Song Quotes
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I'm not somebody who carries around a notepad and writes songs all day long. I don't imagine everything I think of is worth being in a song. So I tend to collect notes, and I set time aside to go to work and write songs.
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My mother and father come from that post-Depression, middle-of-World-War -I kind of thinking that says, 'Find a practical job. You know what I mean, Mr. Big Shot? So, you can sing a song ...'
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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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I feel like if you sit down and have an assistant engineer and a producer in a top-notch studio and everyone sets up all the mikes perfect, all of a sudden it's really hard to live that melancholy song. It's hard to really live it in the moment.
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I just never really thought of not being involved, because when I write the songs I take them to a certain place and by that point I kinda know what I want them to sound like.
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If all experienced God in the same way and returned Him an identical worship, the song of the Church triumphant would have no symphony, it would be played like an orchestra in which all instruments played the same note.
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I'm the kind of cat that can finish three songs in a day. Two or three songs in a day. If my voice is up to it and I feel up to it, I can finish two or three songs in a day.
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Honestly, I get character ideas from the most inane places. Sometimes a song will give me an idea. Sometimes I will just hear a snippet of conversation that ends up having nothing to do with the book that emerges.
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The interesting thing about a song like 'Bulletproof Heart' - it was originally called 'Trans Am' - the interesting thing about the amalgamation of that song was that the song also lived within us, like we all got to live with the song and it was around for about a year before we recorded it again, so the song got to really transform, which you don't really get to do.
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I want to show everybody the diverse me and show people that I can do a tune on an R&B song, I can do a tune on a house song, I can do something on an Afrobeat. I really want to show that.
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My biggest song in the world is 'Nothing's Gonna Change My Love for You.' All over the world, it's number one on the whole planet.
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Music, for centuries and centuries, was used to teach everything. It was used to teach language, mathematics, history. The news was music. Everything traveled by song. It was used to teach ethics. It was used to create conscience, probably more than anything.
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I write some country music. There's a song called 'I Hope You Dance.' Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.
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A lot of my songs, they're like puzzle pieces, and there's just one way to put them together. You could, if you needed to, get the scissors out and cut up things to make them work. But I don't want to do that.
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Well, what's interesting, I try not to think about the radio when I'm writing a song. I want people to love the song, and that means it might not be exactly thinking about the radio, but it's thinking about your audience and saying, 'I want people to like this song after it's done.'
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If you take all that I've learned from Joe and all that Joe has learned from me, and you throw all that into a song, not only are you using the gifts that God gave you, but also all the experiences you've had.
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Martin Swinger is one of those rare singer-songwriters who excels at everything: singing, songwriting, guitar-playing, and being so present with his humor, tenderness, and wild mind that his performances are also deep conversations, soul to soul and heart to heart, about the quirks, surprises, and love that brings us most alive. His songs, ranging from the little plastic parts that hold the world together, to what enlightenment comes from Buddha and Betty Boop falling in love, are whimsically and wisely original and enduring.
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The world puts off its mask of vastness to its lover. It becomes small as one song, as one kiss of the eternal.
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I've never put out a song that I wasn't completely proud of and that I didn't love. In that sense, I've never felt like I sold out in any way.
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We always talk about our kids being a great way to judge whether it's a hit song because there's something very basic about the way they perceive the music that I think needs to be there if it's gonna be a hit.
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Ireland is not at all a simple place, and in many ways it is spare and sad. It has no wealth, no power, no stability, no influence, no fashion, no size. Its only real arts are song and drama and poem. But Limerick alone has two thousand ruined castles and surely that many practicing poets.
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When I play with my band around the U.S.A., the most requested song is 'Peace Frog.'
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Cecilia was made in a living room on a Sony. It was like a little piece of magical fluff, bur it works. El Condor Pasa a Los Incas record that I love. Bridge is a very strong melodic song.
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I don't find writing for the theater that different from writing a rock song.
