My husband David wrote the music and lyrics and I wrote the book for a children's musical, 'Spacenapped' that was produced by a neighborhood theater in Brooklyn.
Gail Carson Levine
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I get even more nervous singing when everyone's fallen silent, but I really try to communicate the meaning of the lyrics, and there's people there listening to that, and if they're moved by it, then I'm moved as well.
Namie Amuro
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The objectification of females is not a good thing! Not every rapper does this, but when the lyrics focus solely on the strip club, 'poppin' bottles' and how many girls they can 'tap,' it distorts what kids are learning. I think if there was more of a female presence in hip hop we could break up the monotony. It's all about balance.
Queen Latifah
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Lyrics can't do what they do - or should do - when you're creating a musical with rock lyrics. There's plenty of room for rock musicals, just not all rock musicals.
Harold Prince
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I never edit the songs that come out. And they tend to come out as a whole. The closest thing I have ever done to editing them is just cutting out a verse, but never rewriting lyrics.
Laura Marling
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I'm frustrated by what I hear. Maybe it's not meant for me. Personally, I'm way too bright for a lot of the hip-hop lyrics to affect. I'm much too smart to think that jewelry or how cool I am is really going to change much about my personality. If you're dumb enough that it entertains you, have a great time. But I am seeking more than that.
Tom Petty
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
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Writing lyrics is part spontaneous, intuitive and part really thought through and carefully analyzed as you write it. It's a mixture of two approaches, and I imagine writing anything is like that, really. Some of it just flows, and you just go with it.
Ian Anderson
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Just look at what is right in front of you. People don't do that. They see what they expect to see, what they want to see, what conventional wisdom tells them to see. They only hear the music and not the lyrics of human events.
Vincent Bugliosi