Songs About Quotes

#1. Beyond hoping that someone will like one of my songs, I don't think about how a song will be received. I just hope that, when somebody hears one of my songs, they'll want to hear it again.

Lyle Lovett

#2. Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.

Taylor Swift

#3. All songs are about shagging, you can't deny it

John Peel

#4. Nobody thinks mystery writers go around killing people, but they always seem to assume singers are singing about themselves, especially if you write melancholy songs like me.

Del Shannon

#5. In 2007, several musicologists contacted me at about the same time, expressing interest in the work of the mysterious Muriel Herbert, a few of whose songs they had come across.

Claire Tomalin

#6. Lust is raw selfishness. It's all about my wants, my needs, my pleasure. Most love songs are actually lust songs.

Rick Warren

#7. Only a fool wants war, but once a war starts then it cannot be fought half-heartedly. It cannot even be fought with regret, but must be waged with a savage joy in defeating the enemy, and it is that savage joy that inspires our bards to write their greatest songs about love and war.

Bernard Cornwell

#8. Everything comes out in blues music: joy, pain, struggle. Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance. It's about a man and a woman. So the pain and the struggle in the blues is that universal pain that comes from having your heart broken. Most blues songs are not about social statements.

Wynton Marsalis

#9. Name ten songs you want to hear again before you die, get all of your friends together and scream them. Because right now all you have is time, but someday that time will run out. That's the only thing you can be absolutely certain about.

Paul Baribeau

#10. I've found for the last couple of years that the things that I can become most deeply involved with are songs that reflect my real feelings about things and so that what I've been writing about.

Neil Diamond

#11. I've found that there isn't any correlation whatsoever between the hours put in and the quality of what comes out. Most of the Beatles' songs probably originated in about five minutes.

Tom Hodgkinson

#12. A lot of my songs are about death and the fleetingness of life. It just feels good to remind myself about that a lot. For whatever reason. And it's a beautiful thing, actually. It seems to me like it's a beautiful way to live in the world and to relate to things, with an awareness of temporality.

Phil Elvrum

#13. I don't have to worry about any pop sensibility. I can write adult songs, and I don't have to worry about choruses and hook lines.

John Mellencamp

#14. It was a ridiculous question. Did I _love_ Char? Did I feel about Char the same way I feel about the Beatles, string instruments in pop songs, the way Little Anthony sang high notes, the way Jerry Lee Lewis played piano?

Leila Sales

#15. Well, I started writing songs about three years ago when I learned to play the guitar, but I've been singing since I was eleven.

Colbie Caillat

#16. When I began writing songs, there was a pretty direct line between what was happening in my life and what I wrote about. So my first album was really all about my failed attempts to make a particular relationship work.

Erin McKeown

#17. It's amazing when I do a gig how many people of different ages come up to me afterwards and chat to me about songs. The emotions I feel are what any person can relate to. Sometimes I'm just a narrator.

Ella Henderson

#18. The demand in India is to have a hit, which becomes a promotion for the movie and makes people come to the theater. You have five songs and different promotions based on those. But when I do Western films, the need for originality is greater. Then I become very conscious about the writing.

A.R. Rahman

#19. I got about 6037 songs I wrote myself and I'm trying to get them on the market and I just wish people could hear them and stuff but they'll do pretty good.

Hasil Adkins

#20. The industrial thing came about mainly through giving up trying to write pop songs in the early '90s. I don't think I was ever very good at pop music and as soon as I stopped trying, and started to write more the things I loved, it became much heavier and more aggressive.

Gary Numan

#21. Singing didn't really come naturally to me, I don't think. I had to really work at it. I just kept singing. I never was really worried about it, though, because I was writing songs, and that was the most important thing to me.

Tom Odell

#22. The thing people don't get about Indian films is that the songs are the story.

Asif Kapadia

#23. One of my favorite songs from the album is a song called 'For Better or Worse,' and it's basically about unconditional love, which is, I'd say, an ongoing theme in my personal life.

Debbie Gibson

#24. I always thought of myself as the piano player in the band. That, I suppose, I'm confident about, and I guess my songwriting developed as I went along and I got a certain amount of confidence in that. The songs are like my kids, I'm proud of all of them for one reason or another.

Billy Joel

#25. I have about 4 albums of Disney songs, but the embarrassing part is that I know each song word for word, and have dances choreographed for most.

Jessica De Gouw

#26. I tend to write songs that are about something pretty specific. A lot of them tell some kind of little made-up story.

Adam Schlesinger

#27. DJ-ing itself is not just about playing songs. The art of DJ-ing is presenting new songs to the crowd that they haven't heard before and creating a party vibe that's different than just listening to anybody's playlist. It's the only way to truly be big and respected in your craft.

TyDi

#28. Writing songs about it is a really useful way for me to love New York more, and stay observing it, and not just zone it out.

Frankie Cosmos

#29. 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.

Jenny Lewis

#30. Many of the songs were written as a way of paying tribute to specific people, but in the end the songs took on a life of their own and I didn't worry about accuracy or biographical truth, so it's not a problem.

Michael Gira

#31. I'd rather people interpret the songs and get whatever they can out of them instead of thinking about me crying in a room with a guitar.

Angel Olsen

#32. We will have close to 3 months of rehearsals to learn about 30 songs. Frank usually rehearsed a band for at least 3 months. If it took him that long to be comfortable we probably would need double the amount, but It's just not financially possible to do so.

Dweezil Zappa

#33. The plants and flowers
I raised about my hut
I now surrender
To the will
Of the wind

Ryokan

#34. It wasn't just about flashing lights and pinball machines blowing up and things like that. It was about using encores, bringing back the good songs and using techniques that I knew about from rock performance.

Pete Townshend

#35. I remember when I wrote songs when I was about 16, they all sounded the same because I didn't know anything. And all the subject matter was all the same because I hadn't actually done much.

Gin Wigmore

#36. I wanted to have more songs with religious backgrounds. The Christmas record has strong, traditional hymns, but it also has a song called 'Christmas in Heaven' about missing someone that you love that's passed on, and wondering what's going on up there on Christmas.

Scotty McCreery

#37. This is why improvisational music and comedy is so inspiring: You are seeing something being born, and that energy, there is no substitute for. These songs, most of them, are about a minute old when you hear them.

John Darnielle

#38. I usually don't write songs by people calling me and saying, 'Write a song about this.' Usually I'm just going with what I want to write, so you never know.

Diane Warren

#39. Just seeing the things on TV and the things in front of you, the amount of information coming in, and the lack of information not coming in, how could you not help but write songs about it.

Billie Joe Armstrong

#40. Some say because music is as much about personal expression as listening pleasure, sharing is integral to why songs have value in the first place.

Charles Duhigg

#41. There are very few songs about just liking someone as a friend.

Demetri Martin

#42. I'm very excited about my new Spotify account, which gives me access to twenty gazillion songs any time, all the time. The day I opened my account, though, I sat there perplexed. How would I figure out what I wanted to hear?

Susan Orlean

#43. It's very hard for me to think about my songs and attribute some significance to them.

Jimmy Webb

#44. The best songs come unasked for. You don't have to think about them ... Summer is good for songs. When it's real warm, if you have a sense of freedom, not a lot on your mind, and a feeling there's plenty of time, it just seems to be a good climate for music.

Jim Morrison

#45. When no one's buying your records, it's easy to justify selling a song. But once you start selling records, you can't really justify having two songs in Cadillac commercials. It looks greedy. And it is greedy. This whole music thing should be about music.

Patrick Carney

#46. To create an album of 12 songs, I've got to write about 80 songs. Half of those are totally weird and rubbish.

Jason Mraz

#47. In songs, you have to tell people about something they didn't see and weren't there for, and you have to do it as if you were.

Bob Dylan

#48. Just because you sing songs about a certain feeling doesn't mean you have to go feeling that way forever. You can sing about that for the rest of your life, but that doesn't mean things aren't going to change in your own life.

Billie Joe Armstrong

#49. It's so easy to write songs about misery and hard times and sadness. It's much more difficult to write songs about happy and chirpy stuff.

Elton John

#50. I think it's really hard to make songs that pursue an agenda. You can kind of do it a little bit through a character, so the character gives voice to something or their story, the story of the character tells you something, but, for me anyway, it's really hard to write directly about politics.

David Byrne

#51. Aren't all the best songs about a girl? It doesn't matter if it's metal, if it's country, if it's blues or rock and roll; all the songs that make us remember and make us want to sing along are about the best kind of girl, the kind you can't live without but can't ever get ahold of.

Jay Crownover

#52. One of the things I love about doing things that are creative is that I feel like it's my right as an artist not to be affected by the reactions of those people that are going to hear my songs.

Zooey Deschanel

#53. It was precisely because her songs were dragged up out of her soul that they were so powerful and passionate. The ones that went into "Back to Black" were about the deepest emotions. And she went through hell to make it.

Mitch Winehouse

#54. I began thinking about the idea of a 24 hour concert. What if you tied songs to certain hours of the day - creating a 24 hour world of lyric and melody. So that was the inspiration for this project.

Jon Foreman

#55. The way you look for songs, you find yourself looking for little signals and clues about life and how things are.

Tom T. Hall

#56. What I'm most pleased about is that there's no particular decline. The songs I wrote 40 years ago are no worse and no better - there's a consistency.

Randy Newman

#57. I care about the records I make and I love writing songs and some songs are really dear to me and they mean something. But the memory of making the records and the activities surrounding the records, the people involved in them is actually a bigger thing to me.

Joel Plaskett

#58. We [Notekillers] are in no way super-earnest about what we do and if you see us live, you see we are cracking up during songs and saying pretty ridiculous things in-between. We're having fun.

David First

#59. What I'm doing is basically the same as Bob Dylan did with folk songs and Woody Guthrie songs, the same as folk music's always done. I'm not going to sing about ploughing, but I'll write a song that sounds like it should be about ploughing.

Justin Townes Earle

#60. What a fine-looking thing is war!
Yet, dress it as we may, dress and feather it, daub it with gold, huzza it, and sing swaggering songs about it,
what is it, nine times out of ten, but murder in uniform!

Douglas William Jerrold

#61. I always prefer to write songs about emotional situations and heartbreak because I like getting into the character.

Pixie Lott

#62. Yes, I did lock myself in my room for about two years and write some songs and things like that. But I don't feel like I missed out on a whole lot.

Hunter Hayes

#63. A lot of my songs are about taking whatever life throws at you and making the most of it.

Natasha Bedingfield

#64. I'm not complaining about my cell phone - all my friends are in there, and all my favorite songs and all my favorite Benedict Cumberbatch GIFs; I don't want to give it up. But cell phones are the worst for talking on the phone.

Rainbow Rowell

#65. My second album was written while I was on the road promoting the first record. I tried to take my personal experiences and elevate them to universal experiences, so that I wasn't writing songs about living on a tour bus or being on a TV set for the first time.

Kate Voegele

#66. The Men at Work thing is always there, it's always going to be there. It's not something I consciously think that much about anymore. The thing that stays with you is the songs, which is a good thing for me, because the songs are the things that stand the test of time.

Colin Hay

#67. I probably belong to a type of composer of songs who keeps thinking about melody ... I am old fashioned.

Toru Takemitsu

#68. I was writing songs as a kid about leprechauns and Catwoman and teapots - whatever it is that little girls wanna sing about. The first song I wrote was called "Kitten." It was about a boy named Liam, who I was just crazy about.

Bonnie McKee

#69. The best songs are the ones about Georgia, even though I've never been there. It's the only place I still believe in Jesus.

Buddy Wakefield

#70. Making a record? You've got to have the song, then you create a record. I think it's the same with a live performance. If the material is strong, you're already 90% there. I always tell young people it's all about the music, the songs. Work on the songs, work on the songs, work on the songs.

Tom Petty

#71. I can imagine moving out to the seaside at some point. I like Brighton, my sister lives there. I'm a seaside boy and whenever I go there, I find myself writing songs about it.

Marc Almond

#72. I've covered Avril Lavigne. I like good pop songs, and I don't think there should be any kind of preconceptions about where good pop songs come from.

Ben Gibbard

#73. When you look into the eyes of your people out there that came to see you, that's when it's like, 'Yep, this is what it's all about.' This is why we don't sleep, and this is why we write songs and try to be the best. This moment right here onstage.

Luke Bryan

#74. I don't know what any of my songs are about. I don't sit down to write about anything. They're about whatever you want. I don't pick subjects. I just start.

Liam Gallagher

#75. Oh, I'll tell you about 'Anyone Can Whistle' - the lesson I learned with doing that record is that the simplest songs are the hardest to do.

Jane Krakowski

#76. The saddest songs are always about love.

Nora Roberts

#77. Every time I get in front of an audience, I do the best I can. I really don't look at it like, you know, 'This is gonna be this crowd, or that crowd.' If anything, I think about the demographics only because of what songs will entertain more than others.

Joe Perry

#78. I went to Morocco, joined a band called Pegasus, ran out of money, went to Gibraltar and worked on the docks, writing songs about the sun and the morning and the birds.

Graham Parker

#79. I thought all pubescent humans dreamed of becoming heroes with songs sung about them.

K.M. Shea

#80. There are a billion songs that I've heard and said, 'I don't even care to have an opinion about it,' but if I have to hear a snippet of the refrain of 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together' once, it'll get stuck in my head, and that drives me crazy.

Kurt Braunohler

#81. All songs have a message whether it's I love you, do you love me or this government sucks in a basic format and then you expand upon your beliefs and your thinking process about what's going on around you in the world.

Rob Halford

#82. Playing on the streets of Iraq, or in Israel or the Gaza strip, I'd sing angry protest songs against war. People would say, 'Make us clap, make us dance, and laugh and sing.' It really made me think about the importance of happy music.

Michael Franti

#83. I don't hide anything about my life, I talk about everything. I talk about it - all kinds of things. I've done songs about bad experiences, a couple about growing up in the ghetto and being abused, sexually. Being raped. And I talk about it.

Lady Saw

#84. Even if you're specific about the character of the song, it's more exciting to place them, juxtapose them in such a way as to make an adventure out of the sequence of the songs.

Robert Wyatt

#85. I don't like songs about wanting things. I like songs about letting go, saying goodbye.

Jasmine Warga

#86. Not that people think that love is not important. They are starved for it; they watch endless numbers of films about happy and unhappy love stories, they listen to hundreds of trashy songs about love - yet hardly anyone thinks that there is anything that needs to be learned about love. This

Erich Fromm

#87. I only write about stuff I know. I don't have a lot of experience with boys and stuff so I write a lot of songs about interesting and strange subjects that people wouldn't write songs about.

Brie Larson

#88. If I'm not writing songs about things I've actually been through, it ruins the idea of making music to me.

Austin Carlile

#89. Now I'm thinking about letters, the molecules of sentences and songs, the bricks of words.

Paul Tremblay

#90. The sort where moon don't rhyme with June, and you're not up to your backside in bloody buttercups. Songs that aren't about your mum and dad. A bit rough, a beat that busts up the old way, the old stodge, the empire and knowing your place and excuse me and the dressing up and doing what you're told.

Francis Beckett

#91. I don't look at myself as a celebrity. People recognize me, but it's all about my music, my songs. It's not like I'm a greater being. I take my kids to school, pick them up, go to the grocery store. I'm a mother, and my kids mean more to me than even being an artist.

Faith Evans

#92. I don't just want to sing about simplistic things all the time. It's good to have a mix of songs that have a real depth, and that provoke and challenge people, and then songs that are fun and people can enjoy.

Marina And The Diamonds

#93. David had apparently been busy writing more songs about the glory of doing his wife.
Ah, true love and stuff.

Kylie Scott

#94. I see some recurring themes: things that feel threaded together, some symbolic references, and songs about some of the big questions, like death. There are a lot of references to weather, too!

Tracy Chapman

#95. For me, when you are talking about perfect songs, you're talking about Gershwin, 'Someone To Watch Over Me.' Or Larry Hart and Richard Rodgers. Or some of the great Cole Porter songs, whether it's 'Night and Day' or some of the comedy songs. Or Irving Berlin, of course.

Maury Yeston

#96. I don't care what people say about my relationship; I don't care what they say about my boobs. People are buying my songs; I have a sold-out tour. I'm getting incredible feedback from my music.

Katy Perry

#97. I also wanted to make a record that was about other things than romance, yeah, after two years on the road singing all the songs from the first album, I got kind of tired of that.

Duncan Sheik

#98. People talk about Bollywood being very kitsch, and just songs and dances, and over the top and colorful.

Shah Rukh Khan

#99. Oh sure, the songs have all totally evolved. I mean, when you're playing the same songs night in night out, they take on a life of their own. I can't even remember what I wrote some of them about now!

Gary Jules

#100. I started writing songs when I was a little kid actually. I wrote a song about Catwoman and I wrote a song about Leprechauns, as a little kid.

Bonnie McKee