A Quote by Atif Aslam

I can't force myself to make up a song. Music comes to me naturally. — © Atif Aslam
I can't force myself to make up a song. Music comes to me naturally.
It's important for me to be respected and to be thought of as authentic and true to myself. So even if country music won't play my music, I'm not gonna go and record a party song or a truck song just to try to get spins. I have to be authentic to myself.
I'll make a song with Rick Rubin, a song with Beyonce, a song with Lenny Kravitz. I just believe in making good music. I'm not trying to section myself off into just making hard-core rap music.
Yeah, once the song is written, it just complexifies the profile of it to have the music and the words at odds. It comes naturally to me. A lot of my music is like that.
A song can be a song where somebody thinks you're crazy. A song that gets released has got to be something that everyone can relate to. Most of the songs that I keep are un-relateable for most people - some of the music I make only for myself and the homies.
I grew up listening to all kinds of music, everything from country to rock, pop, R&B and even rap, so for me, music is music and a great song is a great song.
I make up cassettes all the time - to take on the road with me - a song from this album, a song from that album. That's the way I listen to music; it's like one of those K Tel things: it's from all over. I listen to Fred Astaire, I listen to African folk music, I listen to Talking Heads.
It's not like I force myself to think of sad things, but... it's more that I make music because it makes me happy.
For me, music is a magical life force that has the ability to make me cry, pick me up, and take me back in time.
I can't speak for everybody, I think, for me, I will not be defined by the lyrics of my song. I am a man who does music. It's like clothes don't make the man, the man makes the clothes. It's, it's like that song don't make me, I make the song.
To me, music's something I can dance to or listen to. To write about it is always more of what the music represents, or what it reflects. Like an ideal song, to me, is a song that you can dance to, that summons up some darker and greater mystery.
I have a passion for music, and I enjoy the process of expressing myself within the parameters of a pop song, and I don't do it to seek anybody's approval, necessarily. Obviously, you go on stage, and you enjoy it when people respond to a particular song, but the overall concept of playing music I do for myself.
One of my friends said to me, "Oh yeah, of course you aren't writing." So I was like, "The next time you see me, I'm gonna have a new song." I wrote "Criminal" in 45 minutes when everyone else went to lunch because I had to have a hit. I can force myself to do the work, but only if someone is right up behind me.
As a musician myself, I wouldn't be confident if I received some other composers' song, because I choose to express myself through the music that I make.
I have always thought it was important to maintain some connection for myself to what it takes to make a song work by myself, to put a song across to an audience by myself.
I'd spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down. Then, "Nowhere Man" came, words and music, the whole damn thing, as I lay down...Song writing is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you're allowed sleep.
I'm very concerned with the healing process of a song and music in general. I think that's why I make music - it heals me and I'm extremely sensitive to people who tell me that this or that song made them feel better or helped them go through a difficult time in their life. I think that music is almost medicine. I don't know if that's my philosophy, but that's my thought process.
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