Song Quotes
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It wasn't until I wrote 'Hideaway' that I found the song I related to as an artist.
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When I first played '1234' it was on stage in San Francisco at some kind of, like, sticky-floored club. And it felt like a punk song. I mean it's ridiculous to say that now, but it had that kind of, like, piercing straight melody. And then this fist-pumping ending, you know that pa-dap-pada.
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If you want to say you got to take a woman out to a fancy restaurant, I write songs about hey I'm not taking you to a fancy restaurant, I wanna take you to McDonald's.
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We human beings are tuned such that we crave great melody and great lyrics. And if somebody writes a great song, it's timeless that we as humans are going to feel something for that and there's going to be a real appreciation.
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Popular music is one endless love song that, I suspect, the basically solitary Ella Fitzgerald approached much as the basically solitary Marianne Moore approached poetry: reading it with a certain contempt for it, Moore said, you could find a place in it for the genuine.
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'Spring Day' - I wrote main lyrics based on my personal experience with old friends. It is about my sad memories with him, and it makes me sentimental whenever I listen to the song.
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The first album I ever bought with my own money was 'Ten.' Every single song reminds me of my childhood.
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The inspiration to write a song comes to me when something has happened to me more than once. If it's happened to me more than once, it's probably happened to other people.
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I could never be a country person, sitting around trees trying to write a song. I would rather be in the middle of society, whether it's growing or crumbling.
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Who are you and who am I To say we know the reason why Some are born, some men die, Beneath one infinite sky? There'll be war, there'll be peace, But everything one day will cease, All the iron turned to rust, All the proud men turned to dust, And so all things time will mend, So this song will end.
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A female vocal can lift a song.
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One of them would definitely be the Nelson Mandela gig, when I played the tribute song for him. He was up and dancing, and he really enjoyed it. It was a really lovely occasion.
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Usually now a song starts just in my head with a melody or a lyric idea coming first.Then typically I'll go to a guitar, unless it's a instrumental then I'll usually build it on a keyboard instrument.
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What you believe one day isn't what you believe the next day and I think every writer secretly believes that they may never be able to do write good song or script again, but they can.
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When I signed with Scooter Braun and I decided to go overseas to promote my song, the only concern was how should I communicate with the public and the audience with my language. Scooter and I talked a lot about that: should we translate or not? Finally we didn't, and I think that was a really good decision.
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'Fix' - definitely, when I first heard the demo of that song, it was kind of intimidating because of the high falsetto parts. It was one of those things. I got into the vocal booth and wasn't sure I could do it or how well I could do it. There was something about the song that I really took to.
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Image is everything, and the voice or the idea or the song is hardly anything at all. Half the time the person isn't even doing the singing. I'm a bit cynical about this [music] business.
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You know what, I am not gonna lie, that Taylor Swift 'Trouble' song? I can't resist that song. Her melodies are very catchy.
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I try to make myself, and subsequently the audience, as uncomfortable as possible, whether it's completely desecrating a song they thought was one thing, or getting too drunk to really do a very good job.
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After struggling for so long in the industry and writing so many failed songs and hearing 'no' for so long - I'm so grateful every time I hear a song that I was a part of on the radio.
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I enjoy the process of composing music. The first time I hear a song, it has to bring a smile to my lips. You have to tap your feet and be able to sing the song.
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I could not extrapolate some emotion from any song after 1997 so I bought a drum machine and popped pills. The pink ones make me funny like elephants!
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'Shooting Star' started out as the arrangement on the record, and it's developed into a real audience-participation song, just from playing it.
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Being an artist doesn't just mean you have a song. That doesn't make you an artist. The word 'artist' means so many different things, and I feel like to be a real one, you really have to do it all. The people that I think of as artists - Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Kanye West - are doing the most.
