Songs Quotes

It's not rubbish to say that I was a bit peeved about not getting credit for a couple of songs, but that wasn't the whole reason. I guess I just felt like I had enough. I decided to leave and start a group with Jack Bruce.

I think the fans really wanna hear the songs the way they sound on the record.

And when I've been away from my family and friends, I have felt good hearing some of those old songs.

I can't be bothered anymore about giving songs titles.

It's a real gift to be able to have the works of brilliant, great people to learn from and build from. It gives you so much more to draw on, and then you don't have to be all about three-chord pop songs. I don't really like that kind of writing.

It's not until I hear songs that I've done, that I realize how much of an inspiration music from the '60s and '70s has been.

I have been writing songs since I was 9 years old, so writing has and always will be my first love and passion.

Any musical person who has never heard a Negro congregation under the spell of religious fervor sing these old songs has missed one of the most thrilling emotions which the human heart may experience.

Songs won't save the planet, but neither will books or speeches.

I have to choose songs that represent my personality.

I think people who don't believe in God are crazy. How can you say there is no God when you hear the birds singing these beautiful songs you didn't make?

It's always a mixture of fiction and your own story. It's more I recreate atmospheres and moods through songs.

For Ripley I learned to play some songs on the piano, and I never really played them again.

Bob Dylan's first couple of records in the 60's weren't considered cover records, but he only wrote one or two original songs on each album.

I just feel like the songs that come out are the songs that come.

Of all the songs I've recorded, 'Amarillo By Morning' always sticks out in my mind.

I picked and co-wrote the songs that if I was a guy who would be spending my hard-earned money buying an album I would want to hear.

The way I write my songs is that I have to believe what I'm writing about, and that's why they always end up being so personal - because the kind of artists I like, they convince me, they totally win me over straight away in that thing. Like, 'Oh my God, this song is totally about me.'

It's funny; Luther and I have written many songs together, but we've never written songs in the same room.

I admire pop songs that are perfect at three minutes.

The biggest influence? I've had several at different times - but the biggest for me was Bob Dylan, who was a guy that came along when I was twelve or thirteen and just changed all the rules about what it meant to write songs.

A lot of rap songs don't usually have a lot of melody per se.

There's a whole bunch of unfinished stuff. Then I've got books of lyrics. I find it frustrating to finish a song and not be able to record it... so I don't write a million songs.

The spiritual quest was always the predominant aspect of my life. It's always been there. But there's also an incredible passion connected to it; it's not just a dry investigative process. I have been extremely emotional about it, and that comes out in the songs.

Everyone in my family sang, and we would always sing these songs.

I sing the songs that people need to hear.

There are some songs where I'll have had the music for 20 years and then finally the lyric will come through. That's not common but it does happen. Then there are other songs that come really quickly.

There's a certain kind of motion and pacing that our music has, and this just doesn't have that. We just kind of rushed to the conclusion of most of the songs. I just would've preferred to done them over.

We have the capacity to receive messages from the stars and the songs of the night winds.

You can get really left of centre influences in mainstream pop. Michael Jackson and Prince are some of the most progressive artists ever if you actually dissect their songs there's some crazy stuff going on.