Song Quotes
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I met the Colonel when Elvis was recording some song I'd written for one of his movies. Elvis was just having fun with the gang and all the Memphis boys and Colonel Parker was sitting over here in like a theater seat.
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In some ways, I've always approached singing as acting, and the voice is just like a way of carrying the song.
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Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone. They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go on. And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song. Oh I hope you run into them, you who've been travelling so long.
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It wasn't until I found my tribe of artists - people who were outspoken and not afraid to say what they thought, whether in a song or a dance or a piece of classical music - that I found a refuge.
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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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I wanted to write a happy song. I didn't know how.
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A moment for me that changed everything was hearing my song on the radio for the first time.
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In the past, my process would start with a sample of another song, and I'd chop it up and use that as the basis of the song that I was making.
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We played 'Girl in a Country Song' in front of Scott Borchetta, and he loved it.
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'Roc The Life' is a song I wrote with The Dream, who made 'Umbrella,' 'Single Ladies' and loads more.
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It's funny when you start writing an album and then recording - the songs begin to take on a spirit of their own. Once you start to perform it live, this happens even more so than in the studio. They really start to develop a personality that takes shape over time with the audience.
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Considering the amount of information we're bombarded by, it's amazing if a song can transcend time.
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As much as heartbreak music might be therapeutic, we all want love and long for that feeling. So if a song can give you that feeling, even without being in love, that's amazing.
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As a tool for the activation of specific thoughts, music is as good as language. The combination of the two-as best exemplified in the love song-is the best courtship of all.
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If I'm inspired to make a certain kind of song, I'm going to make that kind of song, no matter if it's what they know me as or think I am.
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Very often, writing a song is a process that happens to me rather than one that I instigate. I feel a song coming on and, like a sneeze; I wait for it until it comes.
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It's always been based around the song, and guitar-playing in the service of the song... The sensibility is about songs. I like to think of it as kind of 'refined primitive.'
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My song 'Play It Again' is a perfect example of my music because the verses go so hard, and they're so urban; and then this pop hook comes out of nowhere and socks you in the face and makes you want to dance.
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When I auditioned for drama college, they asked me to do my Shakespeare. I couldn't do it. They asked me to do my modern, and I couldn't do it. They asked me if I had a song prepared, and I said 'No,' so I sang 'Happy Birthday.' And I did a reasonable improvisation, a reasonable one, nothing special at all. I don't know how I got in, but I did.
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Music is a powerful tool in galvanizing people around an issue. There's no better way to get your point across than to put it in a beautiful song.
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We shot 'Telusa Telusa' song in Bolivia. It took us 50 hours to get to the location. We shot in high altitudes, and oxygen cylinders were kept handy.
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'I Want To Hold Your Hand' is a great classic by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, I sure love that song. I did like the classic version, a rock-oriented song, then someone heard me do it with the Grant Green approach - Grant Green and Larry Young did it, with a bossa nova beat on the funky side.
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Nashville is the business center. They forget that the bottom line of it all is still the song.
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I've always written pop songs. I tend to take inspiration from more experimental genres, like ambient music, but at the root of the song, it's verse-chorus-verse.
