You can keep rummaging around until you find a song you like, but you can't predict whether it'll hit or not.
The best feeling I ever get is when I finish a song, and it exists, and it didn't exist before, and now it's there, and it makes me feel a certain way.
My version of 'Georgia' became the state song of Georgia. That was a big thing for me, man. It really touched me. Here is a state that used to lynch people like me suddenly declaring my version of a song as its state song. That is touching.
The very first day that Hillary came over, we were working on a song called 'All We'd Ever Need.' But we never even thought about it until we had written 5, 6, 7 songs. Then we played our first show, and we all enjoyed it so much. We felt like it was something a special and different. So from there we decided to do Lady Antebellum.
For some producers who are technical-minded, making the song sound good is easy, and getting the emotion into the song is harder.
I try to keep my ear to the streets without sacrificing who I am as an artist. If a song needs a drum machine I'll use a drum machine. If it needs a drummer, I'll use a real drummer.
Then, in that hour of deliverance, my heart spoke. Does not such a country, and such defenders of their country, deserve a song?
I think throughout the day; there are always lines or certain words, and I'll just keep notes in my phone. It might just be one or two words, and then that could inspire a whole song, lyrically.
I think every revolutionary act is an act of love. Every song that I've written, it is because of my desire to use music as a way to empower and re-humanize people who are living in a dehumanizing setting. The song is in order to better the human condition.
What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.
I don't try to worry about sounding like anybody because I know I have my own tone, my own sound. It's just about being honest in a song and trying to relate myself or how to basically break it down as simple as possible for someone to try to understand it. Not being too deep, not being too shallow at the same time.
I don't know if any genuine, meaningful change could ever result from a song. It's kind of like throwing peanuts at a gorilla.
We went for the best overall feel on each song. There are no musical overdubs at all. It's a true live record; it's one of the few true live records out there.
Silence is more musical than any song.
Although, my experience when I've been depressed, not only am I too depressed to sit down and write a song, I'm too depressed to pick up my feet. So if you can at least write about it, you're halfway away from it.
You can meditate on almost anything: a prayer, song, image or word. Close your eyes; sit in a comfortable position. Take a breath, and say the word out loud, emphasizing the humming sound at the end. When you come to the end of the breath, take another one and say the word again. And so on.
I think I have a hard time expressing myself in my relationships. I use songs to tell people how I'm feeling. If I can't say 'I love you,' I'll write a song about it and hope that the person figures it out.
We all love to sing, and when we sit down to write a song I think it kind of shows itself to us.
On stage, generally speaking, the story is stopped or held back by songs, because that's the convention. Audiences enjoy the song and the singer, that's the point.
Sing the song or keep it inside.
People get passionate about a song. It's been my experience if you put out radio candy, something commercial, it doesn't sell records.
One song will launch you, but you don't want to be a one-song artist.
Every song is like a painting.
It is important that the audience should understand every syllable of every word, for only then can they grasp the meaning of the song.
When I write a song and come up with an arrangement and a vocal part, it's always a challenge trying to find a singer who can interpret it sort of the way that I hear it, and it's a very difficult thing to do. I mean, singing is like playing an instrument - everybody does it a little bit different - singing maybe even more so.
An un-named song is like an un-named child, it has no identity.
It's so important to me that I feel like I'm doing something that's never been done before, whether that's in the show, or I'm writing a song. I can exist in this little box here, but I have to do something new with it.
I come from the performance world, but the idea of a worship song is different. It's useful music.
The way I write my songs is that I have to believe what I'm writing about, and that's why they always end up being so personal - because the kind of artists I like, they convince me, they totally win me over straight away in that thing. Like, 'Oh my God, this song is totally about me.'
The way 'Coming Home' uses music in general is incredible, but the final song that really kind of crescendos all of the emotion that the whole movie has kind of been building to is this song called 'Once I Was' by Tim Buckley.
For dramas, I've become more careful because now there are specific works that you think of when you hear the name Song Hye-kyo.
If you're dealing with a musical in which you're trying to tell a story, it's got to sound like speech. At the same time it's got to be a song.
I take chances. I don't limit myself. I don't think anybody who listens to Boston would have predicted hearing a female rapper on the beginning of the song 'Sail Away.' But that's what fit.
The first time I heard Sam Cooke was in the 'Malcom X' film. I was with my father, and that's the first time I heard his song. I remember my father telling me the story of Sam Cooke.
There's no way we could play a country song as well as a country band or a Latin song as well as a Latin band. We could never expect to do that. We just keep doing what we do, what we know how to do. We sound like ourselves.
It's pretty amazing to write under any circumstances when someone gives you an assignment to write a song, even if it doesn't get accepted. I've written songs a couple of times, some for Disney, that haven't actually ended up in their films, but then you're left with a song forever.
