Years later, you can hear a song, and it brings you back right to that moment, what was happening at that time, whether it was a relationship or a difficult time, or maybe a great time in your life, and you had that album you were listening to. Twenty years later, you can put on that song you fell in love to or your heart was broken to, and you hear that song and it brings you right back there. I think music is the most powerful tool we have.
I remember coming in to the studio and meeting Barry Manilow . I was kind of star-struck. He said, "I want to play you this song." We get to the end of the song and I hear him actually sing my name as part of the lyric. I had to pick my jaw up from the floor!
When I get all focused on songwriting, I get into all the marketing and promotion that we do to make it happen. Then the right song comes along and blows it all out of the water. The right song will do it for you every time.
I'd want it to be really special to both of us, but I'm a huge fan of 'At Last' as a wedding song. But what's also really cool is songs that no one else would have at their wedding, like an obscure Radiohead song.
When I was 9 years old, I really wanted to be in the show business. I really wanted to be an artist. I would grab a wooden spoon and I would start singing, even if it was for my uncles and my aunts. And I would just sing any lah-lah song.
Rock n' roll was a bad and evil thing. l remember once I was singing a Barry Manilow song, "Mandy," In the back seat of the car. It came on the radio, and I kind of sang with it, and I got smacked In the mouth because that song was "evil."
I love making videos for my music, you can literally do anything. It's like you can write a song about anything; you can also write a video that is the weirdest thing you can relate to the song, and I find that quite cool.
What I love about piano and vocal is it's incredibly pure, and it gets down to the essence of the song because you're not distracted by an orchestra. When it's just a piano and a voice, it's about the purity of singing the song.
If I come across an issue, or something I feel strongly about, and I happen to think of a song that would go in that direction, then I do it. But that's not what I start out, necessarily, to do. Sometimes I may have an idea for a song - "Well, I'm going to write about a thing.
The original title was 'Waking Up Diagonal'. It's the first line of the song. I just thought it was more interesting than 'I Don't Care', which is such a boring title to me. When I hear that song, it breaks my heart a little bit because it's my story.
I like listening to the whole song. Like my father says, "If you can't pick the whole song, then why are you playing it?"
Even with Neptune City, I feel like if you strip down all the arrangements, I feel like each of my songs is always going to be, at its core, either a country song or a blues song.
All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States - and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!
A good song is a good song whatever your age.
I'm all for making a woman-empowering song. I get that, and I think that's dope. I've got a daughter, and I think that's amazing. But when you're specifically picking on guys, that's when it's not right. 'No Scrubs' is the meanest, dumbest song ever made because they need to be specific in certain areas.
The thing is, when you see your old friends, you come face to face with yourself. I run into someone I've known for 40 or 50 years, and they're old. And I suddenly realize I'm old. It comes as an enormous shock to me.
For me, I say no, but then I am old, and life, with his sunshine, his fair places, his song of birds, his music and his love, lie far behind. You others are young. Some have seen sorrow, but there are fair days yet in store. What say you?
I don't start a song with an idea of what ingredients are going to go into a song. It's not like a recipe. I will normally either talk from personal experience or I'll make a character and then try to allow that character to behave the way he or she naturally would.
McDonald's offers a king's ransom to any hip-hop artist who is able to put Big Mac into a song. MTV - and more to the point, Viacom - is succeeding in extending a teenage life to twenty-nine or even thirty-one years old. It is about extending this market and removing any intelligent substance in the music.
My favorite song that I wrote is 'Love Line.' This was my first song that I wrote lyrics for, and I really wanted to express the feeling when you're in love and hoping the other person feels the same way.
I wanted to deliver the emotions a man feels when he's in love. For example, through song "GG BE," I wanted to the express the feelings of being deceived by a woman (the song also contains the woman's counterargument).
Every song has a memory; every song has the ability to make or break your heart, shut down the heart, and open the eyes. But I’m afraid if you look at a thing long enough; it loses all of its meaning
No one wants the picture-perfect song anymore. I'm trying to keep the beautiful qualities of pop - nostalgia, melodies, and the feeling that a beautiful pop song can give you - but make it real. It's not polished.
I write anywhere. I'm always banging around on the dashboard. Whatever I'm doing. I can make music out of anything. Whenever a song hits me, I'll pick some sort of melody or rhythm out on it, and kind of enhance the song.
When I would create a dance, I wouldn't have the luxury that ballet people do when they take a piece of music and impose a dance upon it. What we did in motion pictures was have a song and within that song try to elaborate. My usual method was to do what a writer does: get a plot.
It's interesting how songs can evolve. Sometimes I'll write a song that feels relevant in the moment, but four years later, I don't want to sing it anymore. Then something will happen in my life, and the song becomes relevant again.
It's hard enough to make a good song and a good recording of that song. But to try to tailor it to some outside force is just like - It's never been a factor in what I've done or what the band's done.
Old is authentic. Old is genuine. Old is valuable.
Like, a song could be really tricky and intricate and be really intellectually stimulating, but I don't think that's the song that that I'm going to throw on 80% of the time. The songs that I really want to listen to are the ones that I can really feel.
I do loads of pitch writing as well, where you write a pop song and then pitch it to DJs who can then work with the song, and sometimes they keep your vocal on it. It's just good to be involved in different things.
One day I was at the park with my family, all my cousins and stuff, in Frankston... We were all just singing a song and my aunty was like 'oh guys, she can actually hold a note.' I think that's the earliest memory of someone actually pointing me out as someone that has an ability to sing. I was probably like 7 years old.
A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle. The rock stars have assimilated all kinds of philosophies, styles, histories, writings, and they throw out what they have gleaned from that.
My favorite song is called 'Reachout.' There are so many different stories told in that song. I think anyone who listens to it will gather a different meaning, but each answer is true. I also like the sound of it, period - there are a lot of classical influences.
If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me?
I really, really enjoy fitting words together - but I only enjoy it when it's easy, when it sort of rolls along by itself. I never erase anything [and] I hardly ever write anything down... The song will be finished before I write it down... I won't write a song unless it serves me in some way, unless I feel I have to write the song to make myself feel better. If you're not overflowing with something, there's nothing to give.
I wanna do a song with Macklemore. I really wanna do a song with him.
One of my all-time favorite Christmas songs, I have to admit, was the Chipmunks' 'Christmas Song.' I remember playing that song over and over.
I suppose that being moved to write a song is more applicable to me, I have to be moved, I have to have a reason to write a particular song.
Weezer's 'El Scorcho.' I'm in a '90s cover band called 'Straight 2 Video' with members of the crew from 'The Vampire Diaries,' and we played this song at our wrap party. I grin from ear to ear every time I scream this song in my car.
When you know you have a good song, when you're onstage, even if it's just a weird, basic energy, you know your song is good.
People know my song but they don't know the guy who sings the song.
Sometimes I'll write a song. When I've gone through something really hard in my life, sometimes it's other people's music. Other times it's actually writing the songs and getting out of mind and into the song.
I write a song for me and I sing a song for me - no one else.
I remember years ago hearing a top band talking about a song of theirs that was a monster hit and they were really dissing it, saying that they hoped they'd never have to play it again. I thought: 'That's not right. If people love a song, play it.'
I always ask any of the artists that open up if they know 'Family Tradition', since that's my last song in the set, and if they do, I normally ask them to come on out and take a verse and have fun. When that song is done, I am gone.
My duty moves along with my song: I am I am not: that is my destiny. I exist not if I do not attend to the pain of those who suffer: they are my pains. For I cannot be without existing for all, for all who are silent and oppressed, I come from the people and I sing for them: my poetry is song and punnishment.
When I was writing 'Trick it,' the inspiration for this song came out of nowhere! The song is about the little white lies you tell to people you care about, even though you can always tell the truth.
My favorite song to write was a song called "Always" I wrote it about a girl who, at the time, I had feelings for her for a long time but she never really felt the same back. So it's one of my more personal songs and I'm very proud of it.
I'd like to connect with music like I did in the beginning. To have that intensity again, to have a song that comes on at 1 o'clock in the morning and it's the premiere song at that point. It's almost magic because, when you condition for it, it doesn't take long for you to write the content that everyone in the world can agree on at one time.
My drum parts are a song within the song; that's the way I look at writing my drum parts. They follow patterns, and they're written to interact with the rest of the band. There's quite a bit of thought that goes into it.
There is a song called 'I Refuse,' and I get a bit scolding, I suppose, in a way. But it all comes back to elements of hope, and in the case of that song, it's basically, 'Okay, you're trying to suck me into this world of negativity, and I'm not going to go there. I'm going to live my own life.'
A good song stays in your head because it's catchy, a great song stays because it means something to you.
When I start writing, I'll have a vague concept or I'll just have a title, and the song just goes on its own direction. Usually it goes in many directions within each song. They get really convoluted sometimes.
Baller Alert' is based on my lifestyle. As I talk about in the song, I've done a lot of dirt and worked hard to get to where I am. This song, like a lot of my songs, is about celebrating life.
Pete Ham in the group was a very good writer. He wrote the Nilsson song "Without You", which is a seriously good song. But the poor fellow topped himself. He was a lovely bloke, I can still see him now. It was a terrible loss.
I sing, not to hear the echo repeat, a shade fainter, my song! I think of light and not of glory! Singing is my fashion of waging war and bearing witness. And if my song is the proudest of songs, it is that I sing clearly to make the day rise clear!
The same song can have drastically different feels and personalities just by changing some minor things. A different drumbeat or some vocal overdub could completely transform the song.
Like a good song, life has verses, the goliards had taught me. Each verse has to be sung. It takes all of them to make a song. It is the entire chanson you name, but when you think of it, when you smile, it is a favorite verse that delights your ears.
When I hear somebody like Hayes Carll write a song that's touching and poignant and sad and funny all at the same time, it motivates me to step my game up and try to figure out a way to get more different emotions into one line or one song.
Let's say music is needed for only 43 seconds of film. You have to score it so it is an entity, so it won't bother anyone when it ends so quickly. Or if a song runs 2 minutes and 45 seconds, but the titles run a minute longer, you have to arrange that song so it doesn't get repetitious.
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