A Quote by Emily Kokal

I appreciate short, perfect pop songs. — © Emily Kokal
I appreciate short, perfect pop songs.
There's so many different kinds of songs that could be pop songs. I don't think pop songs should sound the same.
I love fiction. I like reading short stories. Cupcakes, pop songs, Polaroids, and short stories. They all raise and answer questions in a short space. I like Lorrie Moore. Amy Hempel. Tim O'Brien. Raymond Carver. All the heartbreakers.
I admire pop songs that are perfect at three minutes.
I sing songs from the theater and pop songs. When I say 'pop songs,' I mean from the 90's. And I tell jokes. So it's sort of a stand up show meets a concert - not your traditional lounging across a piano cabaret show. It's much looser.
I like to write pop songs and the stuff I write is fairly poppy, so I thought maybe my lot in life was to write pop songs for people. It never felt right writing songs for other people to sing, though.
That's what is so great about being able to record a 13-song album. You can do a very eclectic group of songs. You do have some almost pop songs in there, but you do have your traditional country, story songs. You have your ballads, your happy songs, your sad songs, your love songs, and your feisty songs.
You can only write so many pop songs before they all sound the same. I got to a point where something overtly melodic and straightforward sounded sort of cheesy to me. Pop songs seemed too manufactured.
I've covered Avril Lavigne. I like good pop songs, and I don't think there should be any kind of preconceptions about where good pop songs come from.
When I began to cover songs for YouTube, they all tended to be in the super pop-genre.. as in, smash-hit songs. My writing process was heavily influenced by this - I went from a more heavy punk rock style to straight up sugary-sweet pop.
In my head, I actually think my songs are pop songs. I think, 'Damn, that's a pop song!' I can practice in front of the mirror with my hairbrush for as long as I want to. But when it finally comes out, it sounds avant-garde to people.
Saying you're a pop group isn't saying very much. Personally, when I think of pop, I think of instant, accessible, catchy songs - I definitely identify our music as that. I think that by writing pop, or instant, accessible or hopefully catchy music, it shoes you into bigger audiences because it seems that more people like that music. I think the possibilities are endless if you stick to a simplistic short song; the music can be as wild and bizarre as you want it to be, as long as at the core of it, there's something really strong.
At one time musical theater, particularly in the '40s and '50s, was a big source of pop songs. That's how musical theater started, really - it was just a way of linking several pop songs for the stage.
When I am seriously composing, sometimes a phrase will come into my head, a catch phrase. When I was writing pop songs for a few years, as a career, separate from my folksinging career, I used to write songs for pop singers.
The perfect pop song is a 20th-century creation; it's not a sonnet, it's not an opera, it's something short - three and a half minutes by nature - and has this ability to travel and to defy class and economic structures.
It was just the next logical step from making succinct pop songs. What do you do after that? You make pop songs that are longer and more epic, that push the envelope. Imagine your favourite song, or something that you play over and over in the car, except that you don't have to start it over as much.
The songs that I'm able to write are the songs I'm able to write, whatever they may be. The path I've cut for myself is pop music - love-y pop music. That's what I enjoy doing. And I don't think I'm going to get sick of it anytime soon.
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