Song Quotes

I learned when I started to study piano that I could play by ear. I could hear a song on the radio a couple of times and hear the song and the lyrics and sing it for you after a couple of plays.

I love the fact that 35 years later, I still hear my songs on the radio.

I love my songs, let's not get crazy here.

Sometimes the fragment of a conversation, the color of the sky, the image in a dream, has everything to do with where the song begins.

I found it was really impossible for me to write songs when I couldn't sing.

There's nothing like a hardship song to set my toes a-tappin.

'Unbelievers' was a song that we felt like we could tackle, so that's one of the reasons we wanted to start playing it live, we really believed in that song and we still believe in that song a lot.

I like the idea that a song can be something that you can lean on, both for the songwriter and for the person who hears the song.

Singing your own songs live is so personal, it's like standing there reading out your diary pages. I still get really nervous so I would have to say performing is the greater rush for me.

I would say the main themes are love, loss and life. Although a lot of the songs represent hard times and situations I think my album is positive, the message is things will get better.

The biggest lesson is that you write the best songs when you're being real, an honest and you mean what you're saying, not trying to be something you're not.

Most musicians count at the beginning, and never count and talk to their musicians after that. They only talk to them at the end of the song. But I would count with them and talk.

Artists don't always know. Almost every song I ever recorded that was a hit at the majors that the promotional people picked I didn't think it would be a hit. I was wrong every time!

When it comes to sitting down and composing, there is no hesitation, no concern, no critics breathing fire down my neck. For me, writing a song is the purest part of all. No one can mess with that.

When it came to using elements of your personal life in your work, my mother was the master, or the mistress. There were three or four songs she wrote about my father - songs about failed love.

I've written songs for Shirley Bassey, Marianne Faithfull, and Linda Thompson. I sort of focus on these wonderful, aging divas. But maybe that's because I think I'm Christina Aguilera.

I find so many songwriters today are missing an element ... either the production is amazing but the songs aren't, or it's the other way around.

Why be in music, why write songs, if you can't use them to explore life or an idealized vision of life?

To me, songs come of their own volition - and with an open-ended philosophy.

Prima Donna is my kind of love song to opera but it's not the full experience.

Every songwriter lives to have at least one song that a cab driver who asks 'You write anything I know?' will recognize.

A lot of my early career, I wrote story songs that had narratives, that had plots.

I thought we were gonna get "Smooth Operator." That song was big in the '90s.

Surely common sense as well as anthropological evidence documents the universal need to pray, to hope, and to lament or carouse through song.

I'm still moving around.We're building a platform to put a song out every week for 52 weeks called ADD52.

To make a song is a gift, and once it's done it keeps evolving and changing and becomes a tool to interact with other people. It's like a conversation.

I can sort of will that stuff to happen to me if I put myself in the right headspace. Then I can actually get to a space where it won't just be one song that comes through, but a series of them.

You can imagine several scenes from Star Wars? The way they looked? For me, that's how music is. Sometimes I'll be developing riffs for songs, just while I'm sitting around and not playing.

It's really very easy for me to be in The Cardinals, because I bring my voice, my guitar, and my songs to them, and then we all play around to find out what works.

I wanted the songs to be themselves, instead of worrying about all this crazy slickster production.

I was the drummer in a band called Hemsworth for a brief stint, too - it was not very great. I didn't even write the songs, but the band was named after me.

But the case has proved that to be true which Appius says in his songs, that each man is the maker of his own fate.

My friend Lou Reed came to the end of his song. So very sad.But hey, Lou, you'll always take a walk on the wild side. Always a perfect day.

[My work] is a love song to our mongrel selves.

When I do older folk songs, I'm not doing them because they're old. I have no interest in reviving or continuing a tradition. I'm just doing them because they're great songs.

I don't listen to the national anthem ironically. It's a beautiful song. I love it!

I don't have many easy songs.

I always liked a good love song and I dig being in love.

I loved that song ["Don't Tell Me"], but man, it was dark. That song did nothing for Van Halen.

I've always been into writing love songs.

"Love Walks In," it was the same thing. That song is about aliens, by the way.

I had more of a vocal range. If you wanted to play a keyboard song, like "Love Walks In," I can do it.

It took me a long time to put it to use in things, but the name of my publishing company is Nine Music, and "Red" became my theme song.

I have found words [in the Bible] for my inmost thoughts, songs for my joy, utterances for my hidden griefs, and pleadings for my shame and my feebleness.

You hear sounds and orchestration, it's ... the fastest way, I think, to your emotions, even if you don't understand the language of the song.

I used to sing songs from musicals all the time as a kid.

I don't like karaoke very much. I like being around it, but I don't like singing it. If I had to sing a karaoke song, it's usually "Son of a Preacher Man" by Dusty Springfield.

I feel like my songs are like diary entries for me. So I usually write about things that have happened to me specifically or sometimes it can be someone who's close to me.

Nobody ever thinks a song is about them. Well, not when it's mean. When it's a good song everybody thinks it's about them. And when it's mean, nobody thinks it's about them.

I think I have some anger-management issues, and they end up coming out in these passive-aggressive songs that sound happy.