Song Quotes
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When your hair is rising, that's when you know it's a good song - that's happened to me with some artists and some songs, John Lennon songs or when Nina Simone sings. It's great to make those moments yourself.
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My guitar is like my best friend. My guitar can get me through anything. If I can sit down and write an amazing song with my guitar about what's going on in life, then that's the greatest therapy for me.
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For example, after developing a sound similar to an elephant trumpeting, I wrote the song Elephant Talk which gave my elephant sound an appropriate place to live.
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I was writing music when we finished the last Walkmen record, Heaven, and a few of these songs may have even been started before Heaven was done. With The Walkmen we all wrote a lot of stuff alone, but then we'd start collaborating with each other.
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Writing has never been an intentional endeavor to me. I know a lot of people have experiences and then sit down and try to sort them out through song, but whenever I sit down to write, it comes out hackneyed or overly saccharine.
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People bursting into song in unison and then pointing it at me is maybe the worst thing I can think of, never mind that you have to pay good money to go be yelled/danced at.
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I've always been into writing love songs.
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There was a lot of Pac haters, but I definitely love Pac. I wish I got to do a song with him.
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The art of the three-minute song is more like journalism than writing a big 400-page book. You want to be brief, you want to make sense right yen and there. And sometimes that takes a bit of work.
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My general audition song is almost always 'Man That Got Away.'
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I find writing songs hard, because it does not come naturally to me. I never set out to be a songwriter or a singer.
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There's songs like 'Africa' that just have kind of become part of pop culture.
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I'm remixing an R.E.M. track called 'I've Been High' from their last album, 'Reveal.' It's a beautiful song, but record execs didn't put it out as a single because it didn't sound like the R.E.M. we're used to. So I asked Michael Stipe if I could have the tapes to do a remix, and he agreed.
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Usually I just let my songs do the talking. As a matter of fact I have long had an aversion to celebrities endorsing politics, and in some cases even other causes. I wonder about their motives. And I have to admit when celebrities get involved in political campaigns I tend to get a little bit sarcastic about it.
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Every song that we wrote for the first album made it. We didn't think about writing a bunch of songs and picking the best ones. We had to just make the best songs we ever wrote.
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In my fiction, there's a lot that's borrowed from music. It's never like I'm taking a lyric, but more the mood of a particular song. 'The Boy Detective Fails' was like listening to 'Eleanor Rigby' by The Beatles, this very melancholy-but-poppy song.
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Sitting in a room, alone, listening to a CD is to be lonely. Sitting in a room alone with an LP crackling away, or sitting next to the turntable listening to a song at a time via 7-inch single is enjoying the sublime state of solitude.
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I wouldn't have a No. 1 record or song if I wasn't a hardworking person.
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I pinch myself every night when I hear the overture starting. I'm so overwhelmed by the whole process, and humbled and giddy all at the same time because I can't believe it's me that gets to sing these songs every night.
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A song just doesn't come on. I've always had to tease it out, squeeze it out.
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'Doin' Fine' is a really special song because it's uplifting but really honest at the same time.
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I'm trying to laugh uncontrollably with whoever I'm making a song with because whatever we just listened to that we just came up with is so dope. I'm chasing that feeling in the studio, not like a trend or what's hot on the radio at the moment. It just seems like the more I do that, the better I get at what I do. I'm going to keep doing that.
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Singin' in the Rain was most excellent if you like movies where people burst into song and tap-dance. Which I do, though not as much as I like movies where people don't.
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Getting a beginner publishing deal really helped me gain the skills. I just kept writing and writing. You just take everything out of life and turn it into an idea or a melody or a song and find the best writers you can to write with that fit you and know what you want to do.
