Song Quotes
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I try to keep my eyes and ears open all the time for the bones of my next song: things people say, melodies I hear in my head, and little musical parts I may stumble across. I write them down or record them on my phone. Whatever I need to do to keep the idea for later when I have the time to sit down with it. So writing for me is a 24/7 pursuit.
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Last season when I was on set...for some reason I had The Battle Hymn of the Republic in my head but I didn't know all the words. It was one of those songs you had to learn when you were younger. It wasn't as important for people raised in the 80's and 90's as it was to people raised in the 50's, 60's and 70's so when I started singing "My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord," Jane Fonda heard me singing it and started singing the rest of it. Suddenly everyone on set everyone was singing. That's just something I can keep in my heart forever.
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'Boneless,' even though we were thinking about servicing it to radio, it made more sense putting a vocal on there. This was actually the first time that I really looked at doing a song for radio and kind of let go of some control and listened to a lot of different radio pluggers and had Ultra come in and help out with ideas.
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You never know until a song comes out and becomes what it becomes, obviously you can't predict how the masses will react.
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'Big Love' was originally an ensemble song, but it's done now as a single guitar piece.
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I think the B-52's were a huge influence on Sleater-Kinney. The way that there'd be a really interesting guitar line that'd be really melodic and kind of simplistic, I really related to that. The sense of melody is really intense and fun. It's not just traditional song structures, but it's very melodic and draws you in, in kind of an immediate way.
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Sometimes, I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there's always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?
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Any song I don't feel good about, I shelve. Anything you ever hear me sing, it's because I want to.
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I will say that I know Nirvana did a show and played a few chords from 'More Than a Feeling' before they did 'Teen Spirit,' and it wasn't very good. But in all seriousness, 'Teen Spirit' was a great song. If subconsciously or somehow I had any influence on that, I'll take that as a compliment.
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A great song is something that you go back to in twenty years and it's still so influential to you.
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Sing your heart out and write the best song you possible can.
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I usually know the general emotion of a song, or the general feeling of it, and then I think I just get so excited by the act of recording. I love that process so much that I feel like if I knew exactly what I wanted I'd arrive at something too soon. Part of the reason I work on stuff for so long is just because I love working on it. It's not that I'm haunted by some ghost sound. I just have nothing else to do with my life. Some people like to obsessively shop online. I like to obsessively rack up studio bills.
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When I'm picking songs for an album I always want a song that I can relate to and that I have experienced. There's nothing worse than watching an artist try and sell a song that isn't believable coming from them.
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Somewhere out in the darkness, a phoenix was singing in a way Harry had never heard before: a stricken lament of terrible beauty. And Harry felt, as he had felt about phoenix song before, that the music was inside him, not without: It was his own grief turned magically to song.
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You want the song to be at least at the same level of goodness throughout. Whereas with something you're doing live, a song dips and rises and that can actually be worked to the song's benefit.
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The friends that have it I do wrong Whenever I remake a song, Should know what issue is at stake: It is myself that I remake.
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I have come up with very creative ideas that really didn't work with the song I was currently composing.
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I write my miserable songs. I write songs about disgust and self-pity. We’re all going to have bummer moments. That’s not the stuff I choose to share.
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I go in and sing the song and arrange it and mix it and that's it. It's no different than playing in clubs.
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Read about some squirrelly guy who claims that he just don't believe in fighting, and I wonder how long the rest of us can count on being free.
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I feel like no matter what I write about, I try to end up being the stronger person in the situation. Even in heartbreak, I feel like I'm a much stronger person because of that. I don't want to just write a sad song and still feel sad after that. I want to feel stronger and better.
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The fun thing about song writing is that it's just creative. It can be whatever you want it to be. For me, I'm really protective of that. I'm not going to write something because I feel like it fits here or it fits there - I just want to write music that feels good to me, you know?
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I went to New York and Miami and hung out by the beach, and I love the American boys, so I wrote a song about it.
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To create an album of 12 songs, I've got to write about 80 songs. Half of those are totally weird and rubbish.
