A Quote by David Lehman

The best song lyrics seem to me so artful, so brilliant, so warm and humorous, with both passion and wit, that my admiration is matched only by my envy. — © David Lehman
The best song lyrics seem to me so artful, so brilliant, so warm and humorous, with both passion and wit, that my admiration is matched only by my envy.
Benign envy can sound a lot like admiration. The difference is that, while admiration feels good, envy is painful.
I was quite surprised when I started looking at the lyrics for 'Punk Prayer'. Given its brutal style, I did not expect the lyrics to be so well written and thought through. But the more I understood of it, the more I realised that this was not only a protest, it was brilliant art as well. So I decided I would try to strip away the layers that made me sceptical in the first place, and focus on the desperate beauty Pussy Riot have conceived in this song.
Envy is the most universal passion. We only pride ourselves on the qualities we possess, or think we possess; but we envy the pretensions we have, and those which we have not, and do not even wish for. We envy the greatest qualities and every trifling advantage. We envy the most ridiculous appearance or affectation of superiority. We envy folly and conceit; nay, we go so far as to envy whatever confers distinction of notoriety, even vice and infamy.
There's only one passion in most artists more violent than their desire for admiration: their fear of identifying the nature of such admiration as they do receive.
When we first started out we only had five or six songs we could play live, so if we ever got an encore, we used to do our cover of City High's 'What Would You Do?' We'd be playing it and people's mouths would be moving singing all the words, but they'd be thinking, Where is this song from? It's such a brilliant pop song but the lyrics are so dark.
From my own personal encounters and studies with both Tantric and Zen Buddhist monks, I have found them to be humorous, warm, charming, and compassionate.
Lyrics is the face of any song. The combination of composition, lyrics and singing is what makes a song a song.
The only thing I can think of is my favorite album at the moment by this guy called Father John Misty, and the album is called I Love You, Honeybear. It's just brilliant. It's the album I'm currently obsessed with. It is original, and the lyrics are fantastic and [it's] brilliant. So that's blowing me away.
I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy - I don't disparage envy, but I don't accept it as legitimately my master.
I'm so bad at lyrics. I'm always trying to get better. Sometimes, the song can restrict your lyrics - if you're trying to make a poppy song, you don't want to sing something that sounds like it could be on an At the Drive-In song.
Sometimes melody and sometimes lyrics. It depends on the tempo and feel of the song. Slower pieces usually begin with melody and faster ones with lyrics. I write for the song and it leads me to my conclusion.
When they're singing the guitar lines of songs in South America? Never heard that before. And in Canada, when they're singing all of the lyrics to every song - that blows me away. I don't know all the lyrics to every song.
What really surprised me was that we had released the song 'Kondoram'... without any video and it still garnered so many views. The song had only lyrics and no visuals.
There's a lot of different ways that a song would be a challenge to parody. There are a lot of songs that would ostensibly be a good candidate for parody, yet I can't think of a clever enough idea. Some songs are too repetitive for me to be able to fashion a humorous set of lyrics around. Some songs flat-out just don't work creatively for me.
'Sweet Summer Day' was inspired by wanting to write the perfect summer song! Both Chaeyoung and myself had ideas for lyrics, and the song formed naturally!
By wit we search divine aspect above, By wit we learn what secrets science yields, By wit we speak, by wit the mind is rul'd, By wit we govern all our actions; Wit is the loadstar of each human thought, Wit is the tool by which all things are wrought.
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