Song Quotes

What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.

But we used to go to flea markets and things, and look for old 78 records that had silly song titles.

We human beings are tuned such that we crave great melody and great lyrics. And if somebody writes a great song, it's timeless that we as humans are going to feel something for that and there's going to be a real appreciation.

I like singing in harmony - I like not having to sing every song.

I tend to overthink things. I'm not the guy who screams 'This is a world smash!' when I finish a song.

Finding fresh song topics can sometimes be quite difficult.

While I've had a great distaste for what's usually called song in modern poetry or for what's usually called music, I really don't think of speech as so far from song.

That was when Neil discovered Jack Nietzsche. They went off and pretty much came up with that by themselves, but I thought it was a great song, and I was more than happy to do my harmony parts on it.

A great song can make a terrible singer sound good, but a good singer - you put a great song on top of that, you're really in great shape!

The way I write my songs is that I have to believe what I'm writing about, and that's why they always end up being so personal - because the kind of artists I like, they convince me, they totally win me over straight away in that thing. Like, 'Oh my God, this song is totally about me.'

People are consuming more than ever, but I think they want a bit of honesty and depth. Adele, Gotye, Janelle Monae - they're giving you a catchy song, but it's also a challenging song at the same time.

We are all treading the vanishing road of a song in the air, the vanishing road of the spring flowers and the winter snows, the vanishing roads of the winds and the streams, the vanishing road of beloved faces.

We worked very hard to make the lyrics suit the music. I can't, like Elton John, for example, compose by lyrics. Elton has a great talent for that. Whatever you give him, including your questions, he composes in half an hour and makes a great song out of it.

Madonna can still produce a catchy pop song, but she hasn't expanded her artistic vocabulary since the 1990s. Her concerts are glitzy extravaganzas of special effects overkill. She leaves little space in them for emotional depth or unscripted rapport with the audience.

Just this morning, out of a large memory for songs, and having been obsessed by them since childhood, suddenly, at the age of 84, I thought of a song I hadn't thought of in over 50 years. It came into my head unbidden.

Not only is your story worth telling, but it can be told in words so painstakingly eloquent that it becomes a song.

I think from the very beginning with 'We Are Young,' there was never any question about where we wanted the song to go and what we wanted it to sound like. And we knew that we wanted it to be big, we wanted it to be booming over the speakers at an arena or something.

I don't ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful.

I suppose any note, no matter how sour, sounds like a song if you hold onto it long enough.

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.

But the greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out. You want the listener to find the song on their own. If you give too much away, it takes away from the imagination.

I'm singing the music publisher's theme song - it ain't a commercial.

Many people think of me as a perfectionist, someone who polishes and shines each song and performance. I've always been bothered by that assumption.

Last tour my bass rig was breaking down every other night. That was a pain. We would get on stage and Trey would count off the song, and I'd play the first note and nothing would be there. Those guys would just roll their eyes.

In some ways, I've always approached singing as acting, and the voice is just like a way of carrying the song.

It's a little gross to put yourself in every song. I mean, how interesting do people really think you are?

'Time after Time' is one of the best pop songs ever written, in my opinion. It's an incredible, beautiful, timeless song.

I write when I have to; I write when the song is done and I deal with the idea and I just go with it and I'll become what that song is all about until I have finished it. And when you do that, it makes the song more visual, it makes it more personal.

I call it sacred geometry. When everything's just right and it feels really balanced, so that when it unfolds to the next part, you feel totally familiar and at ease within the song.

If my life was a song it would be 'Who Let The Dogs Out'.