Songs Quotes

Had I not come out with an inspirational CD, you perhaps would have never known that I feel like I feel, that all songs, all the music I've ever done is a gift from God.

How do I tell people who I am? Not being a writer, the only way is to sing songs that reflect my opinions.

Singing songs like 'The Man I Love' or 'Porgy' is no more work than sitting down and eating Chinese roast duck, and I love roast duck.

Falling in love is awesome, but I'm never drawn to happy songs per se, so whenever you sit down to write a heartbreak song and you're happily in love, it's like, 'OK, now I have to go back to a sad place to get something good.'

I've just built a studio in my mama's old bedroom, which I thought was fitting; she died last year. We've recorded nine songs recorded in there already; we're sort of just chipping away.

I don't feel I have to write deep and meaningful songs; they can be light and meaningless. It has to do with the place I am in my life, a really good place.

Technically, I've been retired for some time now. All I ever do is occasionally write songs for friends, such as one, for a friend who had just turned 80. I wrote a song for him called, The First 80 Years are The Hardest.

Even though other people wrote my songs I put my stamp on them. I have a connection, but there is no truer connection than an artists and their own song.

I connect emotionally to these songs. I mean what I say when I say it, and that allows your audience to connect. That's the number-one reason why any music is successful, because you make people feel something.

I didn't want to be on the losing side. I was fed up with Jewish weakness, timidity and fear. I didn't want any more Jewish sentimentality and Jewish suffering. I was sickened by our sad songs.

No matter how long you play rock n roll songs might change just as the balls are there, the rock balls. And that's what's important to us.

I don't play the traditional Charlie Parker songs. But I do improvise and I do create with my instrument, and that to me is jazz. But there are people who use the word 'jazz' only in a traditional sense, and they would be offended by that, and that's fine.

The kind of vocal exaggeration that I developed was based on what key songs were in.

Universal was absolutely marvelous about sitting down with me and listening to my input. It wasn't something where they chose a bunch of songs that were best sellers. They did a marvelous job on the packaging. It's a beautiful tribute.

If you write great songs with meaning and emotion, they will last for ever because songs are the key to everything. Songs will outlast the artist and they will go on for ever if they are good.

It wasn't my natural inclination to get into writing protest songs.

That's what I love. Not being interrupted, sitting in a car by myself and listening to music in the rain. There are so many great songs yet to sing.

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

The new album is a childhood dream come true. Got to sing with Ronnie Spector, got to cover a bunch of songs that were influential in drawing a line between the punk form and original rock and roll.

Most of the songs I sing, they have that blue feeling to it. They have that sorry feeling. And I don't know what I'm sorry about.

There are seven songs finished and on par with any that are on Siren's.

I must be careful not to get trapped in the past. That's why I tend to forget my songs.

It's great when you play to an audience that knows the words to all your songs, and sings them back to you.

I was never too keen on the British music press. They've called us a supermarket hype, and they used to suggest that we didn't write our own songs.

Real popular culture is folk art - coalminers' songs and so forth.

What I'm doing is basically the same as Bob Dylan did with folk songs and Woody Guthrie songs, the same as folk music's always done. I'm not going to sing about ploughing, but I'll write a song that sounds like it should be about ploughing.

I had this talent for these stupid little teenage songs.

I loved Rent when I first heard it, but it grew on me and so did Tick, Tick... Boom. Some songs are more interesting than others and sometimes the ones that never stood out at first end up being the best to perform.

Lately I've been falling asleep listening to 'Common One' by Van Morrison, specifically the song 'Summertime in England.' It's 15 minutes long, so to make it through the entire song is a real task unto itself, but Van has that emotional payoff that makes even his most tiresome songs more powerful than most people's entire catalog.

I am happy that women can relate to my songs, and hopefully men can too.