What I love about 'Midnight Train' is that it's a song about a journey, but the music actually takes you on that journey. It feels like you're moving through the whole song.
I intend to keep writing Christmas songs. There's still a lot more about Christmas that can be captured and feel like old-time Christmas. A lot of the traditions haven't been explained in song.
A stand-up comic is judged by every line. Singers get applause at the end of their song no matter how bad they are.
The best compliment I ever had is, one day I was in Nashville, some disc jockey said, Hey, that sounds like a Tom T. Hall song. Up until then there hadn't been any such thing.
I get plenty of, 'Is that song about me?' from men but I just tell them to get over themselves.
Just with the basic one guitar, one piano and one vocal and an audience, I think that the intimacy comes through more. People feel much more connected to the song because there's nothing in the way, and I actually enjoy doing that.
In so many musicals today, the story is moved forward by a song. I don't think we're gonna try to do that.
That song is a story that shows how easily you could get slipped into being labeled as the bad guy, even though what you really trying to do is tell the bad guy to leave you alone.
When I'm performing, I'm not even thinking about the song. I'm thinking about the audience.
I don't think radio is selling records like they used to. They'd hawk the song and hawk the artist and you'd get so excited, you'd stop your car and go into the nearest record store.
I think that you get the mood of a song stronger if you get it right that way. On the other hand, you put some songs out live and they don't catch flight. They just flop. It is hard to tell until they are out there.
I'm listing to music all the time. I have favorite artists. Kid Rock loves the Civil Wars' song 'Barton Hollow.' We both said that's our favorite country song of the year. That knocks me out.
It's likely that taboo words are stored in the right hemisphere of the brain. Massive left hemisphere strokes or the entire surgical removal of the left hemisphere can leave people with no articulate speech other than the ability to swear, spout cliches and song lyrics.
There's just something so amazing about being anywhere, and some music starts playing, and you just hold up your phone and can find out what it is. You never again have to say, 'That's a great song! Who is it by?'
I didn't think of myself as a lead player, especially when we did live shows, because me and Keith used to switch around all the time. He'd take a lead, I'd play rhythm. Sometimes even within one song. It wasn't strict and regimented.
The sense of flowing, which is so crucial to song, is also crucial to poetry.
If you feel like you're getting into a rut with a song, a night off usually fixes it.
With technology now, you can go in and sing a song, and for $100,000, you will sound flawless.
I like The Smiths - I would love to do a song with The Smiths, because they are so sonically different.
Then on to all the terrific american songwriters, from Tin Pan Alley to the Beatles, from Bob Dylan to Paul Simon. Whoever wrote and sang in the song form I have appreciated.
I never really focus on writing for other people, to be honest. Every song I've ever written was for me to sing. Maybe if I'm writing for a rapper, but I'd still write it as though it was for myself and then sometimes I'm actually asked to do the part.
The first mp3 I downloaded, which I guess was illegal, was a symphonic rendering of the Super Mario Brothers 1-1 theme song. It was great. I was like, 'This is blowing MIDI files out of the water. This is the future, right here.'
The sincerity of the art worker must permeate the song as naturally as the green leaves break through the dead branches in springtime.
I'm the guy who wrote The Authority Song. Did they think I was kidding? Did they think it was only a song to entertain?
I'd want it to be really special to both of us, but I'm a huge fan of 'At Last' as a wedding song. But what's also really cool is songs that no one else would have at their wedding, like an obscure Radiohead song.
Men, even when alone, lighten their labors by song, however rude it may be.
The most scared I'd ever been was the first time I sang at a rugby match, Australia versus New Zealand, in front of one hundred thousand people. I had a panic attack the night before because people have been booed off and never worked again... just singing one song, the national anthem.
We human beings are tuned such that we crave great melody and great lyrics. And if somebody writes a great song, it's timeless that we as humans are going to feel something for that and there's going to be a real appreciation.
When we play 'Angel of Death', it's actually a 2 and half minutes sing 'til our party starts. That song is pretty much been played traditionally in the end.
Most musicians count at the beginning, and never count and talk to their musicians after that. They only talk to them at the end of the song. But I would count with them and talk.
When it comes to best new artist or album or song of the year, yeah, it's very rare that you see someone in country win one of those. It's a very strong genre, and it's got roots so deep in our culture. I think the pool of voters listen more to pop and R&B and hip-hop. Those seem to be the major contenders.
I don't want to have a song like 'My Humps' and it be sagging down, so I pay attention to that area. A lot.
That folk music led to learning to play, and making things up led to what turns out to be the most lucrative part of the music business - writing, because you get paid every time that song gets played.
Sometimes I will click on a random sequence of notes- not to actually use it in a song, but to see if I can find maybe a simple pattern that I can build off of.
I like to rap about things that are funny but mostly things that are relatable. I remember there was this one song with Ja Rule, and I forgot, exactly, but it was with Ashanti, and there's a line in it that was like, 'She hit me up on AIM.' But that wasn't the actual line; it was something else, but I was like, 'Oh my God, he uses AIM!'
The first album I ever bought with my own money was 'Ten.' Every single song reminds me of my childhood.
