Song Quotations | Page 11

My biggest song in the world is 'Nothing's Gonna Change My Love for You.' All over the world, it's number one on the whole planet.

I'd listen to all the stuff that was going on around me and drift off into my fantasies about it. My fantasies have fuelled all the songs I've ever written.

My writing is really intuitive. As a kid, I went to school in New Jersey and hung out in New York, so the way kids used to talk got into our earlier songs.

Music critics think of lyrics first and don't consider melody but so many songs are lyrically depressing but musically great, and that's why they become classics.

Right now, I'm Writing song lyrics. Experimenting with a play. Toying with an idea for a documentary. I hope one of these will eventually be launched into the light of day.

I wrote a techno song about the four things I love in Germany to make myself happy, which are my grandfather, my two poodle pets, bread, and a strange but delicious Turkish dish called Doener Kebab.

The best songs I write in 20 minutes.

Inspiration is enough to give expression to the tone in singing, especially when the song is without words.

It doesn't take a year to sing a song. Takes a year for people to figure out how to market it.

Throughout my career, if I have done anything, I have paid attention to every note and every word I sing - if I respect the song. If I cannot project this to a listener, I fail.

The biggest influence? I've had several at different times - but the biggest for me was Bob Dylan, who was a guy that came along when I was twelve or thirteen and just changed all the rules about what it meant to write songs.

My songs are self-explanatory... somebody pointed out to me that... my songs pretty much speak for themselves.

Keeping the pen out of your hand as much as possible is the best way to write a song, in my estimation. But the pen must come in to tighten it up.

Most artists, you know, you spend their entire lives learning how to play music and write songs, and they don't really know how the music business works.

I don't want to be known for anything other than writing songs.

The story behind every song is individual to itself.

I need a little bass and I don't even need that crazy bass to break your face. I just want it to sound good when I have my favorite song.

Janis Joplin is definitely one of my biggest influences. She taught me how to feel music, and I don't think there's anyone like her that could bring such pain and emotion to a song.

There's no hierarchy in suffering. I think songs that are transcendent are the ones where everyone can feel something from it, you know?

What I'm most pleased about is that there's no particular decline. The songs I wrote 40 years ago are no worse and no better - there's a consistency.

Working on solo material is something I had always dreamed of doing, and I'm incredibly happy with the results. 'Everything To Me' is a very personal song to me lyrically; it is such an upbeat and optimistic record, perfect for the summer. I can't wait for people to hear it!

The only time I think I've ever gotten sick of playing Guns and Roses songs really was during - after having played them in Guns and Roses, and then in Snakepit, and then playing 'It's So Easy' and 'Brownstone' in Velvet Revolver.

When I write songs for myself it's really personal and I just can't have someone else singing it.

When someone picks up one of my songs and records it, I'm a flattered man, it's a blessing to me

I hadn't played any music since freshman year of college, more than thirty years ago, so I had to relearn everything. I started writing songs. Some were dance and trance songs (I listen to them a lot while I'm writing), and some were love songs, because that after all is what music is about - dancing and trancing and love and love's setbacks.

Well, I'd had the Fat Mattress earlier as a writing outlet for songs and that.

My life's far too complicated to be summed up in one song. It would take 20 just to represent one single day.

I'm a songwriter who's put my childhood memories and teenage angst into songs.

I don't use simple words. I make games and puzzles with my songs.

You've got a song you're singing from your gut, you want that audience to feel it in their gut. And you've got to make them think that you're one of them sitting out there with them too. They've got to be able to relate to what you're doing.

I believe a No. 1 song starts happening when it's believable and validating.

I built a reputation as a songwriter in the industry before my own hits. People were used to coming to me for songs. There were songs like 'Clown' and 'Mountains' that were my songs that I wanted to keep. But the record labels saw me as a songwriter. It was hard to get people to believe in me as an artist.

I think a solo moves forward the way a song does, because it's reflective of the chords that I'm considering as I'm soloing, and at the same time I'm going as much out on a limb as Frank Zappa used to, in terms of just going crazy on the instrument.

That is what intrigues me; songwriting and song structure and expression.

In high school, I was Mr. Choir Boy. I had solos, I was helping out the tenors with their parts and our choir teacher would ask me what songs we should do.

We're in a world where there's famine and hunger and people are dodging bullets and having their nails pulled out in dungeons so it's very hard for me to place any high value on the work that I do to write a song. Yeah, I work hard but compared to what?

I find the greatest songs in the world come out of pain, and I don't like it! Here's what it does: It strips away all of your facade. It makes you so honest. It's cleansing.

Most of our stuff was trial and error. You live with a tape recorder, you turn it on, you play the song and you listen to it.

If you have the opportunity to play this game of life you need to appreciate every moment. a lot of people don't appreciate the moment until it's passed.

It's like, it's up to the people to fall in love with the song. The record company can only do so much.

I do sing in the car. I actually sing Britney Spears songs in the car - me and a close friend of mine. She lives in West Palm and I live in Miami, and when we're going back and forth to see each other, we sing: 'Oh, Baby Baby.' We sing all these 1990s songs. We're like two 14-year-old kids just having a good time.

I just think it's a blessing that I was able to have the gift of words and to be able to put them into music. I was given a great gift all the way around. I didn't ever have to really go out and look for songs, you know.

I try to write down every song that comes to me, even though I know that every song that comes to me isnt a song that I need to sing.

I have eighteen titles in the German language. I had a number one song in 1965.

I would love to have a rapper on one of my songs, like Ludacris, or the 'it's so hot in here' guy, Nelly.

My songs emerge from my life, or wherever they do, unbidden and unplanned and completely on a schedule of their own.

At the same time all this was happening, there was a folk song revival movement goingon, so the commercial music industry was actually changed by the Civil Rights Movement.

Singing songs like 'The Man I Love' or 'Porgy' is no more work than sitting down and eating Chinese roast duck, and I love roast duck.

A great song is one that is around even when I'm not.

The advice I have for new artists is this - write great songs and play them live as often as possible. Get residencies all over town and crush it.

With Rock Band, you can play along to Black Sabbath or Nirvana and possibly find new ways of appreciating their artistry by being allowed to perform parallel to it. Rock Band puts you inside the guts of a song.

I'll refer to my music in color, like 'This song needs to be bright red.'

When you've got an extra gear in your head where that's all you do, you've constantly got a little radar up. ... And when something hits that strikes that beeper, hits that radar, it's like my song skills kick right in and go, 'Oh, OK, there's a song in that.' And then I start trying to figure it out.

There's actually a song called 'Vegas Lights,' which I wanted to be an anthem for Vegas, that represented how I felt when I went to the clubs. I felt this weird energy where everybody was having a good time, and it didn't matter. Dancing like nobody's watching. It was kind of beautiful.

I'm not sure it's a better music world of appreciation and performance. I think the listener is a different guy, and listening is something he does in passing, with other stuff going on. There's less care and understanding of the relationship between the song and the listener.

Even in the beginning, when we knew there was a legal argument about how much our song sounds like his song, as one songwriter to another, I wasn't sure that Cat Stevens would take that as bad.

A friend of mine called and said they're interested in having you do a song for the new Pokemon. All my kids are grown up, so I'd heard of it, but I didn't really know what it was.

And frankly, when I made that record, hit songs were not what I was trying to achieve.

Between each album I try to gain a new insight that I didn't have before and perhaps write a song about something that I've written about before, but from a fresh viewpoint.

In hip-hop, I wasn't very focused on delivering a message. It was just a string of lines that didn't connect. What I wanted to do is write stories... and affect someone's emotions with that song. I think as a soul singer, I'm able to accomplish that.

All the folks I play with come from jazz backgrounds or at least appreciate spontaneity within the parameters of a pop song.

With Whitesnake it would have been inappropriate for me to have played Deep Purple songs, although I did at the beginning because I didn't have enough Whitesnake songs.

My music is mostly for the music. And it gives the liberty to do anything which I want. And nobody limits me to one genre of music. But I learn from life and I try to give back to life, in a way, whether it's the thought of the song or whether it's the approach to the arrangement or anything.

I listen to Helmet - and I love Helmet, they're a great band - but every song sounds the same.

I would prefer it if people thought that I didn't work hard, that I just played the guitar for three minutes a week and was like, 'Check out this song - what do you think?' That would be ideal. I would prefer telling people that I'm just truly talented.

I think if you're writing from the heart, very often, the subject matter will adjust as you age... but you try to write the best song you can possibly write. For us, we have the same basic elements that make up the America sound.

'The Christmas Song,' by Nat King Cole, is not only a masterful performance; to me it just sounds like the holidays. I've never sung it, because Nat's version is so perfect. I gotta leave it alone.

I got tired of playing other people's songs.

It's from being melancholy and having my human down experiences that I learn, that I overcome, that I transform - and these realizations I put into song. That's what I choose to put in my backpack and carry with me around the world.

When I come up with an idea about the way I feel, I can really state it strongly in a song.

I'm always looking for great songs, and not being much of a songwriter, I depend on great songwriters to send them to me. I go through tons of stuff, and sometimes you just find material that kind of fits and becomes something special.

Today, it's very tempting to create songs by cutting and pasting in the studio.

If I do a song where I'm angry, when it's time to perform it live I'm not mad, I'm happy. I'm at a concert. But I have to somehow drum up that rage. That's acting.

I don't want to do romantic roles where I have to lip sync to a song. A role that explores romance on a new level would suit me.

After six or seven performances of any song, you begin to perform it rather than feel it.

I got to realizing that I wanted to record, I wanted to experiment. And doing those same old songs the same old way - I said, 'I think it's time for me to have some fun.'

I write songs about fat girls and about men who run off to Mexico.

I would love to make a bunch of country demos and write country songs for really great country singers.

I worry that if I enjoy something - like the songs on 'Some Nights' are about wondering about who you are. I'm never quite sure and I'd hate to feel sort of content and get a good sense of who I am because if I know one thing, that's not me. I don't mind not necessarily being happy about it. And that's fine.

When you write songs, you can't really point out the exact thing you're inspired by. It's more a state or a mood or an atmosphere that you're trying to put into words.

I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I've always seen my stories as enlarged songs.

I'm the perfect amount of guarded. I don't reveal too much, and I never reveal who the songs are about. They are real life. People get that. I date a lot of musicians and they do the same thing. People that work with me - who I write about too - they get it. It's my creative outlet, my therapy.

I really like the P!nk song with the guy from fun., 'Just Give Me a Reason.'

At one time musical theater, particularly in the '40s and '50s, was a big source of pop songs. That's how musical theater started, really - it was just a way of linking several pop songs for the stage.

I always sing Adele in the shower. But everyone should know you never sing an Adele song in public because no one's better than Adele.

It sounds like something from a Woody Guthrie song, but it's true; I was raised in a freight car.

My grandfather lived across the garden from us, and in his attic he had a lot of radios, appliances and inventions that he had made over 50 years, such as a keyboard called a clavioline, which can be heard on some Beatles songs - it was popular in the 60s. So we had all that at home.

I started writing songs when I was 10. It was a natural way to express myself as a kid. It wasn't until I started listening to jazz, joined the choir and picked up a guitar that my little hobby became something far more serious.

In earlier times, so many people sang much more. You know as a kid you'd go to some kind of religious training and or summer camp or whatever it was and you'd learn to sing a lot of songs.

A song will keep going round in my brain and keep me awake.

A friend of mine once told me that I can't screw up when I play my own music. I also take voice lessons, play other peoples' songs out of music books, and occasionally figure out how to play other people's music from records. This keeps my ears, fingers, and mind working

I feel like 'Next To Me' is a great introduction because it's a simple song that has a simple message for me. I wanted to introduce something that lyrically I'm proud of and introduces me both as an artist and as a writer.

When I'm singing a song, I picture somebody in particular. A lot of it is to a guy.

Every song brings back memories, like I remember where I wrote all these songs. 'Universal Heartbeat' was my apartment in New York City. 'My Sister' was at my apartment in Boston. I remember places and I remember what I was thinking when I wrote it.

If I've got a talent, it's for picking the right song at the right time for the right audience. And I can always seem to get people to sing with me.

If my life were a song it'd be called 'Here I Am' because here I am - I mean, I'm Thia and I'm here to me me, I'm here to express myself musically which I find is the best way to express myself.

I really enjoy the therapeutic value of writing songs.

When you're doing the traditional musicals, singing songs that are 40 and 50 years old, you realize there's a reason why those musicals are hits. These are amazing songs!

People hate cardio. I hate cardio. But pick the five top songs that you love. Do your cardio during these songs, and you're done. I'd say 95 percent of the time you don't even know you just did it.

I just play, and I'm always trying to write songs.