Songs Quotations | Page 5

If there's a criticism of 'Cassadaga' that I agreed with, it's that we left things in the oven too long, that songs were overstuffed, with too many ideas competing for space.

With great artists like Elvis, sometimes the songs weren't the greatest thing about him. When I tried to perform some of the songs, I noticed some of the tunes weren't all that brilliant, but it was the performance that sold them.

Fill the earth with your songs of gratitude.

If you listen to the songs I write, they are the most ADHD songs ever. They have five hooks in one and it all happens in three minutes.

I would hate to think my songs were giving advice to people.

The songs I've written that are the strongest, I'm like: 'I don't know where that came from. It just kind of popped out.' You feel you can't take a whole lot of credit for it. I didn't purposefully will it into existence.

I'm very excited about my new Spotify account, which gives me access to twenty gazillion songs any time, all the time. The day I opened my account, though, I sat there perplexed. How would I figure out what I wanted to hear?

Even though it doesn't look like it, I run. On a treadmill. And I bounce around to all the songs on my iPod - the Pixies, Wagner, Richard and Linda Thompson, even books on tape. Just not self-help ones.

When I look at the majority of my own songs they really came from my own sense of personal confusion or need to express some pain or beauty - they were coming from a universal and personal place.

I think there are some songs that stand the test of time better than others for sure. I think some songs go out of favour; I'll get sick of a song for a while, and I won't play it; then it'll make a comeback.

When I'm on stage, the songs that we've chosen to play from the back catalog are things that still resonate with me, and matter to me. And the songs that I couldn't be a part of, we don't play anymore.

In many ways Bright Eyes is really a studio project. We form bands to tour, but it really is - you know, we take the songs and we figure out how to decorate them and it's all in the studio; we build the songs that way.

I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I've done for 25 years. I don't need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

Doing the box set is one of those things where you get to rewrite your own history to some extent. We could take out some of the songs that we felt weren't as strong as some of the others, so you look better.

I thought that I wrote songs and wrote music, and that was sort of what I thought I was best at doing. And because nobody else was ever doing my songs, I felt - you know, I had to go out and do them.

Songs don't have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I've done is about alienation... about where you fit in society.

That little Miley Cyrus... she's like a little Elvis. The kids love her because she's Hannah Montana, but what people don't realize about her is she is such a fantastic singer and songwriter. She writes songs like she's 40 years old!

The people who can really benefit from our songs are the girls in middle America and the only way you can really get through to them is TV.

We utilized the center channel to present the kick drum, snare and bass guitar tracks, as well as singer Greg Graffin's lead vocals, ... Unlike a lot of modern music mixes for 5.1, the center channel was our anchor. This mix is more akin to a 5.1 feature film mix. By mixing in the Rick Chace Theater we had the opportunity to experience the entire concert in a THX-certified dubbing stage and in a room we know, love and trust. To ensure final compatibility in a range of different environments, Brett reviewed the final mix in Mix One, our THX pm3-certified near-field room, and took a few songs on a DVD reference disc so he could also hear the final mix on the new Bose home theater system located at Epitaph's Los Angeles headquarters.

There are certain television theme songs that are nearly as memorable as the shows connected to them. By jogging memories as well as creating wonderful moments by having them performed on this year's Emmy show, we think we're giving viewers one more reason to tune in and be entertainment.

We started off making a full album with Brendan in his studio in Detroit and had nine or 10 songs done, then he got busy with his own record and we started talking to Jack and Meg about touring together. So we decided to do something for the road, and it turned out that the five completed songs made a kind of cool record, with this dreamier, darker mood than some of our other stuff.

When you think of certain sounds and music representing certain communities, you can get into some pretty interesting critical commentary when you put music together. Serendipitously, these songs signify each other.

We didn't deal with the songs at all, ... We wrote a play. And at certain points in the play, because it's about guys who made music, the music comes in almost like a character would.

There is no peace to be taken/ With poets who are young,/ For they worry about the wars to be fought/ and the songs that must be sung.

Whether they're jukebox musicals I hate the term or new and hip, you gotta pick songs that support the story. If you don't feel for the characters, if you're not worrying about what is going to happen, you're going to fail.

We're going to have all the old members there, playing the songs that were popular during the time frame that they were in the band. We're going to take people through 25 years of Dixie Express in an 8-hour period.

We're going to go and play the songs one more time. It seems like the right time, so I figure we'll go out and play a few gigs and see where it goes. I think we might just show up in assorted places in the U.S. in the next few months without much notice and play some clubs and little theaters, and then go to Europe and play these festival gigs. Beyond that, we don't know at this point.

When we formed the band in 1970, we set out to try to write great songs like the songs we heard when we were growing up,

We write what we know about. It's easy to write songs about things you're familiar with. We're all collective writers.

We write songs about ordinary people, not people that have a certain haircut.

We grew up so much we had to limit it to two songs per person.

Ye living lamps, by whose dear lightThe nightingale does sit so late;And studying all the summer night,Her matchless songs does meditate.

Ye living lamps, by whose dear light The nightingale does sit so late; And studying all the summer night, Her matchless songs does meditate.

We experienced a deconstruction of our personal lives. Coming home to a familiar setting and being alien to it created a sense of isolation from the people we're close to. There were all these invisible barriers that were tough to reach through. So we ended up with songs like 'Alone, Jealous, and Stoned,' about how our emotions propel us toward these conflicts and away from the people we love.

Throughout history, the leaders of countries have been very particular of what songs should be sung. We know the power of songs.

Yes, I sing songs about relationships on the edge, relationships of all kinds, but remember I did not write them all, ... They are not all based on my experiences. Years ago, I wrote with Dennis Walker and Bruce Bromberg, who were 10 years older and divorced two or three times. They had great senses of humor, which is where lines like 'a boatload of lawyers just sank' came from. It is their stories on Strong Persuader, my breakthrough album from 1986. Sneaking out the window, 'Porch Light,' they are not my songs or lines. So, my life is not as miserable as some of the music makes it out to be. My wife Sue and I have been married for 15 years. She's an actor, but Sue gets the credit she deserves on some of my songs.

Yes, I heard my people singing!--in the glow of parlor coal-stove and on summer porches sweet with lilac air, from choir loft and Sunday morning pews--and my soul was filled with their harmonies. Then, too, I heard these songs in the very sermons of my father, for in the Negro's speech there is much of the phrasing and rhythms of folk-song. The great, soaring gospels we love are merely sermons that are sung; and as we thrill to such gifted gospel singers as Mahalia Jackson, we hear the rhythmic eloquence of our preachers, so many of whom, like my father, are masters of poetic speech.

We're really big on songwriting and getting the best arrangements for songs. Once you've got the songs you can do whatever you want.

With this new album, I prepared for it a long time, and I was happy with the songs and the production. I felt that I proved myself with the first album, and with this new album, I just want to share some of my music. And that was always my feeling and my intention.

When your hair is rising, that's when you know it's a good song - that's happened to me with some artists and some songs, John Lennon songs or when Nina Simone sings. It's great to make those moments yourself.

We were always open to all sides and experimented an awful lot. That way we had a lot of mellow songs and a lot of noisy, loud songs.

We'll set up a demo session and try to knock out eight or ten songs and make them sound as close as we can to a record with the money and time we have.

With Whitney she has such a unique sound and powerful instrument that she made those songs her own. She might as well have written them because she brought such a power and passion to them that were very unique. She has a great gift.

We also will do some music that is representative of the country that we are visiting. We brought in a native of Croatia who moved here a few years ago and speaks the language. So we were able to teach the boys some words and pronunciation and she was nice enough to bring us folk songs and the national anthem of Croatia. We learned those things and are hoping to do them while we are on tour. It is nice to show people you are making an attempt to learn a little bit about their language and culture.

What we're finding is that teenagers really like the music. We've gotten good feedback from kids in Woodland, too. Everybody likes it. I think it's because we play the best songs from each decade, with an occasional new hit tossed in. Good music is timeless.

There are some things that are more difficult and commercially successful. Writing original songs is more gratifying on some level. But this is so much damn fun because we invented it and perfected it. The fact that we let the music speak and then poof! -- it's gone -- manages to somehow give us artistic integrity in a cover-band framework. We've got something magical here, and we have to protect it. We don't want to suck any of the joy out of it.

There are some songs where you're like, 'I really like this song,' and it just didn't work out how you thought it would. That's life. You win some, you lose some. You can't dwell on it. I can't be worried about the past.

We decided to let the songs determine where the record was going to go. I had written only a couple of songs before, but we decided just to go with our gut and try different approaches to everything.

We decided the only way to make a cover record special was to do the songs that influenced us when we were younger.

We're 100 percent going with the flow, no songs whatsoever. That's as structured as it gets.

We're a part of the fabric of people's lives at this point. As songwriters, but also as a band, we can stand up there and sing songs that (people remember) listening to the first time (they) made out in the car with somebody. It's a big privilege for us. When we walk out there and sing those songs, you see what's in the eyes of those people. We're singing about everybody.

We did pre-production for the first time. He listened to the songs and made suggestions on structure and other things. We're such control freaks, we never let anyone hear anything in the past. But when we recorded, we were prepared ? we tried really hard to nail every part, every vocal, every guitar. And I think that lends it a certain urgency.

We have played hymns and songs that people know like ?The Star-Spangled Banner? or ?Battle Hymn of the Republic.? Sometimes people like to sing along.

We have people who come from all over the state and have something going on in the area. Over the time we've been (at Oregon Trader), we've built up kind of a following both with musicians who play and regulars. A lot of these songs are our standard stuff. When we start doing those, people start to sing, and it's fun.

The Fab Four have always been among the very most popular bands online even though they're technically -- or legitimately -- unavailable online. My easy prediction is that the Beatles sell a lot of songs online, even though seemingly everybody who has access to them has their songs already.

The extraordinary thing about Irving Berlin is that he's like the American Mozart! It seems as if his songs were always there. How do you put together songs like 'Always' or 'Cheek To Cheek'? Songs of his are, frankly, perfect.

The real challenge of writing songs isn't just writing a bunch of parts - like a verse, chorus, verse - but making something that flows together, that brings you back.

When I'm on a plane, I am the annoying person humming into my phone. Sitting there static with nothing to do, a lot of melodies come to me. So I've written a lot of songs on planes.

When I was 13, I told my dad I needed to record myself because I sounded awesome, even though I didn't. By 18, I was a lot better. Then I got a publishing deal, so I was writing songs for other people professionally.

The popular songs that were written in the 1920s and '30s, '40s and early '50s were written by veterans - mostly men who'd had experience in life. How can you write a lyric if you haven't really lived life?

The popularity of the Sprint Music Store is due largely to its ability to instantly deliver the songs people want when they want them on their Sprint phone, the one device that is likely always with them. This feature, along with the easy-to-use storefront, appeals to a mass audience in addition to tech-savvy early adopters.

We have a set list, but we work up a lot more (songs) than we're gonna do. That way we can throw things in and change it around, especially if we're in a place for two days. It's good to keep yourself interested. The last show we did five songs we never rehearsed and that certainly sparked us up.

We're gonna play you some songs we know and some we don't. But we're pretty good at it. We have no set list, no agenda and no fear.

We're gonna bring in different songs and play for two hours. That's our new thing. We never played for two hours in our whole career. We thought we would die, but now when I get onstage, I want to do more. So it might be more, you never know.

This program or programs like it are great platforms for a career, but they don't guarantee any career. Their music, at the end of the day, and where they take their music and the quality of their songs is going to do that.

When I graduated high school, I bought a guitar and, at first, didn't really think I'd get into the songwriting thing as much as I did. But after learning a few songs of other people's to play on the guitar, I got bored with that and just started writing songs on my own, and that's kinda how it came about.

When I hear the songs 'Dangerous' or 'End of My World', I go, 'Wow, I didn't even know I could go that low!' And when I played them for my family, they said, 'That doesn't even sound like you.'

The primary goal of the choir is to rekindle interest in the language, ... The kids are interested in the Cherokee language and when we go on trips, we use a glossary of words that are in the songs and practice using them while we travel.

When you can buy just the songs you like in a digital format, you don't have to buy the album.

L. R. H. in Clearing Procedure, 1957:"The work was free. Keep it so."Therefore, although we have no such stature as the Great Philosophies, I charge you with this - look to source writings, not to interpretations. Look to the original work, not offshoots. If I have fought for a quarter of a century, most of it alone, to keep this work from serving to uphold the enslavers of Man, to keep it free from some destructive "pitch" or slant, then you certainly can carry that motif a little further. I'll not always be here on guard. The stars twinkle in the Milky Way and the wind sighs for songs across the empty fields of a planet a Galaxy away. You won't always be here. But before you go, whisper this to your sons and their sons - "The work was free. Keep it so.

Lyrically and thematically, the title 'Doctor Faith', that song is about therapy, psychotherapy, and that song is about emotions and personal insight. I think all the songs on the record sort of go along with that.

Making playlists can kill a whole afternoon for me. I like building very specific playlists for new writing projects. In a strange way, choosing certain songs is part of the process of plotting the book out. I pick songs that I think with resonate with characters, their personality quirks, relationship dynamics, action scenes, and so on.

Liam is a songwriting genius. His songs make me cry 'cause they are better than mine.

Level-two students have the ability to handle songs that are harder. To higher level students I give different assignments, other songs and tests.

Let It Die' is more piano-based, organ-based and percussion-based. Live, the songs are more guitar-based. The record that we're doing right now is really guitar-based. I feel like finally I get to write some parts that I'll be excited to play on tour for this record.

Leprechauns, castles, good luck and laughter.Lullabies, dreams and love ever after. Poems and songs with pipes and drums. A thousand welcomes when anyone comes... That's the Irish for you!

Let's face it, ... I'm not the most marketable songwriter out there today. But there are still some people who want to hear those songs. I'm grateful I've found ways to get the songs to them.

Many of the songs on the new record underwent drastic changes in arrangement, tempo and dynamics with the addition of the other band members.

So, it ended up being what you have there, seven songs brand new and ten live songs which is a good mix.

So, if we're happy playing the songs we have written, for as long as we can, then that is sort of the proof that they're good songs as well.

So I concentrated on the rhythmic side of things, and therefore left a lot of holes. I didn't want to use big pad chords everywhere. All of the songs are built up of small melodies and counter melodies all played very rhythmically.

She used to play every weekend in pubs with Daddy, and she'd written all these Irish songs out in a book. They're songs we've loved over the years, and because our parents played them in their band, they're very special to us.

'Shotgun's one of the first songs I ever wrote. It's about a couple I met at Waffle House, an all night diner I used to hang at before I could go to bars.

Shoot, we go through hundreds of songs to find 12, ... It's like that on every album that I do.

Since there's only room for me to write a few songs on each band album, I really have to use my songs. But on my own album I had room to use songs I wanted.

She only sang. I didn't have to talk to her. I was quite uncomfortable, but I thought it was a nice moment. Love ends, but songs are for ever. They capture a moment and an emotion. You can have two human beings who should not be in the same house, or possibly even the same country, but the music tells you that it really could have been for ever. In those three minutes, there are no hard feelings.

She incorporates comedy and funny songs - it's not the kind of thing you'd typically see at a folk concert, but it's really unique and fun.

Most of the songs I write are just very directly from my life. I don't have a big imagination. Whenever I tried to write from fantasy, it comes out sounding really fake.

Most of the time, somebody has a good story and adds the songs to it later. This show seems to be worked from the completely opposite angle. Billy wrote the music and lyrics, and Twyla grabs it and makes the show.

Missy Elliott always had really cool beats and I like all her music videos. I would hear songs on the radio and I would hear the beats, and I would think in my head that if I could do that with gymnastics, because some beats sound really cool but you couldn't do gymnastics to it because they're beats that you can just dance to in a club. In gymnastics, you have to be able to breathe and move at the same time.

Motown is the soundtrack of our lives. These are songs we have always wanted to do, and now, happily, we have had a chance to do them.

MP3.com is thrilled to be able to feature selected songs and videos from many of Warner Music's top artists.

My favorite songs are those that are most deeply personal and emotional for me, and they include the love songs that I've written for Monique.

My first attempt at a kiss was in fifth grade, but it didn't go so well. Later, I used Boyz II Men and Jodeci songs to come on to girls. I had more success.

one that was the antithesis of 'The Fragile,' which was complex. Songs flowed into each other, and it was layered. This record I wanted to be as stripped down as possible. I wanted it to be more real, more organic, not overly fixed or chopped up. At the end of the day, it reminds me of 'Pretty Hate Machine.'

One of our most popular channels is 'Sirius Hits,' which plays the most popular songs in high rotation. But we have other channels, like bluegrass, where listenership isn't as high, but there's an extremely high level of satisfaction. That's the kind of service we can provide.

One of our most famous songs is 'O Sole Mio.' It's not about the mountains; it's about the sun, the sky. Our mountains are near the borders up north, and those are the areas where winter sports are big. Really, only about a quarter of the country is into those sports.

Of course I'm glad I've become known for other things, but I'm not ashamed of my past. I look back on those times as being very exciting for me as a performer and, in fact, I still sing some of those songs today.

Of course, I have no idea what you know and don't know. But I have managed to introduce these songs even to people who listen to a lot of music; maybe you have somehow managed to have missed them.

Of course, because I was at the beginning of my career. For me, as a musician, to have a chance for an icon like Miles Davis to play on one of my songs was something unique and unbelievable.