Song Quotes
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You used to have to come to America for 18 months and drive around in a van, trying to get radio stations to play your song. But I remember One Direction's manager telling me that the first time they came to America, they hadn't released a song - they'd only been on 'The X Factor.' But there were 2,000 fans waiting at LAX airport.
James Corden
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My favorite part is, once a song is out there to the public, having someone come up and tell their own story about why one of your songs resonated with them. It's an incredible feeling.
Chris Young
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At college - I went to Yale, and everybody's very smart, and everybody has their thing that makes them special, and people at Yale would pretend they didn't recognize me. Only after they'd had a couple of drinks would they start singing the 'Life Goes On' theme song.
Kellie Martin
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The older I get, the more I think it's this listening. You listen for it, and you have a bit of patience. And it'll come until it sounds - to me, the best songs I've written, I think, are ones that I can't hear anything - any of myself in it. It sounds like a cover song, like somebody else's song - really something you've stolen wholesale off a radio that you've listened to in someone else's flat.
Nick Lowe
Brinsley Schwarz
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When I heard 'Jesus, Take the Wheel,' I was like, OK. Some people look at it as a song written for an American Idol, Carrie Underwood, who is wonderful. But when you're a songwriter listening to a song, you hear something else. I heard that song, and wow.
Lady Gaga
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The person who's writing and performing those songs wants to get to know the fans even more. Find out how close that song is to their real life, what it means to them. The earlier in the process that we can start connecting those artists with fans, the better.
Bob Richards
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'Something More' is a song that I wrote not necessarily about country radio, more so about a lot of songs that were being pitched to me. I wrote that after song after song after song was just the same song, just a different melody, so I was just looking for something more to put on the record.
Scotty McCreery
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I'm not confident about my appearance, I'm not confident about anything really in my life, I'm a very tortured soul when it comes to self-confidence, but when it comes to my pop songs, if I started to question, I would never stop questioning.
Torquil Campbell
Broken Social Scene
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I think what it means to be an 'American Girl,' and what I wrote the song about, is our freedoms. The idea that we as Americans can be what we want to be and say what we want to say and that we take it for granted.
Bonnie McKee
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I met Prince William at a musical festival and he let me know he was a fan of my music. But the invitation to sing at his wedding reception came completely out of the blue. The fact that Kate and William knew the words to my songs was very touching.
Ellie Goulding
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I think our songwriting has evolved. We can show that we have continued to branch out and do different stuff and incorporate different instruments. When it comes to writing, I think that we have pushed the envelope. We can do whatever we want to try - a longer song or a shorter song, some different instruments, some piano, an intro with just vocals, something that's scathing. Whatever. However we feel the song should go, that's what we will do. With that mindset, I think it's made us better writers.
John R. Bush
Armored Saint
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I've never written a song that I thought was a hit.
Richard Marx
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People now have been conditioned to believe they should only buy one song at a time, that nobody can make an entire record that would merit you paying, you know, $7, $8, $10 when CDs in the '90s were $18, $19 and people bought millions and millions and millions of them.
Brian McKnight
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Music is made by individuals. Some artists will be very politically overt in their songs, some will be more subtle. You have to be true to yourself, true to your nature.
Edwin Farnham Butler III
Arcade Fire
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I have a real dog-like mentality, in that it's like, 'Where is my next meal coming from? Am I ever gonna eat again? Will I ever write another song again? Will anyone show up for tour?' I think it comes from being really poor as a kid.
Neko Case
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I think if the United States gave anything to culture at large in the 20th century, the most important contribution made was the popular song.
Linda Ronstadt