A Quote by Tom Waits

Sometimes words are just music themselves. Like 'Chicago' is a very musical sounding name. — © Tom Waits
Sometimes words are just music themselves. Like 'Chicago' is a very musical sounding name.
I think I was just lucky to be brought up in a very musical family. My two older brothers were, and still are, very musical and very creative, and music was a big part of my life from a very young age, so it is quite natural for me to become involved in music in the way that I did.
Sometimes I just start humming something, find a melody I like a lot, and if it sticks around for a couple days, a few words will lock themselves into place. I might just get the first line. Then words just keep falling into the syllables. The choruses kind of write themselves and verses I have to work at a little bit.
I love Chicago - absolutely love Chicago. I mean, I'd much rather go to Chicago and do a play or a musical than New York, honestly. Because just probably for reasons that are obvious to you. It's just a little bit - it's a nicer, easier city.
Musical 'fusion' projects have earned themselves a bad name, but that's mainly because they often involve pop artists conscripting orchestras to play unimaginative backdrops to their acts. What's really exciting is when you spark off a dialogue between very different musical forces.
I'm from Chicago, I live in Chicago and I wanted very much for the music in Chicago to succeed.
There's a bunch of cities I'm not crazy about, but I love Chicago. I love the musical history - the mid-'90s indie rock scene, Chicago house music. It's a great town.
Whatever is original in my writing comes from my musical apprenticeship. I look for rhythm in words. I imagine words as if they were musical chords. Often I'll write something, read it, and find it musically unsatisfactory. There is a musical imperative in my choice of words.
Irish music in the local pubs was my first exposure to musical expression, and I feel like Irish music is very close to musical theater because it is always telling a story.
Every song I've ever written always starts with the words because I want the music to be the musical extension of the feelings of the words, and not the words being the emotional extension of the feeling of the music.
Music. – There is something very wonderful in music. Words are wonderful enough: but music is even more wonderful. It speaks not to our thoughts as words do: it speaks straight to our hearts and spirits, to the very core and root of our souls. Music soothes us, stirs us up; it puts noble feelings into us; it melts us to tears, we know not how: – it is a language by itself, just as perfect, in its way, as speech, as words; just as divine, just as blessed.
Popular music of the last 50 years has failed to keep in step with advances in musical theater, namely Stephen Sondheim. But the two have grown apart so that popular music is based more than ever on a rhythmic grid that is irrelevant in musical theater. In popular music, words matter less and less. Especially now that it's so international, the fewer words the better. While theater music becomes more and more confined to a few blocks in midtown.
Probably my two biggest musical influences were the Everly Brothers and the Beatles, in chronological order. Both of them have had a very simple-sounding musical style that's actually quite complex as far as popular songs are concerned.
The decision came from the publisher. It certainly was cleared by Chicago. And then they come out with these fine sounding words about relation to readers and their obligation. It has nothing to do with that.
My comedy comes from the actual music itself - they're observational musical gags. I could take the music away and it would just be some words.
If you have words and want to write music for them, the words hit you with a feeling which you can't really describe in words, and so what you do is to put music to them and in this way you make contact with the words, through the musical thing. It happens when two feelings come together and they do something together and they compliment each other.
Poetry is halfway between prose and music: it is sometimes like an intimate conversation, in words and phrases which need not be fully uttered, and sometimes like dancing and wordless music.
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