Song Quotes
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David Bowie emerged as a rock star in the late '60s. And as Ken Tucker wrote, "In the face of the hippy era's sincerity, intimacy and generosity, Bowie presented irony, distance and self-absorption. His song 'Changes' announced the arrival of a new counterculture," unquote.
David Bowie
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Sing such a song with all of your heart that you'll never have to sing again.
Kabir
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Every song has a different genesis, or feeling. Usually the lyrics, I don't really know what it's all about, I just kinda do it. I mean, there's a combination of, like you're saying, that kind of lyrics about commitment or vaguely relationship lyrics mixed with jokey 90s Beck-style non-sequiturs and stuff.
Stephen Malkmus
Pavement
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Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston. I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, 'Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.'
Dolly Parton
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A few Disney TV composers had me pinch-hit writing some scoring cues to picture. Disney tapped me to be the composer for the underscore and song producer for this new show called "Phineas and Ferb."There is nothing like a successful animated show to get your chops up. You have to do every style - action, adventure, romantic, suspense, spy, poignant, rock, funk, big band - delivered on a deadline.
Danny Jacob
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A lot of love records or breakup records, a lot of the songs can tend to be on the blame side and the bitter side. And this was good for me, writing, because it made me feel like I was forcing myself to be more mature and grow up a little bit. It's not putting the blame on anybody, it's accepting responsibility just as much as the other person.
Nicole Atkins
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I know the video platform so, so, so well. I know the perfect mixture of how comedic a piece has to be, what the video has to be like, what the song has to sound like, to make it successful.
Lilly Singh
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It's kind of a protest song. My objective is to make sense of foreign policy decisions taken by the current Bush administration and showing how they resemble solipsistic bullying.
Colin Meloy
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If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while.
Tom Lehrer
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Every time I finish a song... most of the time it's in my own head, like this sounds too much like a Townes Van Zandt song, or whoever. I realize there are so many melodies and chord progressions in pop and rock music that are so similar that you can kind of trace it back to other things. Most of the time it's just in your head.
Conor Oberst
Bright Eyes
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The Beatles. I didn't like the first couple of songs, but when I heard "She Loves You', it was like something went off in my head.
Ozzy Osbourne
Black Sabbath
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I think my great book is Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song.
Charles Hartshorne
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It always disappoints me when I go to a concert and they don't play my favorite song, or at least one of their biggest hits.
Shania Twain
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I don't know, I just got a feeling about her. You know when a song comes on and you just gotta dance?
Ryan Gosling
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I think it was Tommy who told me, 'When your song is called 'XYZ' or whatever, every line has got to make sense against your title.' He showed me little methods of proving to yourself whether the line belongs, and ways of finding out whether you were able to get more out of a line if you tried.
Merle Haggard
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I'd spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down. Then, "Nowhere Man" came, words and music, the whole damn thing, as I lay down...Song writing is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you're allowed sleep.
John Lennon
The Beatles
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Basically, I'm going to take what you did, the bare-bones structure of what you were trying to do, how you were attacking the song, and attack it in pretty much the same way, just with more intensity to show you that you could've come harder. Like, I've been in situations where I've had to tell a cat how to rhyme his rhyme.
Bun B
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SONG You bound strong sandals on my feet, You gave me bread and wine, And sent me under sun and stars, For all the world was mine. Oh, take the sandals off my feet, You know not what you do, For all my world is in your arms, My sun and stars are you.
Sara Teasdale
