When we're in trouble, it's usually a line from a song that saves us. I wish it was sermons, but, I'm sorry, it's not. When you're in crisis, what comes to mind is 'O love that would not let me go.' You know?
With every song that I write, I compare it to the Beatles. The thing is, they only got there before me. If I'd been born at the same time as John Lennon, I'd have been up there.
It should take you 15 minutes to make a song, and then get out of there.
The old jazz singers or old blues singers, you always just saw them kind of sitting down and singing. They weren't worried as much about their voice sounding perfect. They would make the song kind of fit their voice.
I was one of those guys, you know, playing and singing, and there was no reason for me to write a song, because there were so many beautiful songs out. And Bob Dylan was always the ultimate songwriter, and nobody could ever write a song as good as him, and nobody ever has written a song as good as him.
We will no longer surrender this country or its people to the false song of globalism.
'Tum Jo Mile' came as a surprise. Vivek and Kumaar sir, who has written the song, sent me the track just to listen. I was in London at the time for my world tour. I heard the song, and I fell in love with it instantly.
I always sing Adele in the shower. But everyone should know you never sing an Adele song in public because no one's better than Adele.
For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed for it, for all the celebrations it has been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.
Songwriting is something I really need to work on. I don't have very many songs but I really love it. I would love to be a great song writer some day.
It just didn't feel right to let my child scream and holler and thrash by her little self in the dark in her crib when I knew full well that a little rocking in her glider, maybe a song and a sweet nuzzle of her cheek would send her off to dreamland.
I don't know any other lifestyle. I get up in the morning and I really do feel that the world is my oyster, and I start that way, the same as I would if I were preparing to write a song: put a blank piece of paper up on the piano and you go for it.
I started writing my own songs from the time I was a little kid. I would write my own lyrics to other people's songs that I heard on the radio and take whatever song and make it about fairies and angels - whatever little girls sing about.
I'm always imagining some sort of story behind the song, even the ones I haven't written. I'm actively engaging in playacting.
Madonna can still produce a catchy pop song, but she hasn't expanded her artistic vocabulary since the 1990s. Her concerts are glitzy extravaganzas of special effects overkill. She leaves little space in them for emotional depth or unscripted rapport with the audience.
I think 'Invisible' is a great song, but I don't know how accessible it is.
Today, I'd like to talk to Bob Marley. I'd just like to ask him what was his method. Bob is one of the greatest songwriters ever. I don't know if people understand how powerful his songs are and the simplicity and genius behind them, from 'Redemption Song' to 'Is This Love?' and 'I Shot the Sheriff.'
If a song's about something I've experienced or that could've happened to me it's good. But if it's alien to me, I couldn't lend anything to it. Because that's what soul is all about.
I would have to work on the song and figure out how they wanted the song done, because they're such high-intensity songs. We figure that out first, then I go back and listen to it and go over and rehearse stuff with it and try to get a feel for the words.
In college, I would follow Bob Dylan around, and I would show up to a concert, and he would sing some song he hadn't sang in a long time, and it would speak to something, and I would think it had some great fateful implication.
I hate that if you do one style of music or become really well known for that one song, that everything that comes after has to fit that mold.
She danced a jig, she sung a song that took my heart away.
We've never performed the song live outside of recording it in the studio. That was a dream come true because Whitney, she's an icon and she's been one of my main mentors in this business.
I just love pretty things, whether it is art, a song or a pair of shoes.
It's a powerful thing to be able to write a song. Even the least powerful feeling - like insecurity - that makes you feel weak when you experience it, when you write about it, you are powerful.
I don't want people to sit and process the song. I want them to just let them bathe over them.
The Beatles mean so much to so many people, you know? Everybody has at least one song of The Beatles that's one of their favorite songs of all time.
The writers that I aspire to, like Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman, they'll tell you that the work gets harder, not easier. And they set that bar for us where we're always striving to do something better than the last time, whether it's the next song or just the next line.
At my shows, I want to be totally sharp and focused on every single song, on every single thing that I do, and plus, I have to because I'm, like, caking someone and have to run back and mix the next song... and I have so much fast, quick reflex timing.
In all honesty, I don't know what one song can change.
When I was a kid, my first favorite song was probably Lou Reed's 'Walk on the Wild Side.'
It takes a Bobby White to make a tired 90-year-old composer write a song about love.
I'd say the key thing is to remain true to what originally got you into music. When I wrote 'Hallelujah,' it ignited me to do music because of the love and joy that I got from writing that song. Down the road, you get all of these opinions from people; just remember what got you started in the first place.
But I like to listen to demos. I like to hear the finished product. It's like listening to a song - I mean, a story. If you're going to sit here and tell me a story, I just like to listen. I don't want to make them up.
I think my most famous was 'Poco's Legend.' It's a white album with a simple line drawing of a horse. It almost has a Picasso feel to it. I remember that Rusty Young, the lead singer of the band, said, 'I want you to draw a horse for the song 'Legend,' which is about a phantom spirit horse. I want you to do it in several lines.'
When you write a song you have an idea of how it should be sung but it doesn't work out that way if someone else records it.
