My father being in the movie business, I thought being an actor would be great. But when I started singing to people in coffeehouses, you know, singing folk music and then, later, singing songs that I started to write myself, I felt more than an affinity for it.
In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.
I like to write music. And I think exploring with lyrics and figuring out how to make complete songs is fun. I think I have a take on it. I don't know if it's great, but it's an interesting take. It's original.
I will sing happy songs, and I do sing happy songs, but the stuff that's going to move me and going to make me close my eyes is always the blues.
In 2004, I went onstage for the first time. They put a mike in my hand and pushed me out the door into the crowd. I did the three songs I had recorded and got out. It was the worst day of my life.
It's great to be able to get up there now and do an hour or 75 minutes of songs they're familiar with.
When we were making vinyl records we had a lot of time limitations for each record so songs were left off for a number of reasons. Now, with CDs, much more music can be included.
I hope people learn the power of vulnerability through my songs. I think vulnerability can save the world. Empathy helps people connect with each other.
I want to write songs and play them for people - live.
I love ballads. I'm not into fast songs. I love to put my heart and all of my feelings into a song.
One of my songs was on a jazz station for awhile. It was a song that I wrote for a jazz sax player friend of mine, and I sang and played the guitar on it.
My mom and dad played this music all the time when I was growing up, so to me songs by Jerry Lee and Fats Domino are the classics, they're the best songs ever.
When people come to a concert, they wanna hear the hits, the big radio songs, and they wanna hear them how they're used to hearing them. I like playing them how they were recorded.
I keep a journal and just kind of take notes. I don't really so much sit down and write songs - I just take a lot of notes, and sometimes I sit down and put them all together.
My songs grow on people - like warts.
It was awesome because we were doing Ramones songs.
The songs of Bizet are by a French peer of Rossini. When Rossini stopped composing, he was living in Paris. He also wrote some beautiful songs in French.
It sounds odd, but I was a singer and started writing songs, and I didn't have anything in mind. Maybe it crossed my mind that it would be cool to have a hit record and a career, but that was so out of reach that I don't think I thought about it that much.
So I didn't have anything to do with picking the songs, but I got to musically take them in places I thought might be interesting, so it was a real neat collaboration among the three of us.
They are very personal, emotional songs - people react to them very strongly.
You're an enormous sponge and everything goes in there and you squeeze it out in songs, I guess. And if you're a painter, you squeeze them out on to a canvas.
I put a metronome up to all the songs, and I tried to really keep it true to the original tempos.
I don't think I'm turning back the clock by doing these old tunes. I love rock and roll and popular music. It's just that the spirits of the singers whose songs I do are living within me. That's why the songs come out in the voices of the original singers. I'm not doing imitations. That's the way they sound inside me.
I think Bridge Over Troubled Water was a very good song. Artie sang it beautifully. The Boxer was a really nice record. But I don't think I've written any great songs.
It's funny, when I'm not on the road or doing stuff with Bad Company - or whatever- I've always written songs galore... a lot of stuff people don't even hear.
When I was 11, I decided to start rapping, playing guitar, and writing songs. Everything really blossomed from there.
I like songs with a lot of heart and feeling and subtlety.
I try to sing many different kinds of songs. If I sing a batch of humorous songs, I'll throw in a deadly serious song. Or if I'm singing too many serious songs, I'll throw in a ridiculous song, to mix it up.
I could write songs about politics, but I'm conscious of not writing songs that sound the same as the ones I wrote 30 years ago.
I can sing in various genres, but my heart truly lies in singing romantic songs. This has been my forte ever since I was 8 or 9.
'Billie Jean' was a negative dance song, and that was one of the best dance songs ever.
When we played with the Rollins Band, we'd keep songs going until we felt like ending it.
A lot of people from my generation can't write songs anymore, or it's really hard and it's an unpleasant experience. I don't feel that way at all.
I had this talent for these stupid little teenage songs.
Writing songs has always been my first and foremost love, and, you know, whether I continue to have success as an artist or not, I will always write songs.
There are a bunch of songs that I think are beautiful recordings, and I'm proud of them, but I've no interest in listening to them.
