Song Quotes

The songwriting of Hall & Oates is deceptively complex. There are a number of key changes that pass you by as you're listening to the song because they're so seamless and clever.

They were so good that you just had to sing the song to them once and they got it. It's amazing. Sometimes it didn't come out the way you wanted, but it was good.

I think Bridge Over Troubled Water was a very good song. Artie sang it beautifully. The Boxer was a really nice record. But I don't think I've written any great songs.

I like kind of varied songs, not just the same song all the time. And I thought things like "Too Sentimental" is a different thing for us, but it works and we love the way they all came out. There's definitely varied songs on there.

If my life was a song it would be, 'It ain't that easy being green' from Sesame Street.

I never have any problem getting enthusiastic with a good song and a good band.

But the reality is when you write a song, you should be able to strip away all the instruments and just have a song right there with an acoustic guitar and a voice, and the song should be good.

It's amazing when you're playing to a crowd who barely understands English but they're singing parts of your song back to you.

Sometimes I'll get to the end of a song, open my eyes and there's all these faces peering at me. It's quite horrifying.

I was half asleep lying there writing this lyric in my head at about 3:30 in the morning. I woke Steve up with this idea and then we went into the living room where there was a little upright piano and finished the song. I wonder where that piano is now?

When you sing a song the way I sing it, you have to use your whole body. It's almost like working out.

That's really what was wonderful for me growing up, since I got to know so many of the songwriters who liked me and thought I had talent. They would then tell me how to read a lyric and sing a song, and challenge me to try and find a different end to a song.

You could write a song about some kind of emotional problem you are having, but it would not be a good song, in my eyes, until it went through a period of sensitivity to a moment of clarity. Without that moment of clarity to contribute to the song, it's just complaining.

Each member does whatever they want with the song and it totally changes it from whatever idea I hear around it. It turns it into a Sonic Youth song and completely away from it being a solo song.

I'm competitive with anyone who writes a good song - I don't care if it's a band or solo artist or whoever.

The song I like to do is 'Dead.' I'm constantly playing that one.

The thing I try to do the most is to play in terms of the song and play in terms of what I'm hearing.

Dave and I had been song writers in Nashville, trying to get around, out hustling, trying to meet people. We randomly met Hillary out in town one night. She said she was a singer. I asked her if she would like to write some songs with Dave and me, and a week later she came over. Instantaneously we had this chemistry.

If you can make the song a soundtrack to what you're living at the time, I think that's the most important part of a song.

You can cage the singer but not the song.

With technology now, you can go in and sing a song, and for $100,000, you will sound flawless.

If my life had to be a song I would name it, 'Live every day like its your best day ever', because it pretty much is.

At the close of the day when the hamlet is still, and mortals the sweets of forgetfulness prove, when naught but the torrent is heard on the hill, and naught but the nightingale's song in the grove.

And I think as long as a song has beautiful lyrics, I'm so happy.

A kid now can practically record a song or edit a short film on his way to school. I think that will produce, perhaps, more less-interesting things - or you'll have to search more to find the interesting things. But I also think it's exciting.

I can't see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That's terrible.

I can't say that I'm always writing in my head but I do spend a lot of time in my head writing or coming up with ideas. And what I do usually is write the music and melody and then, you know, maybe the basic idea. But when I feel that I don't have a song or just say, God, please give me another song. And I just am quiet and it happens.

If you have a song that you think sounds like another song you should contact the publishing company and say I have a song here, let's cut a deal that lets everyone walk away feeling good.

Tori Amos had a major influence on how I craft words in a song.

It can even be a single note which defines the entire song.