'After 17' is a song I wrote when my first daughter went to college, so that's kind of where I'm at in that part of my life. If you listen to that song and knew anything about me, you'd say, 'Oh yeah, he wrote that about his daughter,' but I try not to write them that they are so specific that they wouldn't apply to anybody that has a child.
'She's Dynamite' was a 100 years ago, and I recorded that song because the company thought that it was a great song and it was hot. That was the beginning of rock n' roll, and I guess they thought it would be a BB King version of rock n' roll.
I have a real dog-like mentality, in that it's like, 'Where is my next meal coming from? Am I ever gonna eat again? Will I ever write another song again? Will anyone show up for tour?' I think it comes from being really poor as a kid.
I'm an older woman who's not going to have a shiny pop song ever again, so that gives me license to do whatever the hell I want.
No matter where you are or what you're doing, it's always great if you don't have to get up and physically change the song that plays next.
I write some country music. There's a song called 'I Hope You Dance.' Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.
I think when you have raw emotion in a song, it makes it great.
It's easy to get people to sing along to cover songs, but when it's your song, it's the coolest.
If people can't relate to something, there's no use of the song being there.
My biggest song in the world is 'Nothing's Gonna Change My Love for You.' All over the world, it's number one on the whole planet.
Who cares about the clouds when we're together? Just sing a song and bring the sunny weather.
Music's always been really cathartic. It's the best drug for me to get away from the everyday pressures just for a second via a good song.
I just want to write a great lyric and write a great song, and everything else is icing on the cake.
We would play, then they would play a set, then we would jam on the last song.
'Peace Train' is a song I wrote, the message of which continues to breeze thunderously through the hearts of millions. There is a powerful need for people to feel that gust of hope rise up again.
It took me a long time to learn how to write a good song.
I have a card catalogue in my brain of every lyric of every sappy love song ever written.
So many women have experienced horrific forms of male violence throughout their lives, and why isn't there a song about how you get depressed because of it?
When somebody asks me what a song or a line is about, I feel like I'm not done writing it yet.
I love Emmylou Harris's version of my song, 'Sweet Old World.' Her intonation is great.
I understand that transposing a song a half step can effect the believability of a lyric.
It sounds like something from a Woody Guthrie song, but it's true; I was raised in a freight car.
When I was about 14, I got a tacky keyboard for 250 pounds and put on a drum machine and found I could write a song.
Frank Ocean would be incredible; I'd love to be a sponge and absorb everything he says. Every song he puts out, I'm like, 'Why didn't I think of this?'
We have a song, 'Welcome to the Family' - we realized for the first time in our lives that people go through this every day around the world. There is someone very close to them that they're losing, every day. That song is, 'We know how you're feeling.'
When you write a hit song, and you know it when it's done, it's one of the best feelings in the world.
I'm not a pop song lyric writer. I can't just focus on one simple meaning or even a double entendre.
A good song takes on more meaning as the years pass by.
You have to have that organizational principle behind the song.
I really like the thing I did with Martina McBride. I had that song sitting around for a long time.
I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on summer humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.
To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must be able to guess what will interest; we must learn to read the childish soul as we might a piece of music. Then, by simply changing the key, we keep up the attraction and vary the song.
I've always been a fan of melody and emotional melancholy, whether it was Rites of Spring or Tears for Fears or Neil Young. If I hear a song that has a sweet melody, I'm a sucker for it, whether it's Linkin Park or Little Richard.
We sing a little song before we eat, a little blessing before we eat, and it's really - we're thanking the Lord and the Earth for the food that we eat, and it really brings you together in a profound kind of way.
It's kind of exhilarating, walking through a crazy, insane mob. The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.
I produced a song for Bobby Vee called Get The Message.
