Song Quotes
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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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It's from being melancholy and having my human down experiences that I learn, that I overcome, that I transform - and these realizations I put into song. That's what I choose to put in my backpack and carry with me around the world.
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'The Shepherd Boy’s Song', in Part II, Ch. VI : The Valley of Humiliation; comparable to: 'I am not now in fortune's power: He that is down can fall no lower', Samuel Butler, Hudibras (1663), Part i, Canto iii, Line 877
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People were saying that Southern folk song was dead, that the land that had produced American jazz, the blues, the spirituals, the mountain ballads and the work songs had gone sterile.
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I have enough rhythm to blend at this point. I have enough rhythm to blend one song into another. But man, I have such respect for the art of deejaying. I hesitate to even call myself a deejay.
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I kept thinking, 'How do you make a modern musical?' Then it became clear that I could do it just like a small indie art-house movie, very naturalistically. I could create a world where it's o.k. to break into song, without an orchestra coming up out of nowhere.
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And it’s a sad song, Todd, but it’s also a promise. I’ll never deceive you and I’ll never leave you and I promise you this so you can one day promise it to others and know that it’s true.
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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 have time to stand around and listen to an 11-minute song.
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The problem is I'm a perfectionist, so the producer might say he's happy with my vocal take but I'll say, 'No, it can be better.' I'll do it again and again until I feel I've got the truth out of a song.
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The way to do it is to put as much life into the song as I can. You can either get it to breathe or you can't.
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For me, with the Blue Man Group, I got asked. It was for the Royal Variety Show, which was something I always wanted to be a part of. I'm really interested in things people don't necessarily expect. I did a pop song, but I did it in my own style.
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I don't know if I want her to sing it with us, but I'm curious to what type of song Taylor Swift would write for us. I'm curious to see what kind of pen she would write for TLC. Or like an Adam Levine. Somebody like that. They're phenomenal writers.
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The only song that I've ever played on when I was not allowed to hear the backing track. 'Just make whooping oodle noises for three minutes', was the cry from the control room. 'Bastards', I thought at the time.
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Sometimes a song indicates that it wants to be about a certain thing. And then if you write it, you find that it is about something that you've done.
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I just had a really crappy time in school and I spent a lot of time writing songs and not doing work. I started talking to Noah - Panda Bear - about recording a really solid album, spending a lot of time on it to get it to sound exactly the way we wanted it to.
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There is truth in little corners of our lives. There are hints of it in songs and children's eyes. It's familiar, like an ancient lullaby; What do I live for? If we've eyes to see... If we've ears to hear... To find it in our hearts and mouths the word that saves is near. Shed that shallow skin... Come and live again... Leave all you were before... To believe is to begin.
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I don't work so hard at trying to get every song to be three-dimensional and mean so much. I just want to breathe, right now, with the music.
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When my song came on the radio for the first time, that was one of the heaviest things I remember.
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We proved to the world that a completely Spanish song can take over the world.
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You could play the blues like it was a lonesome thing - it was a feeling. The blues is nothing but a story... The verses which are sung in the blues is a true story, what people are doing... what they all went through. It's not just a song, see?
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To look for some kind of insight or meaning in pop songs is not really - well there's plenty of other places where you should probably look first before you start looking for it in a pop song.
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Normally you'll have a structure to a song. You'll have an intro to a verse to a pre-chorus to a chorus, kinda repeat that, maybe there's a bridge, then you'll go out on a chorus - that's the quintessential song structure - sometimes you might do a fake-out, re-do a pre-chorus but the chorus doesn't come until later, but for the most part you follow these tried and true structures.
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Because of an off-hand funny comment I made backstage at a concert years ago, a story circulated that the song has been a burden and even that I didnt sing it for a while. Thats completely false. I am very proud of American Pie and the many satellites that grow from it and revolve around it. For many years I carried my songs around and now they carry me around. I have always sung American Pie for my audience and would never think of disappointing them since it is they who have given me a wonderful life and untold affection for almost 30 years.
