Song Quotes

That song has the full extent of my mandolin abilities; I'm not a good mandolin player at all.

We're in a world where there's famine and hunger and people are dodging bullets and having their nails pulled out in dungeons so it's very hard for me to place any high value on the work that I do to write a song. Yeah, I work hard but compared to what?

We were the rebels of the music industry so we wanted to write a rebellious song.

I think it's important to really press on with the song writing and just go with it. There's no code, there's no craft... it's just let yourself shine through your music. If it's meant to be loved and heard, it'll happen.

That folk music led to learning to play, and making things up led to what turns out to be the most lucrative part of the music business - writing, because you get paid every time that song gets played.

I've never written a song that I thought was a hit.

I met the Colonel when Elvis was recording some song I'd written for one of his movies. Elvis was just having fun with the gang and all the Memphis boys and Colonel Parker was sitting over here in like a theater seat.

If my life was a song the title would probably be 'Clumsy', 'cause I'm clumsy.

Everything is Song. Everything is Silence. Since it all turns out to be illusion, perfectly being what it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, you are free to die laughing.

And he was going to give me a song, because I'm a singer and I wanted to sing in everything.

If you're dealing with a musical in which you're trying to tell a story, it's got to sound like speech. At the same time it's got to be a song.

Sinatra was pretty astute - he used the best songwriters around, he used all the resources, he covered every song from the era basically.

I get so excited when a song I wrote that's very personal to me goes No. 1 and I look down and see people singing the words back to me.

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.

But when you get to a song, not only do you have to do a vocal melody, you have to write words and not be redundant and make some semblance of a story.

If my life were a song, what would it be? 'A Never Ending Road of Musical Good Times'.

I can reach the mass audience if I come from different perspectives on every song.

'None of Your Business.' It's the only Salt-N-Pepa song that I regret.

It took me a long time to learn how to write a good song.

You can fill this table up with people who are racist, homophobic, Satanist worshippers, sexist and we can be arguing but if you put on a song, I guarantee that people will stop and listen and that's what I love about music, it can bring people together.

I do not think men have more talent. There are a great many women in the arts; novelists, painters, sculptors, poets-but the proportion is far lower in the field of song writing.

It's so easy for me to do a boy-bashing pop song, but to sit down and write honestly about something that's really close to me, something I've been through, it's a totally different thing.

Regardless of who originally made it popular, any hit song becomes a challenge to the ingenuity and imagination of other musicians and performers.

And then, I was thinking of doing a record just like starting with voice, because I did this one song that was just kind of a cappella, and I did it for this art piece I did where people could come and play music to go with a voice.

Thus mating of females was strictly along the lines of paternal song.

I've never really had anybody close to me die. I think the song is about a feeling that I have that, it still applies. It's a feeling of longing, once again.

A song must move the story ahead. A song must take the place of dialogue. If a song halts the show, pushes it back, stalls it, the audience won't buy it; they'll be unhappy.

I have a very eclectic iPod. So I've got my cardio people - so it's anything from Beyonce to some Jay-Z to Janelle Monae, her song 'Tightrope,' that's a good cardio song. And then I've got Sting. I've got Mary J. Blige. I've got The Beatles. I've got Michael Jackson. I try to pick the songs that I personally love.

Michael came home and asked, Would you like to write a song with me? I got this idea for a title called A Kiss at the End of a Rainbow. So we had a couple glasses of wine and wrote it.

I've never done anything so political before. I've spent years shouting my mouth off about serious issues over dinner tables but never really had the confidence to express my views in a song.