Song Quotes
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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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Greg Trooper writes great songs, including one of my very favorite songs in the world, Little Sister. On top of all that, there's his voice - an instrument I have coveted for 15 years.
Steve Earle
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I would never put my songs in a commercial.
Tom Petty
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
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Sometimes, our brains just don't work that way. You see these people who have the world at their fingertips, and all the success you can imagine, but they still are depressed. That's kind of what that song is about: the American demons. Because even if you are the poorest American, you still are better off than a lot of areas in the world.
Jonny Hawkins
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A lot of artists come into the game with a radio record, but they don't establish the fans as fans of their style of music. It's just that they're a fan of that song, and after that song plays out, it's real hard for 'em.
Nipsey Hussle
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I'd much rather be playing songs than talking to people.
Ray LaMontagne
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I can write a song in about an hour if it's a simple country song.
Dolly Parton
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Let patriotism have its high days and freedom its monuments, and let the triumphs of navigators and generals be annually observed; but surely, beyond all these, a season that stands for as much to the race as Easter does may well be remembered each year with songs and flowers and with every mark of gratitude and of loftiest jubilation.
George Horace Lorimer
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I like listening to the whole song. Like my father says, "If you can't pick the whole song, then why are you playing it?"
Alexandra Richards
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On stage, generally speaking, the story is stopped or held back by songs, because that's the convention. Audiences enjoy the song and the singer, that's the point.
Stephen Sondheim
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When a song comes from a real story and from a real place I think it comes across to people. That's important.
Negash Ali
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I don't know. I mean, it's not all beautifully harmonic, this world we find ourselves in. Clearly. There's shit music, and sometimes the melody goes away completely. There's silence and dissonant chord that cringe your ears. But the synchronicity of a perfectly created chorus? And the fact that you never know when one is coming? And that amazing feeling, the first time you hear a song and now it's going to be with you forever?
I have to think that's worth everything.
Bill Konigsberg
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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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I was studying Francis of Assisi for quite some time, when Benedict was still the pope. And I was studying it for a song that I did for my last album, 'Banga.'
Patti Smith
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You end up throwing a ton of energy into one or two tracks, and the song that we thought was gonna be the single isn't the single.
Ed Robertson
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I could go play some songs for two hours every week - play whatever I wanted to - and then also spend that time putting more music on my computer and getting into more things. It definitely informs the way that I think about music and I think in general, made me a more open-minded consumer of music.
Chris Baio
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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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The choice that I made was from my best music, for the songs that I knew that the public liked. Then, when I recorded my new songs I found that my old material had not faded, it was still current, the music was good and the songs were great. I sat in my house and listened, got the chills, and I thought, how great is that? It hasn't dated, it hasn't gone anywhere, and it's great.
Tina Turner
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All those experiences were a chance to learn more about music. Playing with the Valley band is like such a "live" band. I mean, really, in many ways Bright Eyes is really a studio project. We form bands to tour, but it really is - you know, we take the songs and we figure out how to decorate them and it's all in the studio, we build the songs that way. Whereas Mystic Valley Band was the exact opposite, where everybody knows what they are gonna be playing on the song and there's sort of a general stylistic approach, and then it's just plug in and play.
Conor Oberst
Bright Eyes
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Reality TV is sleazy, it is manipulative. It is as momentary as anything in popular culture.
Morley Safer
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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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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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O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit Beneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest, And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe; And all the daughters of the year shall dance! Sing now the lusty song of fruit and flowers.
William Blake
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When I write something simple I'm always really proud of it. When you write something that simple with that much air in it and the whole premise behind it is something pretty obvious - that everybody wants to be happy and free - the song is sort of an exercise in not forgetting that's what you really want and what you really need. We can get caught up in a lot of other stuff.
Steve Earle
