Song Quotes
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I don't think there's any danger of me playing Indian music. However, I did a song of George Harrison's 'Beware of Darkness' that was kind of like that. That was an illusion. I was playing that on a thumbtack piano, and Jim Gordon was playing tablas. He's an amazing player. That was as close to India as I ever got.
Leon Russell
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There's that kind of song, "Whoah baby, I love you," which doesn't have a visual element, but a very strong emotional element, and these are the great songs to me - those ones that you put them on and they just make you feel great, or whatever.
Nick Cave
The Birthday Party
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I was 17, and a friend said, 'Man, you've got to listen to this song,' and he played 'Man to Man.' From there on, I was hooked on country. Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Clint Black. Every show that came through America West Arena, I was there.
Dierks Bentley
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When I start to write a song, I initially fall into patterns and creative habits that are familiar, and because they're familiar, they sound convincing. It's important for me to not pursue those ideas, because I've already done them, but to find ideas that are different and feel strange to write and disconcerting to write.
Nick Cave
The Birthday Party
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I try to just encompass the entire feeling and emotion behind the song the best way possible, and if that's 100,000 screaming guitars right in your face, then that's what's going down.
Brantley Gilbert
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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.
Henry Rollins
Black Flag
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For us the Dresden Dolls were porcelain dolls that were made in that city at the time, that is what they were to us, and also a reference in Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut, and in a song by The Fall.
Brian Viglione
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For the brief moments the song lasted, it was pure joy, stirred up from deep within, in that place not a soul can find, not until it comes alive with music and laughter.
Ben Galley
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The song writing is different because with this stuff, I write it on my own and with Hot Water, we're more of a collective and I love both sides of that. Honestly, it's two different animals but I love and respect them both and feel really honored to be blessed with people who care about it and come out and support both sides of it.
Chuck Ragan
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Whenever any great song or album gets lost in the ether, someone is deprived of the joy of hearing it, and the great effort of those who created and recorded the work is damaged.
Henry Rollins
Black Flag
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When the Beatles wrote 'Paperback Writer,' it couldn't have been the same old thing. You can hear so many influences in it, from the blues to Bach, and it's not just verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge chorus. They start off singing a cappella, almost like a Bach chorale, and the song goes into this bluesy guitar riff.
Jon Batiste
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I think one of the things about writing in the studio is that the song hasn't matured, if you like, so quite often the vocals are early attempts. Whereas once you've taken it out on the road a bit, you learn more about a song.
Peter Gabriel
Genesis
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I just feel like this guy who's visiting the music business over the weekend. Every time I write a song, I feel like it's never going to happen again.
John Grant
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I like to go for a certain over-the-top opulence when naming the drone pieces whereas the song titles are all about concision, I guess. I mean, if I were truly a purist, I'd call things, "Long Piece #27" or "Newest Fast Song", but I enjoy titling and it is helpful at rehearsals or when making set-lists.
David First
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The songs are inspired by my experiences. Sometimes they are more than my real-life and, conversely, my life is more than just my songs.
Melissa Etheridge
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The present flowed by them like a stream. The tree rustled. It had made music before they were born, and would continue after their deaths, but its song was of the moment. The moment had passed. The tree rustled again. Their senses were sharpened, and they seemed to apprehend life. Life passed. The tree rustled again.
E. M. Forster
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I've written almost 200 songs with Bad Religion. No matter where you look in our history, the focus has been trying to instill some of these disturbing realities about the world, some of the implications of evolution into an artistic format that can be interpreted by people who may never study evolution.
Gregory Walter Graffin
Bad Religion
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I tend to work on a song, generate ideas, and re-arrange it like five times, and I'm glad I take the time to do that, because I think my original songs come out better.
Britta Phillips
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I usually have an idea of how I want a song to sound, but I don't always know how to get there.
Lucinda Williams
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Love is the soul of the world, though its body bleeds, and we must learn to bleed with it. Love is also the seed and milk and the fruit of the world, though we can partake of it in greed or reverence. We are born, we eat, and learn, and die. We leave a tracery of messages in the lives of others, a little shifting of the soil, a stone moved from here to there, a word uttered, a song, a poem left behind. I was here, each of these declare. I was here.
Michael O'Brien
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I think when black performers performed in blackface, they were kind of taking back slave songs, but it was still a little bit iffy because they were performing, a lot of times, for white audiences who found it hilarious.
Cecile McLorin Salvant
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I don't think it's an artist's responsibility to be political all the time. I think your first responsibility as an artist is to make music that people will listen to and enjoy. However, I think that when you are able to say something that is moving and put it in a great song, then that is even better.
John Roger Stephens
