Song Quotes
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I write poetry because I can’t disobey the impulse; it would be like blocking a spring that surges up in my throat. For a long time I’ve been the servant of the song that comes, that appears and can’t be buried away. How to seal myself up now?…It no longer matters to me who receives what I submit. What I carry out is, in that respect, greater and deeper than I, I am merely the channel.
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I don't do every song that comes my way; I'm very choosy.
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There are certain songs that just stick around and do something that transcends whatever time they were written in. Through different eras, people are able to impart different meaning to the song, and they become part of some sort of consciousness.
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I'm by no means a pianist. I think that's safe to say, but the piano, for me, I would say it's the enabler. It gave me what I needed and gives me what I need in order to write a song. And I think playing or improvising on the piano is where I feel most liberated and sort of less conscious of all my insecurities or inadequacies.
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Meanwhile music pounded / across hearts opening every valve to the desperate drama of being / a self in a song.
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I just want to unify people. A crowd full of people singing one song... that doesn't derive from anything dishonest... It's someone's truth.
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Our purpose is to educate as well as to entertain. Painless preaching is as good a term as any for what we do. If you're going to come away from a party singing the lyrics of a song, it is better that you sing of self-pride like 'We're a Winner' instead of 'Do the Boo-ga-loo!'
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I spent 80% of my time working on this, and 20% of my time working on music. Why do you think the song 'Niggas in Paris' is called 'Niggas in Paris?' 'Cause niggas was in Paris!
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As long as each song makes somebody feel something, I think that's the point of it all. I don't want it to just be background music, you know?
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I don't wanna get into that space where a lot of guys now, their solo album is like eight or 10 songs with other people, you don't get an idea of who this guy is. I just wasn't interested in that.
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I told Celine Dion not to record that 'Titanic' song. That's about as big as you can get. 'Flashdance?' I thought, 'Welder by day, disco dancer by night - who wants to see that?'
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The process is always the same. I get an inspiration for a new song, I put it down on paper immediately so I won't lose it. When I am ready to go to the studio with it, I play it a few times on the piano and edit, add, and type the lyrics and take it to the studio. Sometimes I don't have anything on paper.
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I would start seeing, in just the sense I was saying now, the kind of record it was going to be and what the arrangement demands, and what my vocal part should be in the record. This was all emerging as the song was emerging.
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While I've had a great distaste for what's usually called song in modern poetry or for what's usually called music, I really don't think of speech as so far from song.
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I realized probably when I was, like, 20 years old that the hardest thing to do is to write a pop song - not, like, a candy-pop, throwaway pop song.
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I think what makes compelling fiction or cinema is when you're basically taking the most intense moments of experience and you're creating a song or a narrative out of it.
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If you write a hit song for Britney Spears, it's worth several million dollars. Just one song! And it might have taken you two hours to do it. It's like mining for gold. It takes a lot of skill and a lot of technique.
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There's times, in certain songs, that I might be in my own world, and who cares about who's out there, you know? You have a job to do, so you do that job of singing that song or telling that story because that's what you're doing.
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I just sing and write songs and wear what I want. It's quite a good job really. If I wanted to I suppose I could become more of a fashion icon, but singing is my thing.
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It's crazy because I was 10 years old when 'Macarena' was all over the place, and I remember looking at it from a different point of view. I remember culturally how important that song was, even though people didn't really know what they were saying. It was more about the dance and the movement of it and the cultural side of it.
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When I come home and have a new song I've written, she gives me an honest critique. If my wife likes it, I know I have something.
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You'll almost encounter a superstition amongst musicians, people sort of go through strange rituals, what they need to do to write a song.
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I like when the song starts to take over and you feel like you have to dance more than write.
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I may not be the most famous songwriter in the world, but you know a David Friedman song when you hear it. It took me a long time to appreciate that.
