A Quote by Joy Harjo

My mother wrote lyrics and sang but was overtaken by life with four children and worked. — © Joy Harjo
My mother wrote lyrics and sang but was overtaken by life with four children and worked.
There were a lot of lyrics that I sang but didn't understand. But I had this facade in performance of looking like I wrote the book.
I wrote the tunes and sang only nonsense words. Then came Moore and dressed them with the lyrics.
I was born in love with music. My mother is a singer, many of my aunts and uncles on my mother's side are musical, my grandparents sang and played blues piano. It's literally in my blood. My mother wrote an original song to teach me the days of the week.
I don't see myself as the boss. I sing and write the songs, and it would feel strange if somebody else wrote the lyrics I sang.
I spent most of my adult life as someone's mother and the rest of my life trying to make sure that children are safe. So this to me is - we wrote Hell Is For Children in 1979.
I always sang when I was little-bitty girl. I sang all the time. And then I'm from Knoxville, Tennessee, so I sang in a show at Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. You know, they have all those variety shows where Dollywood is. And I sang there and yodeled and clogged, but I never wrote my own songs.
Bob Marley was one of my favourite artists. He sang politically conscious lyrics, yet he sang love songs, too.
Raphael painted, Luther preached, Corneille wrote, and Milton sang; and through it all, for four hundred years, the dark captives wound to the sea amid the bleaching bones of the dead: for four hundred years the sharks followed the scurrying ships; for four hundred years America was strewn with the living and dying millions of a transplanted race; for four hundred years Ethiopia stretched forth her hands unto God.
My interest in the theater led me to my first writing experience as an adult. My husband David wrote the music and lyrics and I wrote the book for a children's musical, 'Spacenapped' that was produced by a neighborhood theater in Brooklyn.
I didn't even write the lyrics down. I got in the booth, I put down a little guitar riff and the idea I had was it was going to be really simple, I just want it to be all about the lyrics and I just literally sang the lyrics.
One thing I did have under my belt was, my mother lost her mother when she was 11. She mourned her mother her whole life and made my grandmother seem present even though I never met her. I couldn't imagine how my mom could go on but she did, she took care of us, she worked two jobs and had four children. She was such a good example of how to conduct oneself in a time of grief. When I lost my husband, I tried to model myself as much as I could on her.
'Teenage Dream' was the most difficult song I've ever been a part of. We wrote five different versions of it. We couldn't get the lyrics right. Max Martin and Dr. Luke wrote most of the melody, and then Katy Perry and I were responsible for getting the lyrics right.
I have learned as a child of a single mother who worked and supported four young children to take things in stride, enjoy the moment and the people around you who are helping you get through the day the best you can and helping you to building a future that you can be proud of.
I was asked by this British band called Kairos 4Tet to write lyrics for them. And I wrote lyrics for them. The album is called 'Everything We Hold,' and you can hear my lyrics.
I started when I was about 3, and worked and worked and worked. I sang at nursing homes, Walmarts, and still didn't get no place. But I had this feeling that I was almost there.
I wrote my own pop songs and sang one of them when I went into a stupid beauty competition when I was 16. That was my public debut, and it made my mother even more determined that I should go into opera!
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