Song Quotes
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A true friend is someone who is always there during the ups and downs, I actually have a song called 'True Friend'.
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I tried to make a 'When Doves Cry' in a rap version. I used a lot of instruments and I broke it down like I thought Prince would do, and that's the song I sent to Big Boi.
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Everything I do is collaborative. It's just my way. I'm really very interested in how the other musicians perceive the song.
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Even on my most angry song, I'm also still saying, 'Thank you for helping me to learn.' I've always wanted to give voice to that complexity in our experience.
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There's nothing like the eureka moment of knocking off a song that didn't exist before - I won't compare it to sex, but it lasts longer.
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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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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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It blows me away the number of truck drivers or macho guys that will call, and then I start peeling back the layers, and I find out they've been listening to me for 10 or 15 years, and they know every lyric to every sappy song.
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The whole of life itself expresses the blues. That's why I always say the blues are the true facts of life expressed in words and song, inspiration, feeling and understanding. The blues can be about anything pertaining to the facts of life. The blues call on God as much as a spiritual song do.
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Music makes us want to live. You don't know how many times people have told me that they'd been down and depressed and just wanted to die. But then a special song caught their ear and that helped give them renewed strength. That's the power music has.
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When we were making the record, I just decided, at the last second. I thought, "This song ["Ordinary World"] makes a lot of sense, being on the album [Revolution Radio]."
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A good song is a good song.
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One of the things that I think is such a constant in country music is that the song is so much a story. I believe it is supposed to be based around a story.
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It's easy to say that reducing a song to 90 seconds on "American Idol" strips off so many things, and how it's the 21st century and music doesn't mean the same things to people and that it's so disposable.
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It's a powerful thing to be able to write a song. Even the least powerful feeling - like insecurity - that makes you feel weak when you experience it, when you write about it, you are powerful.
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My first song was about the smog over Dublin in the 1980s, so yeah, I suppose I was always socially conscious. My first song was not a love song, it was about smog.
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A song like 'Shooting Star' - the thought process behind writing that song was that I looked around and thought, 'Wow, there's a lot of people dying at that time in the music business.'
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I tended not to be concerned about whether a song was going to be a hit when I wrote it. Because it became evident that none of us knew what was a hit and what wasn't. So I thought if I just write what I like, why shouldn't people like what I like?
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I don't force it. If you don't have an idea and you don't hear anything going over and over in your head, don't sit down and try to write a song. You know, go mow the lawn...My songs speak for themselves.
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It's very important to me that every person takes away their own meaning from a song, and it's why I don't always love spelling out what a song is about for somebody.
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You know, I've always wrote my best stuff when it takes me hardly any time at all. Actually I wrote.....this is actually a really funny story...'Ghost Of Vincent Price', I've been wanting to write a song about Vincent Price coz he's one of my favorite characters of all time.
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My music is rock. I listen to Red Hot Chili Peppers and I listen to one of my songs, and if I don't give you the same emotion, then I go back and re-spit.
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I don't want to do children's music. I write kids songs, but the kids songs I write are for my kids - like when I'm putting them to bed. We sing some song that we made up but I don't want to make a record like that.
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There's something about prime time television and the way the song is going to come off on the air. I'm very concerned, very self-conscious about that.
