A Quote by Phil Coulter

It was a matter of not seeing the woods for the trees. Glorious songs have been in Ireland forever, but a lot of these were so popular they were sung only by drunken men at weddings. They didn't have any regard for the song at all. So, I picked out 14 songs that I had grown up with, songs with great melodies. After 35 years as a songwriter, I appreciate the value of a good melody because I know how hard it is to write one. So I presented them in a new way, with piano, keyboards, strings, and a contemporary rhythm section. I just treated the melody with a bit of dignity and a bit of style.

Phil Coulter

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Phil Coulter
Irish - Musician
Born: February 19, 1942

When she awoke there was a melody in her head she could not identify or recall ever hearing before. 'Perhaps I made it up,' she thought. Then it came to her - the name of the song and all its lyrics just as she had heard it many times before. She sat on the edge of the bed thinking, 'There aren't any more new songs and I have sung all the ones there are. I have sung them all. I have sung all the songs there are.

Toni Morrison

If you listen to a lot of the songs that are popular now, there's very little melody in there. People love the beat. But to musicians, it's melody, because we understand how elusive it is and how hard it is to hold.

Branford Marsalis

I've just really been into melody and lyrics and songwriting. Writing a rap, to me, is easy. I could write a rap like that. But writing songs and melodies and s**t that's hopefully going to stick around for 30, 40 years is f**king hard...If you have good songs and you're talented, people will eventually come to your shows, people will buy your music.

Kid Rock

A lot of times, that's hard to capture: what you sound like in person versus what you sound like on record. If I had total control, I would do a lot of the old songs - not only my songs but Sam Cooke songs, Luther Vandross, melody songs. That's what I would really do if I had an opportunity to do a record.

Darlene Love

Paul Simon once said that a songwriter's supreme challenge was being complex and simple at the same time-writing songs with lasting depth that are also simple enough to be memorable. Jimmy Van Heusen was a master at this kind of song. His music was complex, with deeply rich chord changes any jazzman can embrace, but also possessed catchy, crystalline melodies of exceeding sing-ability. His songs were meant to be sung, not just listened to, and they were sung by the best, with Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby at the top of that list.

Paul Zollo

It is amazing when you try and write songs without an instrument. It kind of forces the melody to be honed it. It has to be good. A lot of what I think are my best songs were made without an instrument.

Graham Colton

When I first came to London I thought there'd be this amazing music scene, but I was quite let down by how little was going on and how few ideas there were in music. Bands were writing songs that had no melody, and I wondered, why is that, melody is the most important thing in a song. It's the thing that sticks in your head.

James Righton

I have a lot of memos in my phone of songs; I've had dreams about a melody. It's always melody first as far as when stuff like that happens - I find that my melodic sense is my strongest asset as a songwriter.

Nick Jonas

The first song I wrote and had published was titled "Just As Long As That Someone Is You". It was written in 1959, and recorded in 1965 by Jimmy Ellege. I started writing songs because I wanted something of my own to sing. I, at that time, was not aware that the songs I heard on the radio were not written by the folks singing them. I had always loved poetry, and found it easy to integrate a melody with poetry.

Mickey Newbury

Throughout all of the changes that have happened in my life, one of the priorities I've had is to never change the way I write songs and the reasons I write songs. I write songs to help me understand life a little more. I write songs to get past things that cause me pain. And I write songs because sometimes life makes more sense to me when it's being sung in a chorus, and when I can write it in a verse.

Taylor Swift

I write all my own songs and they are just simple melodies with a lot of lyrics. They usually have to do with current events and what is going on in the news. You can call them topical songs, songs about the news, and then developing into more philosophical songs later.

Phil Ochs

I've always been a singer-songwriter - it started off with me and the guitar, just writing songs, they were very simple. When I got in the studio it took me probably three years to get where I am now - being open to experimenting with new songs, being comfortable with where the songs were headed. I'm happy with where they are because they feel very genuine and authentically who I am.

Zella Day

My favorite over the years is probably 'All I Have to Give.' That's probably my favorite. It's one of the first songs that the five of us were featured on the lead, and I just think it has such a great sonic sound with all the melodies and harmonies. It has a little bit of a mixture of R&B and a pop sound. It's just a really good feel-good song.

Howie Dorough

All films created by Walt Disney at the time of his major outpouring of work were carefully crafted to fit scenes, characters, moods and situations. If these elements changed in any way, songs - no matter how good they were - were discarded. Others were written for the new scenes. Many times, character songs were dropped because characters were dropped...sequences were dropped etc.

Richard Sherman

A lot of Woody Guthrie's songs were taken from other songs. He would rework the melody and lyrics, and all of a sudden it was a Woody Guthrie song.

John Mellencamp

Eventually I had so many little melodies and ideas that, you know, that they were all songs to me and I threw in a few cover songs like Enya's "Watermark," Bach, and my dad's song, "Song for the Whales."

Petra Haden

A Quote by Phil Coulter

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