I don't know what makes a guy want to write songs and sing, but if you've got a message, you want to get it across. When I come up with an idea about the way I feel, I can really state it strongly in a song.
I had never danced all my life until I shot for my first song in 'Chirutha.'
In Hungary all native music, in its origin, is divided naturally into melody destined for song or melody for the dance.
Karaoke was my family's happy secret. In those early years in America, like many immigrants, my parents struggled with poverty and loneliness, but they also built provisional families, and inside our bubble there was joy, understanding, an intimate language I could never translate - and above all there was song.
There is a one-in-300 chance that Earth will be struck on March 16, 2880, by an asteroid large enough to destroy civilization and possibly cause the extinction of the human race. But, on the bright side, Prince could re-release his hit song with the new refrain 'We're gonna party like its twenty-eight seventy-nine.'
I kick butt on karaoke with any Journey song!
I conceived 'All Is Song' as a modernised, loosely interpreted version of Socrates's life.
I'm definitely not going to go and sing a song that condones certain things.
Everyone who moves to New York City has a book or movie or song that epitomizes the place for them. For me, it's 'The Cricket in Times Square', written by George Selden and illustrated by Garth Williams.
I'm not a drama person, but when you can make a movie in song form in three-and-a-half minutes, it's surreal.
When I record somebody else's song, I have to make it my own or it doesn't feel right. I'll say to myself, I wrote this and he doesn't know it!
Above these universal themes 'Truth Will Set U Free' is also a song composed for those who were born gay. I am a straight man so I do not profess to understand or know what a LGBT person experiences but I do recognize injustice when I see it.
I might sing a gospel song in Arabic or do something in Hebrew. I want to mix it up and do it differently than one might imagine.
You put a song on the record or on tape and you stop singing it. You just don't sit around and sing it anymore unless you're performing. That's kind of sad.
I could never be a country person, sitting around trees trying to write a song. I would rather be in the middle of society, whether it's growing or crumbling.
I certainly wouldn't want a song that I'd already written to be used on a commercial. That seems strange.
I'm quite a particular singer, and I need to feel like I can bite into the song, in a way, to make it my own. You want the challenge of the songs having some attitude.
I was in 'Jacques Brel' Off-Broadway for many years, so I've always been a singing actress, but the songwriting was a complete surprise. I had never written a song in my life. We were on the road with 'Jacques Brel' doing the national tour, and I picked up a guitar one day and I wrote a song.
I usually have an idea of how I want a song to sound, but I don't always know how to get there.
That's really what was wonderful for me growing up, since I got to know so many of the songwriters who liked me and thought I had talent. They would then tell me how to read a lyric and sing a song, and challenge me to try and find a different end to a song.
There's a wide spectrum of possibilities in how to deliver a song.
You gotta make sure the listener is listening to you, so if you put it into a song, often times, if the song is striking enough, then you can really deliver the story most effectively while keeping the ear of the listener the whole time.
The same song on a different day was a different 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.
I did write a letter to the archdiocese who'd banned the song, Only the Good Die Young, asking them to ban my next record.
I just decided to play make believe, memorize it like it was just some kind of song and just take the emotion out of the words. And I did. I goofed a couple of times.
I don't like giving names to generations. It's like trying to read the song title on a record that's spinning.
Mr. Fantasy was the only song that was scribbling on a piece of paper.
I know when I've written a good song when I can imagine the video. If I can't imagine the video straight away, I'm not gonna put it on my album.
You're a song written by the hands of God.
The people at the record company had asked me if I could write a song about my life, my relationship with God, and where I'm from. Well, I can't write a song on purpose, my songs come in a moment of inspiration or desperation.
I definitely don't sit down every day and make a new song.
I was kind of known as a ballad singer. People would send ballads. Some of them would go over my shoulder and float off the top of my head, and I just didn't feel anything. Then I would hear a song that would absolutely shake me.
Our approach makes it so if you hear a said song of ours in 2003 and then you hear it again in 2009 it's probably evolved and changed a good bit, and hopefully for the better.
'Cover Me.' 'Take Time To Know Her.' 'Warm and Tender Love.' 'Out Of Left Field.' 'Dark End Of The Street.' 'Tears Me Up.' 'My Special Prayer.' All points back to one song. 'When A Man Loves A Woman.' The Grand-daddy to all of my songs. The boss of all of my songs. I have great respect for that song. Always will.
I've got a song called 'Salt Skin' because when you run in the heat it evaporates and you've got salt crystals on your face. I love that, because it means you've worked really hard.
