A Quote by Courtney Act

Call me old fashioned, but I love songs that end. As a songwriter, I feel like you put a fade out when you can't work out how to end a song. — © Courtney Act
Call me old fashioned, but I love songs that end. As a songwriter, I feel like you put a fade out when you can't work out how to end a song.
A couple years ago, I felt like I was in a dead end, and I kept asking myself, "How do you get out of a dead end?" People would say the answer is, "You just turn around." But that was not the answer that I was going to accept. I realized, for me, that getting out of a dead end was literally the world turning upside down, and I had to fall out of the dead end. So you have to surrender, so I've really learned how to surrender, practice unconditional love. With my art, I've always put out things I love.
Every one of those old songs like "What's My Age Again?" and "All the Small Things" is like a tattoo or a scrapbook or an old photograph. There are just songs that define certain moments in your life. Everyone has a song that got them through a bad breakup or they put on and it made them feel like they wanted to go out and kick the world's ass with their friends on a weekend. Those songs still feel like that to me.
'Cover Me.' 'Take Time To Know Her.' 'Warm and Tender Love.' 'Out Of Left Field.' 'Dark End Of The Street.' 'Tears Me Up.' 'My Special Prayer.' All points back to one song. 'When A Man Loves A Woman.' The Grand-daddy to all of my songs. The boss of all of my songs. I have great respect for that song. Always will.
I love the idea of how fast can we make the song, but I don't think that I'm necessarily, like, a super-talented songwriter. I think I'm just really productive. One out of 10 songs is a hit.
When I first started writing songs, I was probably about ten or twelve years old, and the first thing you think as a songwriter is, 'Can this be a hit? Can this come out, and people are going to hear the song and like the song, and then they're going to like you, and you'll get famous and rich?' That hasn't changed a bit.
When you write a show, you just never know if it will have a future or if the show will end up ever having a production, but, that doesn't mean that the songs - the best of the best songs - can't be pulled out and put on a CD. And, if the shows that they come from end up happening, then people will regard this as like a quirky little concept recording. And, if the shows don't end up happening, at least the songs will live on in some capacity.
It's really hard for me to sometimes put myself out there, like 'Hey, how do you feel about making music together?' because maybe I'm afraid of rejection or I don't want to put anybody out. It's the Southerner in me, like, 'I don't mean to bother you but do you mind making a song?'
Life," Garp wrote, "is sadly not structured like a good old-fashioned novel. Instead an end occurs when those who are meant to peter out have petered out. All that is left is memory. But even a nihilist has memory.
While he writes, I feel as if he is drawing me; or not drawing me, drawing on me - drawing on my skin - not with the pencil he is using, but with an old-fashioned goose pen, and not with the quill end but with the feather end. As if hundreds of butterflies have settled all over my face, and are softly opening and closing their wings.
I've been looking for ways to audition more, because it also keeps me sharp and keeps my ambition at its firm edge. That's something that I'm actively engaged in conversations about now with my reps: What's out there that I can really either put myself on tape for, or meet with the director for and read for? How do we do that? We're now at the end of the Star Trek reboot trilogies and whether we are going to do another movie remains to be seen, and so I feel like I'm at the end of this cycle that began with me coming out of school and auditioning and building my way up.
I didn't know they would pay you money to sit in a room and write songs for other people. I always thought that George Strait was singing a song, he made it up, and that was the end of it. But the instant I found that out, that that could be a job, I thought, 'That's the job for me. I gotta figure out how to do that.'
I would have to work on the song and figure out how they wanted the song done, because they're such high-intensity songs. We figure that out first, then I go back and listen to it and go over and rehearse stuff with it and try to get a feel for the words.
It doesn’t feel like the end of the world. (Davyn) No, it doesn’t…(Stryker) How does the song go, ‘It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine? (Apollymi)
[Doing music] is time consuming, will drain you, and stress you out at times. But in the end if you love doing it, and you're putting out music you're proud of, it will never feel like work. It'll just feel like love.
I always try to write the best song I can in the moment, and those songs are often going to end up on Death Cab for Cutie records. I don't set out to write a solo song or write a band song. I just write, and where that songs ends up is kind of TBD.
The songs I was writing still had lyrics or sentiments that didn't match what I was feeling. It was old, negative energy coming out of me still, but it needed to all get out so I could trash those songs and put them in the bin. And then I was able to let the new songs out.
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