Song Quotes

The Beatles mean so much to so many people, you know? Everybody has at least one song of The Beatles that's one of their favorite songs of all time.

I wrote the song For A Dancer for a friend of mine who died in a fire. He was in the sauna in a house that burned down, so he had no idea anything was going on. It was very sad.

I had written lyrics to a song called The Silent Extreme, which Alex later renamed Humans Being.

I liked the way they treated the first, second, and third place finishers equally. It was an amazing year. I only entered two song contests this year; I won one and placed second in the other. And I entered each of them a day or two before the deadline.

I don't like giving names to generations. It's like trying to read the song title on a record that's spinning.

Just with the basic one guitar, one piano and one vocal and an audience, I think that the intimacy comes through more. People feel much more connected to the song because there's nothing in the way, and I actually enjoy doing that.

He saw us play a few times in fact. I did this song called I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes, and Jimi loved it. He paid me a huge compliment when he told me that he was thinking of doing something similar himself!

I learnt from Armstrong on the early recordings that you never sang a song the same way twice.

Some people have said that I can 'hear' a hit song, meaning that I can tell the first time a song is played for me if it has potential. I have been able to hear some of the hits that way, but I can also 'feel' one.

It wouldn't be a Carrie Underwood album without a revenge song on it. People really like when I do that. I don't mean to. I don't hate men that much. But it turns out so well!

Music, at its essence, is what gives us memories. And the longer a song has existed in our lives, the more memories we have of it.

It's cool when your husband starts to sing some old Merle Haggard song and I can pop in with a harmony and it doesn't sound too bad.

By the time I got to record my first album, I was 26, I didn't need pen or paper - my memory had been trained just to listen to a song, think of the words, and lay them to tape.

I think one of the things about writing in the studio is that the song hasn't matured, if you like, so quite often the vocals are early attempts. Whereas once you've taken it out on the road a bit, you learn more about a song.

I was doing these performance art pop music pieces in the city. And they were a bit on the eccentric side I suppose. So people started to call me Gaga after the Queen song 'Radio Gaga.'

Art, a book, a painting, a song, can definitely inspire change, whether it's a small change or a big change but you know there's novels I've read or a scene in a film that I've seen where I definitely inspired something and made a change or addressed an issue in my life or done something cliche like make a phone call.

I wanted to write a happy song. I didn't know how.

Unfortunately, most of the songs that I write I don't write them with guitar in mind. I just write it as a song and that was probably one of the ones that left an opening for it. The song's all right, I wouldn't choose to sing it now.

Sitting next to Olivia Newton-John, I was like, 'Do not sing one song from Grease.' That's all I was telling my brain at all times: 'Do not sing Hopelessly Devoted. Don't do it.'

Then, once I have lyrics, being able to shape them around a song is nothing new for me, I've been doing that for 25 years. The soul searching part of it, the spontaneous part of it, that was, and remains, a really terrific process.

Peace Train is a song I wrote, the message of which continues to breeze thunderously through the hearts of millions of human beings.

While listening, to things like western swing, for instance, I'd work something out in my head, then play it on my National; not the same song, but one that captured the feeling of the original tune.

I may not be the most famous songwriter in the world, but you know a David Friedman song when you hear it. It took me a long time to appreciate that.

Right from day one, you know when you've written a good song.

So we're considering doing a new Christmas album, because there's been Christmas episodes since then, and maybe finally do the version of "The Most Offensive Song Ever" with lyrics intact.

One of them would definitely be the Nelson Mandela gig, when I played the tribute song for him. He was up and dancing, and he really enjoyed it. It was a really lovely occasion.

I love to cook, my husband and I collect wine, and in my head, I am always on Sullivan's Island, walking the beach listening to the song of the ocean.

Music can help you through any kind of emotion. It can help you through a break-up, make you dance, or help you realize or understand something about yourself... and if I can sing a song and make someone feel those things then I will feel like I have made a difference.

And you have a record company behind it, this is a key too, you need people to fight for your records, at least a little bit. So if you have a great song, it's catchy, and you've got a little bit of help, I think that's all you need. But there hasn't been that in music.

I do not mind having written the song at all. I just wish that I had written it in a different key, as the high d is hard to play. I am glad that I wrote something that brought joy to millions of people.