Song Quotes

Writing a song is much like being an author. Yes, we all have tools to write (everyone has a brain I hope!), but that doesn't all of a sudden make us best selling authors.

Morrissey wrote a really gorgeous song for me. I'm crazy for that man. And he thinks I'm hip!

You've got to really know your song, inside and out.

Of course, the kids who had never heard of a person called Ben E. King were then aware of the name associated with the song. That gave a tremendous lift to me as an artist.

If I like a song, I'll just keep playing it, and it never gets old.

I find it hard to get excited by just a sound. I have to have a song there, then I'll find what used I can make of that sound within the song.

I started crying, because there's nothing like hearing that the artist who originally did the song likes your version.

When I'm writing a song, it gives me more actual pleasure to hear someone else sing it than do it meself.

I think there's a good pop song in pretty much anything.

I have never been so calculating as to sing some Barry White song to get a girl. But I do think it's very romantic to cook dinner and sit around the piano at night and sing together.

I like when the song starts to take over and you feel like you have to dance more than write.

Solace is my favorite song. It was the last song we wrote for the record. It was right when we really started to mesh as far as music goes and we started really connecting with each other.

I really didn't think about song writing.

But my role is to just apply the skills I've learned over the years: you listen to the guitar, you listen to the vocal melodies, you listen to the rhythm, and you come up with something that helps you take the song somewhere.

I don't have a favorite song that I've written. But I do have a favorite song: 'Always on My Mind,' the Willie Nelson version. If I could sing it like he do, I would sing it every night. I like the story it tells.

I had always wanted to write a song called, The Vicious Circle. I always thought it was like, the kids are born there, they grow up there, they die there.

There's not one Tin Pan Alley song on my record.

Since I have been singing for so many years, I don't always need to approach a song quite so laboriously and meticulously.

When I graduated from college in early 2010, I decided that I needed to create a calling card, some kind of business card that people can link to my name and face. So I did this 'Mad Men Theme Song...With a Twist' music video. I released it just as I moved to L.A.

In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.

I found out a long time ago that if I didn't have a good story for a song, I could just make one up! Now it seems over half the stories in my show are made up. The funny thing is, those seem to be the ones that resonate the most with the audiences.

I remember so vividly the first song I ever wrote. It was called 'Different People.'

I have a real dog-like mentality, in that it's like, 'Where is my next meal coming from? Am I ever gonna eat again? Will I ever write another song again? Will anyone show up for tour?' I think it comes from being really poor as a kid.

Words are important to me, but a song can work and function and be a good song with words that are fairly standard. But really great lyrics can't rescue a dog of a song.

We would play, then they would play a set, then we would jam on the last song.

Typically I go in the studio and whatever I'm contemplating that day will wind up being a song. I don't come in with lyrics... I just go in and let it happen.

When I first heard that song, it was a ballad but it had a lot more. It felt like a gospel song when I first heard it and it just moved me.

I used to think that all my Wings stuff was second-rate stuff, but I began to meet younger kids, not kids from my Beatle generation, who would say, We really love this song.

With every song that I write, I compare it to the Beatles. The thing is, they only got there before me. If I'd been born at the same time as John Lennon, I'd have been up there.

There's something about prime time television and the way the song is going to come off on the air. I'm very concerned, very self-conscious about that.