Song Quotes

I don't want to be somebody who stands still and sings pretty. Each song is a world. Each song is a story. I don't achieve nearly what I want.

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

Disco was brand new then and there were a few jocks that had monstrous sound systems but they wouldn't dare play this kind of music. They would never play a record where only two minutes of the song was all it was worth. They wouldn't buy those types of records.

It took me 29 years to finish that song. That's a typical Jardine move.

Sing the song or keep it inside.

You don't have to be a cheater to sing a cheatin' song, that's what I'm saying.

I wrote that song for my wife, and it's what some guy who's sitting under a tree would be singing to the woman of his life, telling her how wonderful she is. To me, that's more lasting than something that sounds like it belongs on a movie soundtrack.

I guess you could write a good song if your heart hadn't been broken, but I don't know of anyone whose heart hasn't been broken.

Living here in southern California, I'll miss hearing Rocky Top for an entire week at the end of December. I was actually looking forward to it. Tennessee has a better fight song than Nebraska.

I like to do cover songs if I really love them, I have to love the song first.

I'd have to say that my favorite thing is writing a song that really says how I feel, what I believe - and it even explains the world to myself better than I knew it.

I wish I had a nickel for every song that I've left in the bathroom, written down on a matchbox, or just totally forgotten about.

That's what I find with any good song, you just have to let it happen. Out of about twenty songs you might write, one of any significance. It might be thirty or forty, but I just keep churning them out and churning them out in hope that one of them will stick.

If my life was a song the title would be 'Naima'.

When I put out a record or single I don't allow myself to set up expectations like, 'This song must be a number one hit. Its got to sell X amount of records.'

For example, after developing a sound similar to an elephant trumpeting, I wrote the song Elephant Talk which gave my elephant sound an appropriate place to live.

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.

The big thing that everyone forgets, you're famous and on TV and everything, but I think there's something very rewarding to be able to write a song, record it, and have it turn out as you heard it in your head, or even better.

I've learned this, that haters wanna hate. You could sing a song perfectly, you could write the songs perfectly, and some people are absolutely going to hate you.

The first song is called "London." It's about two Russian soldiers who desert the Russian army and escape to London, where they indulge in a life of crime.

When I write a song, it's all about the riff - the riff first, then the words come later.

I think that you get the mood of a song stronger if you get it right that way. On the other hand, you put some songs out live and they don't catch flight. They just flop. It is hard to tell until they are out there.

There was a chance for me to write one song for the section where Elvis sat in his black leather outfit and sang the old hits. At eight oclock the next morning I had written Memories.

We march and fight, to death or on to victory. Our might is right, no traitors shall prevail. Our hearts are steeled against the fiery gates of hell. No shot or shell, can still our mighty song.

And if you're horrible to me I'm going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That's how I operate.

To me, 'Blackberry Way' stands up as a song that could be sung in any era, really. We do it with the new doing all sort of fanfare things in it and it works really well. It goes down great with audiences.

I think I always had a musicality, and I think I could tell a good song from a bad song. And I would appreciate hearing something that was new to me.

So, once I've written a song, you know, I'm pretty happy with what the song is on its own terms.

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

Each song has its own secret that's different from another song, and each has its own life. Sometimes it has to be teased out, whereas other times it might come fast. There are no laws about songwriting or producing. It depends on what you're doing, not just who you're doing.