Hit Song Quotes

#1. First of all, I'm not a heartthrob. If you saw me in high school, you wouldn't say I'm a heartthrob. Having a hit song, the minute you're famous, you're a heartthrob. I know you don't believe me, but I honestly don't consider myself a heartthrob.

Enrique Iglesias

#2. But it's not just "Do you want a hit?" More importantly, it has to be something we - the artist and I - like. If you go in just wanting a hit song, it's not going to happen that way. You have to first be committed to making music you like.

Lukasz Gottwald

#3. Artists are taught to be humble about their impact, especially in folk music. It's so ingrained that I have a hard time even thinking I had any impact other than what a normal hit song would have.

Janis Ian

#4. If you write a hit song for Britney Spears, it's worth several million dollars. Just one song! And it might have taken you two hours to do it. It's like mining for gold. It takes a lot of skill and a lot of technique.

Jewel

#5. It's arguable whether a hit song is gonna add to the business a film does. There are plenty of films that didn't do any business and sold a million albums.

John Hughes

#6. There's a lot of craft that goes into achieving a hit song - at the beginning of your career, you're usually more inspiration than craft, and you get great when those intersect. A skilled songwriter can get you to that intersection.

Kara DioGuardi

#7. I went to a radio station on Long Island in 1982, and thank goodness for me, it was so new that there was no receptionist. So the DJ opened up his booth, and took my tape and listened to it and thought it was a hit song.

Jon Bon Jovi

#8. The one hit song that I have tremendous gratitude for is Boots, because it has a life of its own. It's like being identified with a brand name.

Nancy Sinatra

#9. You're either recording a hit song or you're not; you've either got something that's worth recording or you haven't.

Gus Dudgeon

#10. I don't ever have the pressure of making a hit, because I've never had a hit song, per se. The closest thing to a hit song was 'Shiraz,' and it's not your prototypical hit song, with a catchy hook and all this other stuff.

Action Bronson

#11. I'll meet listeners who tell me what a great voice I have. But I don't have a great voice for radio. My voice is the utterly normal voice, but sheer repetition has made them think it's OK. Mick Jagger once was asked, 'What makes a hit song? He said, 'Repetition.'

Ira Glass

#12. I think people are tired of fake music, man. And there's a lot of it. Technology has reached the point where any boob can walk into a studio and with a little AutoTuning you can have a hit song. I think it's pathetic.

Corey Taylor

#13. If I wanted to make a quick buck, there's far easier ways of doing it. What I want is to provoke people. If you want a hit song, all you need to do is rewrite an old song. It might have been proven to work, but you won't be remembered the same way.

Avicii

#14. These girls wouldn't let just anybody spew on their vital parts, they wanted a guy from a group with a big hit song on the charts.

Frank Zappa

#15. American Idols that come off the show and don't have a hit song - that makes it tough. If you come off the show and the song isn't big, and it takes a couple months to get your single out there - that time could be damaging.

Nick Fradiani

#16. Some people have said that I can 'hear' a hit song, meaning that I can tell the first time a song is played for me if it has potential. I have been able to hear some of the hits that way, but I can also 'feel' one.

Glen Campbell

#17. Regardless of who originally made it popular, any hit song becomes a challenge to the ingenuity and imagination of other musicians and performers.

Les Baxter

#18. I cried for everyone and for all the scrabbly, funny love one sent out into the world like some hit song that enters space and bounds off to another galaxy, a tune so pretty you think the words are true, you do!

Lorrie Moore

#19. You can make a hit song in 15 minutes. I don't know about someone else's song, but songs that people like of mine, I've created in 15 minutes or less.

Action Bronson

#20. If I were to die tomorrow, I think they'd say Newman 56, composer of the hit song, Short People. Jumped off a mountain today.

Randy Newman

#21. If I have a hit, then I hope the people who like the hit song go out and buy my album so they can hear it all.

Chely Wright

#22. It's the same at a rock-and-roll concert. You have an opening number with a strong entrance; then you go through a lot of the old standards, building up to your hit song at the end.

Marjoe Gortner

#23. I just know of so many musicians who burn out because they go on tour and they have to play their one-hit song over and over and over and over again. And they are not moved by their own song. And then when you go and see them perform there's something off.

Larkin Grimm

#24. When you're like, 'Yo, we gotta write a hit song, we need a hit song right now,' that never works. Every time that happens, I never write a hit song.

Benny Blanco

#25. Everybody wants to write a hit song, but in Nashville people want to write the best song, which was my original intention as a singer/songwriter.

Melissa Manchester

#26. I had a boyfriend who told me I'd never succeed, never be nominated for a Grammy, never have a hit song, and that he hoped I'd fail. I said to him, 'Someday, when we're not together, you won't be able to order a cup of coffee at the fucking deli without hearing or seeing me.

Lady Gaga

#27. Armed with a hammer and sickle, singer and folklorist A. L. Lloyd hit the nail on the head and cut to the quick on page one of his monumental study of folk song: 'The mother of folklore is poverty.'3

Rob Young

#28. Smashing Pumpkins has never been a band about hit songs.

Billy Corgan

#29. Hip-hop is more than music, it's a culture. It's bigger than hit songs.

Nelly

#30. I'll never be bothered if I don't have a hit because you look at the songs that are hits and they're none of my favourites. Just the fact that we do have fans waiting here, that's exciting enough.

Bert McCracken

#31. When the melody touches your heart emotionally and the words hit your brain intellectually, more than likely you'll find you'll have an excellent song to sing.

Yip Harburg

#32. I can play songs that I hear from a movie and just play it a few times on the keyboard. I will hit all the notes on the keyboard until I find the right key, and then I will play the rest of the song.

Callan McAuliffe

#33. When I began to cover songs for YouTube, they all tended to be in the super pop-genre.. as in, smash-hit songs. My writing process was heavily influenced by this - I went from a more heavy punk rock style to straight up sugary-sweet pop.

Alex Goot

#34. Now that you're gone, it hit us, super hard on Thanksgiving and Chrismas, this can't be right, yo you heard the track I did called this can't be life

Kanye West

#35. Once you've been on tour six, seven years, you get an idea of what works and what doesn't work universally. There will be some crowds that we just can't play a song, but we've got 90% of a show that we know is going to be a hit with the Lupe Fiasco fan. I think the catering has already been done.

Lupe Fiasco

#36. That's the beauty of song writing. You never know when inspiration will come or how it will hit, you just gotta kinda grasp a hold of it and make sense of it somehow.

Kimbra

#37. Whenever a songwriter writes a big hit, then the next 20 songs they write - no matter how bad they are - get recorded.

Ahmet Ertegun

#38. When I put out a record or single I don't allow myself to set up expectations like, 'This song must be a number one hit. Its got to sell X amount of records.'

Scott Weiland

#39. Sometimes when you grieve, you grieve at a time where you don't really expect it. You might hear a song or you might smell something or see something that might trigger something, and all of a sudden you get hit with this rush of emotion.

Michael B. Jordan

#40. Songwriters, you have to work - you have to wait for residuals. You have to pray that the song's going to be a hit. And then a year later, you might get a check.

Bruno Mars

#41. I have a very young brother and sister, and if you can get a kid singing the words to a song after they heard it for the first time, it's a hit.

Adam Levine

#42. I don't think Flo Rida gets on just any song. If you look at the songs he has done - even The Saturdays one - was a hit. If it's not good enough, then he won't do it.

Olly Murs

#43. I would love to do a Bond song, and I could have done a Bond song: I was offered a Bond theme, but I turned it down because I didn't like the song. But as it turned out, I was right anyway because the song was the only Bond theme that never became a hit, so I'm glad I wasn't associated with that!

Bonnie Tyler

#44. I don't know anyone who sits down to write a song hit except Irving Berlin. He can't help writing hits.

Cole Porter

#45. You can keep rummaging around until you find a song you like, but you can't predict whether it'll hit or not.

Tennessee Ernie Ford

#46. A lot of songs I sang to crowds to get their reaction. That's how I knew they'd hit.

Little Richard

#47. Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," a song that was written for Simone, she confronted the band's lead singer, Eric Burdon. "So you're the honky," she said, "who stole my song and got a hit out of it?

Nina Simone

#48. Melodies are far more interesting. They are there, in your face, in certain sections of the songs. People do complain about the melody thing, but we do hit patches of melody and beauty, as well as the other stuff.

Scott Walker

#49. It was a great thrill just to know Roy Orbison, so to play, sing, write hit songs with him and have him in The Traveling Wilburys was beyond my wildest dreams!

Jeff Lynne

#50. You should listen to songs and listen to what works. Listen to why a song is a hit. Check it out-not to imitate it, but there are certain things that work-hooks and melodies. Hear what works through the ages.

Diane Warren

#51. I think I took a few stabs at writing socially conscious lyrics. I had never intended to write a song about the Gulf War, but when I wrote "Before You Hit The Floor," I didn't know what the hell was going on in the world.

Bucky Pope

#52. Getting older doesn't help you in the fact that you might have covered some of this ground before. So you're listening to a song that you know is a hit, but it just can't be a hit for you, it's gonna be a hit for somebody else. That's tough.

Garth Brooks

#53. My voice is who I am, who I was when I was 3, and who I am going to be when I am 90 years old. When I hit the stage and people do not know who I am, they automatically assume, before I open my mouth, I am going to sing a Bob Marley song!

Valerie June

#54. That could be made into a sad song, Simon supposed. 'If they are eggs, why are they gray? Who can say, who can say?'
Admittedly, "Why Are the Eggs So Gray?" might not be a big hit, even on the hipster circuit.

Cassandra Clare

#55. When John Lennon left the Beatles and started making music with Yoko Ono, many people scoffed at the idea. How could this talented man with so many hit songs give it all up? Well, we all know it was love, but beyond that, it was a leap of faith to try something new.

Ashley Bryan

#56. I did the co-writing thing all through the '90s and I got one hit out of it - a Keith Urban song called 'But For The Grace Of God' - but then I got burnt out.

Jane Wiedlin

#57. I realized I was gay in the shower one day with Barbra Streisand. It happened while I was lathering, rinsing, and repeating with Pert Plus. As I was belting out the chorus to my favorite song from 'Funny Girl,' 'Oh my man, I love him so, he'll never know ... ' it hit me.

Ross Mathews

#58. Some hit songs are really stupid, and who knows why they're hits. But a lot of hit songs are really good. I agree with Jim [Lauderdale] in that I think the really good ones are songs that when you hear it [sic] ... there's just something about it that touches your heart, and you don't know why.

Jorma Kaukonen

#59. I am the entertainer, I've come to do my show You've heard my latest record, it's been on the radio It took me years to write it, they were the best years of my life It was a beautiful song but it ran too long If you're gonna have a hit you gotta make it fit So they cut it down to 3:05.

Billy Joel

#60. Any artist, when he goes in to record, should have the feeling that any song he records can be a hit. This may sound egotistical, but it makes sense.

Ray Charles

#61. I think my favourite song on the album [Second Hand Rapture'] is 'Head Is Not My Home', I love the vocal melody and it's such a power hit of a track. Every time it pops on I like listening to it, I'm really drawn to it.

Lizzy Plapinger

#62. Pop music thrives on repetition. You know a song's a hit when you've heard it so often that you'll be happy never to hear it again.

James Surowiecki

#63. I'm learning how to work my voice. I got some songs that you probably wouldn't even know it's me singing on there. I will sit there and take 20 takes until I hit that note right. It's different on stage - you've got to hit the notes that one time.

Dreezy

#64. Friendship is like a song, some may be a hit and last forever and some maybe be a waste of time and never to be heard of again

Zoe Prentice

#65. It used to be that you'd have a song recorded by a major country artist and if it was a hit, you could buy a car. Now you can buy a dealership.

Tom T. Hall

#66. (We wrote "Sweet Child o' Mine" later, and the "where do we go now" coda of that song actually was just sort of tacked on, which is one of the reasons we didn't anticipate it being a hit - or even a single, for that matter.)

Duff McKagan

#67. A song is a favorite song, not because the singer can hit and hold a high note, but because of the words, their meaning.

Taylor Swift

#68. We're all about trying to play better every night, not just singing hit songs ... we ad lib, and every night there's jamming .. it's almost like the Grateful Dead meets Buck Owens some nights, because we'll go off on little adventures and sometimes we do crash the bus! ...

Brad Paisley

#69. 'Mean' is a song I wrote about somebody who wrote things that were so mean so many times that it would ruin my day. Then it would ruin the next day. And it would level me so many times, I just felt like I was being hit in the face every time this person would take to their computer.

Taylor Swift

#70. A song is a song and a hit record can change a life.

Rico Love

#71. I hit the dance floor, wincing a little bit as the DJ looped feedback through the throbbing of a useless song about someone playing poker with his face or something.

Lili St. Crow

#72. Every song that has been a hit for me has been honest and truthful. I have to believe that same formula will work on this (television) show. It has to be believable and honest.

Reba McEntire

#73. The Hank Williams Syndrome: Come to Nashville, write some good songs, cut some hit records, make money, take all the drugs you can and drink all you can, become a wild man and all of a sudden die.

Waylon Jennings

#74. Artists don't always know. Almost every song I ever recorded that was a hit at the majors that the promotional people picked I didn't think it would be a hit. I was wrong every time!

Roy Ayers

#75. I've made so many mistakes, so many corrections. I'm so far from perfect so many imperfections. But I'm a go getta I get up and go get it, so if you preaching prosperity, i wanna hit it ...

50 Cent

#76. That big hit 'Get Lucky' is a disco song - not only the melody and the whole concept, but we had one of the great disco guys and one of the best guitarists ever, Nile Rodgers, to play on it. So that's great disco, but a modern disco, because it has great vocoders and synthesizers.

Giorgio Moroder

#77. I like lots of songs, and I find it quite interesting to do [cover songs] from time to time. My first solo hit was in 1973, the [Bob] Dylan song "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall."

Bryan Ferry

#78. I hope somebody does this to all my crap demos when I'm dead, making them into hit songs.

George Harrison

#79. But at this phase of my life, I want to write and not have to think about whether a song is going to be a hit. I want to explore the music that inspires me, and I don't want to ape myself.

Scott Weiland

#80. When songs fall from the sky, all I can do is catch them before they hit the ground.

Willie Nelson

#81. I tended not to be concerned about whether a song was going to be a hit when I wrote it. Because it became evident that none of us knew what was a hit and what wasn't. So I thought if I just write what I like, why shouldn't people like what I like?

Hal David

#82. Hit songs did not come out of musicals. Pop-rock was creating the hits. There were very few songs that made the charts out of any Broadway musical.

Stephen Sondheim

#83. When the sunlight hit the trees, all the beauty and wonder come together. Soul unfolds its petals. Flowering and fruiting of plants starts. The birds song light up the spinal column and harmonize the hippocampal functioning.

Amit Ray

#84. [Best original song nomination in 2016] should be Wiz Khalifa for "See You Again," but this is an amazing song and it's easily the biggest song out of any of the songs nominated. It was a huge hit. And really, I'm just happy for Weeknd as a person.

Bun B.

#85. Several record companies had rejected my song 'Owner of A Lonely Heart' on the grounds it was 'too left field.' I never create to make a hit just to satisfy some record company executive's quarterly profit statement.

Trevor Rabin

#86. It felt safer to run, a moving target was harder to hit. But this vague sense of security evaporated when the darkness came, it was like running in a void where every step brought the threat of a painful fall.

Anthony Ryan

#87. I've never written a song that I thought was a hit.

Richard Marx

#88. For me, writing a song, I sit down and the process doesn't really involve me thinking about the demographic of people I'm trying to hit or who I want to be able to relate to the song or what genre of music it falls under.

Taylor Swift

#89. I don't know if a song is going to be a hit or it's going to flop. I never know. I just do the music and if people like it, they like it.

T-Pain

#90. If it's a good song, it doesn't really matter if it's trendy or not. It will hit.

Tablo

#91. I don't want to have one hit, one song of the summer, and then have me disappear forever. I really want my things to last, and I want my songs and my bodies of work to resonate with people. I want to hit people - at least make a dent in them. I want to make a mark somehow.

Alessia Cara