Song Quotes
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They're making a song and dance because that serves their immediate interests. But what will happen tomorrow? They will have to pay salaries and pensions.
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Sound-wise, I'm really limitless in the way I write songs. Whatever comes out, comes out. Every song is completely different.
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My favorite Bob Dylan record is the very first one where he sings one Bob Dylan song and the rest of them are his interpretations of the Dust Bowl-era folk songs, or even going back as far as the mass influx of people coming into the U.S. during the gold rush. His interpretations of those songs are incredible.
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The comedians all finished their acts with a song. They would get a certain amount of money from the song publishers and would use that money to pay the writers. None of them paid very much for their comedy material, but it all added up.
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The one album I can't live without is called 'Cumbolo' by a band called Culture. Every song on their album is deep, but there's one in particular called 'This Train.' I have a tattoo of the lyrics on my left arm.
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I took some of the hardest things about my life and wrote an empowering song with it. It has made me want to always write from that place.
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If someone had told me when I was a kid I'd get an ovation from Frank Sinatra! One time, I did a song called 'I Am A Singer', but I rewrote the words for Frank. I was in tears and, when he got up, so was he.
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Somehow you can tell the difference when a song is written just to get on the radio and when what someone does is their whole life. That comes through in Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Willie Nelson. There is no separating their life from their music.
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Hip-hop is more than music, it's a culture. It's bigger than hit songs.
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It's a weird thing to say you want people to be sick of your song, but I guess that's what happens if your song goes really well.
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I'm trying to stay a song ahead, two songs ahead of everybody else.
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It's honestly every time that I'm doing something, and every time I visit a station and hear my song on the radio and people buying my stuff, I'm like 'Are you kidding me? This is insane!'
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I think Sam Smith's dad got a huge loan or something to help his career. Those things can help artists get attention, but I guess my song 'Say You Won't Let Go' proved it's about the song.
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Madonna can still produce a catchy pop song, but she hasn't expanded her artistic vocabulary since the 1990s. Her concerts are glitzy extravaganzas of special effects overkill. She leaves little space in them for emotional depth or unscripted rapport with the audience.
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When I wrote the song, I had the sea near Bombay in mind. We stayed at a hotel by the sea, and the fishermen come up at five in the morning and they were all chanting. And we went on the beach and we got chased by a mad dog - big as a donkey.
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I think that's what makes my music different from other artists in my lane is that I write every word that's on my album, and every word comes from a real experience or a real feeling that I've either experienced or felt. And I'm very particular about that, and I take a lot of pride in it, so you know if I say something on a song, I mean it.
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If a song is longer than three and a half minutes, it'll need something to keep you entertained.
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You can write a song about being in love with someone, but you don't have to be in love with anyone.
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When you sample something, you're using the crutch of borrowing chords and melodies from a song that's already great, that's already stood the test of time, that's already special. When you're trying to do it all from scratch, you're writing something brand new that has to stand on its own.
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When I was about 14, I got a tacky keyboard for 250 pounds and put on a drum machine and found I could write a song.
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I just sing the song and I sing it with conviction, meaning and I get into the mood of every song I do no matter how much time I have in between.
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Whenever I'm talking about relationships, it's always at least three things. It's my relationship with myself, my relationship with God or an idea, and then usually somebody, a real person. I try to operate on all three levels at the same time, and it's difficult, but I never want to have a break-up song or something like that.
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To write a love song that might be able to make it on the radio, that is something that is terrifying to me. But I can definitely write a song about that chair over there. That I can do, but to sit and write a pop song out of the clear blue sky, that is very difficult and I admire the people that can do it.
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The chorus-ending from Aristophanes, raised every night from every ditch that drains into the Mediterranean, hoarse and primeval as the raven's croak, is one of the grandest tunes to walk by. Or on a night in May, one can walk through the too rare Italian forests for an hour on end and never be out of hearing of the nightingale's song.
