Song Quotes
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I was in 'Jacques Brel' Off-Broadway for many years, so I've always been a singing actress, but the songwriting was a complete surprise. I had never written a song in my life. We were on the road with 'Jacques Brel' doing the national tour, and I picked up a guitar one day and I wrote a song.
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One day, I was just fingering around on the keys of a Fender Rhodes piano, and I came up with this little riff, and all of a sudden, it morphed into a song. It had never been touched by a guitar, which was very weird for us. 'Under the Ground' is the first song I have ever written that had nothing to do with the guitar.
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A light broke in upon my brain, -It was the carol of a bird;It ceased, and then it came again,The sweetest song ear ever heard.
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Yoga has had a profound effect on my songs and performances. I don't meditate in the traditional style of sitting and doing nothing. I prefer the zen of paying attention, such as the meditation of yoga flow, or walking meditations. I also consider singing, surfing and gardening to very meditative.
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Creating a set list is like making a running order for an album. Certain things get pitted against one another that make more sense. One song sets another one off, or it might diminish it. You're just constantly looking for the next thing that's gonna make sense in a particular place.
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I like the songwriting. I don't ever listen and then go back and change stuff. For me when I wrote the song, it's always really fun and exciting.
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I used to write on pads with a pen but had trouble reading the words the next day. Years later, Bob Dylan taught me to just write and write on a laptop computer. Then I'd print that out. When it was time to write a song, I'd go through the pages and sing melodies to words that moved me.
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Stray birds of summer come to my window to sing and fly away. And yellow leaves of autumn, which have no songs, flutter and fall there with a sigh.
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I'd never written a song before 'The Blood'; I didn't know it was going to be a song.
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I've had a lot of fans come up to me and say, 'I love the video song.' It's like it's a soundtrack recording or something. We'll never forget that the music comes first. I sometimes find video a little distasteful for that reason. People associate a band with their video images rather than with the music they produce, that's a little scary.
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You're always going to write and draw inspiration from things that you're feeling, things that you've felt. It's kind of impossible not to unless you're writing a song and there's an exact scenario that you're trying to write a song for.
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Jack White has just done a song for Coca-Cola. End of. He ceases to be in the club. And he looks like Zorro on doughnuts.
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Those emotions that are really strong, the ones that inspire a song, you can hold onto that. You can let it marinate for years and keep writing about it even better than you did then.
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Nothing is more frustrating to me than putting a song on an album and regret putting it on there. I'm excited that there are no songs on 'Tailgates & Tanlines' that I'm iffy about.
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Questions don't easily die within me until they're answered, and so being able to write a song and put words to complex feelings is part of my process of understanding and letting go of things.
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If you feel like you're getting into a rut with a song, a night off usually fixes it.
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'Tis easy enough to be pleasant, When life flows along like a song; But the man worth while is the one who will smile when everything goes dead wrong.
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I want people to understand balance. I might make a banger, and that's the way that I feel, and then I may want to make a song that's really deep.
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Something that I think extends to a lot of African cultures is that the line between performer and audience is blurry. My mom would lead the wedding song regularly, and she isn't a professional singer. Even as an audience member, you're expected to clap and sing the response to the lead.
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Writing 'This Is Who I Am...' I wanted to write a song about where I'm at, that I have accepted where I have come to and I wanted my fans to be able to connect to it too. I want them to stand proud!
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I don't sit down to write a song, per se.
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I worked hard on making a body of work that takes people on a journey. It was never about making a certain type of song. It was simply about embracing real-life situations.
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The vocals are what immediately draw people in and sell the song.
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I learn stuff from making music every time I go in the studio. I'm continuing to try to find new ways to play in a song or be in a song and have a positive impact on a song.
