Lyric Quotes

The way I teach people to sing... I have them talk the lyric out until it sounds like something they really believe, like an actor with a monologue.

I understand that transposing a song a half step can effect the believability of a lyric.

When the student has her voice under complete control, it is safe to take up the lyric repertoire of Mendelssohn, Old English Songs, etc. How simple and charming they are!

Lyric writing is an interesting process in Sonic Youth. There's three people writing now, and we've all had a lot of interest and involvement with expression through words.

The most astonishing joy is to receive from the muses the gift of a whole lyric.

Everything that Traffic ever did, I'd give Steve a complete lyric, titled, written out with the verse, the bridge, the shape and rhyme and then Steve had to figure out how the meter of the words would fit musically.

One thing a lyricist must learn is not to fall in love with his own lines. Once you learn that, you can walk away from the lyric and look at it with a reasonable degree of objectivity.

He doesn't make it so complicated but just really allows the lyric to come through even though there's a lot of production going on. I think that's the key and that's the magic, it's making sure that people could still connect with the lyrics while they're on the dance floor.

There are some songs where I'll have had the music for 20 years and then finally the lyric will come through. That's not common but it does happen. Then there are other songs that come really quickly.

I don't really get shaken very much. People could heckle me, a spotlight could go out, I could forget a lyric... I'm not operating on somebody's brain, you know what I mean? So I just think it's all funny.

Religious poetry, civic poetry, lyric or dramatic poetry are all categories of man's expression which are valid only if the endorsement of formal content is valid.

A lyric has to mean something to me, something that has happened to me.

I'd rather sing a good lyric written by someone else than one of my own that is terrible.

A lyric, it is true, is the expression of personal emotion, but then so is all poetry, and to suppose that there are several kinds of poetry, differing from each other in essence, is to be deceived by wholly artificial divisions which have no real being.

I have a little dictaphone and if a sound takes my fancy or if a lyric comes to me in the middle of the night I'll just record it there and then.

I'm not a lyric writer to make statements. What I enjoy doing is making paintings with lyrics, creating colorful images. I think that's more what entertainment and music should be.

Publishing the lyric books, poetry or comics of other musicians I know. That's the thing I really want to break into!

I've learned that in the theater the story is everything. Every lyric, every line and every musical gesture has to propel the journey of a given character or the overall plot.

After using four different languages on an album, it's tough to decide which one I'm gonna actually learn to speak. I always study the lyric, make sure I know what I'm singing, and try to get the pronunciation as perfect as possible.

I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.

This proves that great lyric poetry can die, be reborn, die again, but will always remain one of the most outstanding creations of the human soul.

I want to suggest a feeling. It's ridiculous to assume you can state an opinion. Somebody else can never relate to the lyric in the same way because their whole experience is different. You can only suggest, then people add their own history and experience to the lyrics.

If I play anything that sounds like a solo, it's gonna sound like a lyric.

This 'Making Mirrors' album is far more personal, even if there's a character element to the sounds I'm working with. Every song on this album I stand behind; I feel like I have a close relationship with them. There are older songs where I can feel myself writing a story, so this is the first album where I'm proud of every lyric.'

In my opinion, Lenny Bruce was more of an influence on Zappa's satirical lyric's than anyone that I know of.

He passes from lyric to epic poetry in order to speak about the world and the torment in the world through man, rationally and emotionally. The poet then becomes a danger.

Enormous enlargements of an object or a fragment give it a personality it never had before, and in this way, it can become a vehicle of entirely new lyric and plastic power.

It was a little at a time but I broke out my Walkman and my lyric pad and started writing.

When I'm stuck for a closing to a lyric, I will drag out my last resort: overwhelming illogic.

There can be no proof that Blake's lyric is composed of the best words in the best order; only a conviction, accepted by our knowledge and judgment, that it is so.