If it's a good song and it fits me, that's what I'm going to do, I'm not out there trying to change the world. I'm just out there trying to sing country music the best way I can.
I grew up in New York City in the '80s, and it was the epicenter of hip-hop. There was no Internet. Cable television wasn't as broad. I would listen to the radio, hear cars pass by playing a song, or tape songs off of the radio. At that time, there was such an excitement around hip-hop music.
People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.
I've woken up from dreams and the whole song is there. I'm listening to it in my dreams. I consciously have to wake myself up and get a tape recorder because I hear it like a record.
If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
It doesn't matter what age you are, an effective song will move you.
It's of course important to mention that when DJing, I'm building my own story through the music. I'm figuring out what song to play next, what song to play after that, and how the two will blend together. How the emotion is going to develop from one song to another. So I first build that storyline.
The thing is, in English I'm able to write the lyrics as I'm making the song, once I'm done with the melody.
'Endless Love' is such a perfect love song for a wedding or for a Valentine, because that is the committed kind of endless love. All the lyrics are perfect.
I go through cycles with my writing. I have cycles where I'm up all night and lose track of time, and then I go for months without a thing to write about. My song 'So Good, So Right' came to me while I was washing dishes after a dinner party.
When I was driving home after registration, I heard this song on the radio, a guy singing about not ever going to class in college and always hanging out and singing for his friends. I laughed and said, I can relate, because it was so much like me. I realized right then I would pull out of school and pursue a music career.
I think the song itself, 'Smoke and Fire,' is just a metaphor for the feelings that you feel in a relationship.
I think if you go to 'Strength of the World,' a song like that, the chorus isn't that great, but you go into the bridge and other things and the catchier parts and the better melodies we were really focused on.
Let's have the music that will open the door to millions of people... the kind of music that will not make people think only of the song or even of the singer... not music that is confined to the merely personal.
So I wanna see all of you making out during this song.
When you sing a song of love, you're actually giving something to yourself, too. You're singing and casting these affirmations of love out into the universe. It resonates in your body in a way that feels extraordinary.
I think any song should sound good just played on a solitary instrument with the vocal. If you have those basics you have all you need. The production then just polishes that idea into the finished thing.
Music isn't like news, where it's what happened five minutes ago or even 10 seconds ago that matters. With music, a song from the 1960s could be as relevant to someone today as the latest Ke$ha song.
I didn't write this song. Someone was talking in a room. I just wrote down everything they said.
If I hear a conversation and somebody says something intriguing, my first thought is, 'Is that a song?' I write all year long, and at the end of the year I pull these forty or fifty things out and say which of these things do I want to record.
Falling in love is awesome, but I'm never drawn to happy songs per se, so whenever you sit down to write a heartbreak song and you're happily in love, it's like, 'OK, now I have to go back to a sad place to get something good.'
'The Girls,' by Lori Lansens, is a ballad, a melancholy song of two very strange, enchanted girls who live out their peculiar, ordinary lives in a rural corner of Canada.
I loved musicals because I felt like breaking out in song makes so much sense to me because it's the stakes of how you feel inside!
If I write the song, I get to name it.
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.
Every record we do, we do one song we didn't write.
Every song you write you think is the last one you're going to manage. You put everything you've got into the song, and you've twisted it and pulled at it and dug in and found a way to complete it. To get another one is the trick.
A great song is one that is around even when I'm not.
You can cage the singer but not the song.
Not every song has to be about love and tenderness, sometimes you have those strictly physical feelings for somebody and it's okay to have those feelings.
Somehow, it seems that the sadder a song is, the happier I feel. The release of emotions that many would label as 'negative' is actually a liberating process for me.
I've always been a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde. I always feel that you should keep singles as commercial as possible so that the people can walk down the road and whistle a song. But on the other hand on albums I think you can afford to show people what you can do.
You always will be singing a song or humming a line or a melody.
If you write a country song, and it's the best song you've ever written but throw it out because you're a metal band, you'd be an idiot.
I'm 18 in this album. I'm not losing fans, and I'm not disrepecting women, but you reach the maturity of taking it to the next level with a girl. It was only necessary for me to have at least one song like that.
I am outraged that the Gorillaz have infringed the copyright of my song 'Time Warp,' claiming their song 'Stylo' to be an original composition.
