Even though other people wrote my songs I put my stamp on them. I have a connection, but there is no truer connection than an artists and their own song.
The easiest songs to write are pure fiction. There is no limit to how you can tell the story. I find it difficult when I'm replaying an event through a song.
'Dangerous' is an album that I was very dedicated to. I wanted every song to be a hit.
I write a song to be recorded. And to some extent to be performed, but definitely more to be recorded than performed, because the recording will last longer than a performance.
'Helter-Skelter' was the motive for the murders. Manson borrowed that term from a Beatles song on the 'White Album.' In England, helter-skelter is a playground ride. To Manson, helter-skelter meant a war between whites and blacks that the Beatles were in favor of.
Because my musical training has been limited, I've never been restricted by what technical musicians might call a song.
It's always a live experience - anything that happens around you. It's so easy to just put it to a song.
I think for new artists the hardest thing is putting the face with a name. People maybe heard our song on the radio or something but until they get several impressions of who you are - from whatever it is, whether TV or a live show, I feel like they don't quite connect the dots.
Larry only ever wrote one song, and he wrote that with Tony Kaye, I think it was, from Yes.
I can reach the mass audience if I come from different perspectives on every song.
I've always sung. My dad had a song in his heart and on his lips 24/7. A lot of the time, it was the same song and the same phrase over and over again.
A song will keep going round in my brain and keep me awake.
When something is bothering me, I write a song that tells my feelings.
You don't have to be a cheater to sing a cheatin' song, that's what I'm saying.
Singing and being truthful to a song... I've developed that skill, and I know how to do that real instinctively, that's all I've been doing for the last 25 years.
So I'll set a cycle in motion and pop it into record and I'll lay down a drum pattern, a bass line, a keyboard and guitar part, and once the groove is going I launch into the song and sing my song over the top.
I've always wanted to sing, just as I've always known that one day I would have my own niche in the annals of song. It was a feeling I had.
Once at the White House I was asked to conduct the Drum and Bugle Corp. The man just handed me the baton and I finished the song. It was great. I got to keep the baton.
It's never easy to write a song. It's the most difficult thing I do.
Empires dissolve and peoples disappear, song passes not away.
I am a songwriter. I do get to put my personal experiences in song.
You can do a lot to shape the feeling of a song by the way you record it.
When I'm picking songs for an album I always want a song that I can relate to and that I have experienced. There's nothing worse than watching an artist try and sell a song that isn't believable coming from them.
A song like 'Osito Carpintero' came straight from the Pedro Infante films, movies that all the kids in Mexico watched.
When I play a song for someone the first time, if I make 'em laugh, I think, 'Yes, I've succeeded.'
Let's get with it, guys: You don't need to hear a Ministry song to get political. You should be political on your own. We're just a side project to society. So do I care what people think about me personally? No. I just do what I do.
Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought.
The compelled mother loves her child as the caged bird sings. The song does not justify the cage nor the love the enforcement.
You can tell if there's magic in something. When you start it, you want to finish it and you want it to be perfect. If you're not inspired, and you're working hard to pull inspiration from somewhere and make a song something it's not, then it's very contrived, and I don't like to write music that's contrived.
That's one of my pet peeves. People always want to put something into a category - this one or that one. You know, a great song is a great song.
Certain songs like 'Enjoy the Silence' - to me, it always fits anywhere. There's something about that song that's really timeless, and I never get bored or feel like I have to muster something up.
To me, 'Blackberry Way' stands up as a song that could be sung in any era, really. We do it with the new doing all sort of fanfare things in it and it works really well. It goes down great with audiences.
There's so many great things that happened at the Grand Ole Opry in 50 years. You get the chance to go out and visit with your peers. You get a chance to sing your song and say hello to so many friends and neighbors and all that you have. It's just - well, it's a second home.
Well, I make every song I sing personal. I've never chosen a song that wasn't.
Much responsibility rests upon the shoulders of the song leader; it is not infrequently within his power to make or break a meeting.
I heard Q-Tip on the Jungle Brothers' song 'The Promo.' It was very exciting. It was very new. The music and the culture around hip-hop was evolving. I think there's an emotional quality to their music and there's a vulnerability to the music. For me, A Tribe Called Quest was my Beatles.
