What A Song Quotes

#1. I hear a really good pop song every now and then. 'ROAR' by Katy Perry, I love that! 'Poker Face' ... Oh! What a song! And 'Rolling in the Deep' ... Oh!

Bjorn Ulvaeus

#2. There's this notion that allows people to create their own collection of songs, so it rewrites what a song is. They may only want 10 seconds of something, or they may only want this particular song, or they want this group of songs. It becomes much more user-controlled.

Michael Nesmith

#3. It seemed like, in the early '80s, there was just a moment where there was suddenly no specific notion of what a rock band could be or what a song could be.

Bucky Pope

#4. When someone asks me what a song is about, it's like, I feel like I might ruin it if you ask me that. I feel like I did my best to explain the song in the song on its own terms as a song.

Kyle Morton

#5. What a song is is a subjective thing. There's no one real definition for it.

The Edge

#6. When you write songs, you gotta be like a receiving station: you gotta be aware of what's going on around you. I never know what a song is going to be about before I write it.

Tony Joe White

#7. The funny thing is, people's perceptions of what a song is about is usually wrong a majority of the time. But they're still going to read what they want to into it.

Vince Gill

#8. I think every good song tells a story, as ambiguous and vague as it may be. And if you know what a song is talking about, it can only help your performance.

David Cook

#9. If all the elements are in place, you should get 80 percent of what a song has to offer no matter how you hear it, whether on headphones or on the radio.

James Blake

#10. If you can even manage to tell exactly what a song is about, all you do is put that song in a box forever, and it loses its evocative power.

Robert Hunter

#11. It's very strange when people get so focused on what a song means, what actual events inspired a song. That gets people really excited for some reason ... But that's what's great about music - however people interpret it, whatever they see, is what I want to be there for them.

Conor Oberst

#12. What did that Walt Disney song say? Someday my prince will come? Well, mine came alright ... and I don't think Disney would make a song out of it

D.H. Starr

#13. Bands have always written songs against what they see as wrong. Ronald Reagan really made for a lot of songs.

Henry Rollins

#14. I watched him playing with the long blades of grass, weaving them into patterns as he hummed an unfamiliar song, a waltz.
"What are you doing?" I asked him.
"I'm letting you get used to the idea of me," he said idly. "I'm pretending to be harmless. Is it working?"
"Until you smile," ( ... )

Delilah S. Dawson

#15. If I come across an issue, or something I feel strongly about, and I happen to think of a song that would go in that direction, then I do it. But that's not what I start out, necessarily, to do. Sometimes I may have an idea for a song - Well, I'm going to write about a thing.

Charlie Daniels

#16. It doesn't really matter what chords I play, what words I say or time of day it is, as it's only a Northern Song.

George Harrison

#17. Millie told me once that the ability to devastate is what makes a song beautiful. Maybe that's what makes life beautiful too. The ability to devastate. Maybe that's how we know we've lived. How we know we've truly loved.

Amy Harmon

#18. I would prefer it if people thought that I didn't work hard, that I just played the guitar for three minutes a week and was like, 'Check out this song - what do you think?' That would be ideal. I would prefer telling people that I'm just truly talented.

Julian Casablancas

#19. 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

#20. If I find something I like, I'll chase it and see what comes out the other side. Once a song gets momentum and gets away from you, that's a good sign.

Dave Matthews

#21. You could play the blues like it was a lonesome thing - it was a feeling. The blues is nothing but a story ... The verses which are sung in the blues is a true story, what people are doing ... what they all went through. It's not just a song, see?

David Edwards

#22. But what if Oscar - "
"Breathes fire and threatens to cook you over a grill?"
"I was thinking what if he gets mad, but I think your way works as well."
"Then you shall make for a tasty meal.

Erica Sehyun Song

#23. I have always thought it was important to maintain some connection for myself to what it takes to make a song work by myself, to put a song across to an audience by myself.

Jeff Tweedy

#24. Somehow you can tell the difference when a song is written just to get on the radio and when what someone does is their whole life. That comes through in Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Willie Nelson. There is no separating their life from their music.

Lyle Lovett

#25. Nine times out of 10 when people do a tribute album or tribute songs for somebody, it's what I call 'white boys playing reggae'. They know they can't, we know they can't, so they sing like they can't and play like they can't. They gently make fun of the idiom or sing in a false accent.

David Lee Roth

#26. I don't really care about how good a song is, I only want them to reflect what I felt when I was writing them

Lana Del Rey

#27. What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.

Bono

#28. The Doctor: Doctor Song, you've got that face on again.
River: What face?
The Doctor: The "He's hot when he's clever" face.
River: This is my normal face.
The Doctor: Yes it is.
River: Oh, shut up.
The Doctor: Not a chance.

Steven Moffat

#29. I only work with a couple of co-writers who I'm really close with, so they always know what's going on in my life and we talk about things openly, they know every song is true to something that I'm either going through or have gone through before.

LIZ

#30. I mean a song that's specifically for the girls. It's saying you know we talk about them night and day, we're constantly pondering on men and what they've done good and what they've done bad and all these things in our lives.

Willa Ford

#31. Everything is an echo of something I once read.

Dream, hope, and celebrate life!

Love always comes back in a song.

One thing we all have in common is a love for food and drink.

Memories never die, and dreams never end!

What is time?

John Siwicki

#32. 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

#33. 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

#34. You can lose people without them dying, and I have, from moving, from traveling. The emotion is real, it just doesn't actually have to do with death. I'm singing about what I know, and it's a song about longing for somebody who's disappeared in your life.

Jon Crosby

#35. Sometimes I don't even know what to name a song when I get done with it, and I'll let somebody else tell me what I should call it because it's whatever stuck in their head.

Justin Timberlake

#36. I was drawn to love songs, but I was just drawn to great music - no matter if it's hip-hop, pop, R&B or whether it's rock n' roll or country. It could be a Garth Brooks song, and if it's a smash, then I'll love the different wordplay and different melodies. That's what I'm a fan of - great music.

Nayvadius Cash

#37. I think most bands probably peak on their first album. We peaked on our third album. On the first album, I feel like I wish the production was a little better. I'll always hear a song I don't like. I look for what I could have done to make it better. It's always difficult for me to listen.

Johnny Ramone

#38. What is clear to me today is that I must ignore the opinions and advice of others when they interfere with my own inner knowing. It is enough for me to know that I have a song, and by God, I intend to sing it.

Wayne W. Dyer

#39. When I met Michael Jordan on a basketball court at an athletic club - we hooped together in Chicago - he came to me and asked me if I wanted to do a song for his upcoming movie. I was like, 'Yeah!' I didn't even ask what it was.

R. Kelly

#40. Carol says we speak with one voice. What she doesn't say is that voice belongs to HER. There's only one song to sing these days
Carol's song
and if you aren't in harmony, you can stick a stone in your mouth and shut the hell up.

Joe Hill

#41. 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.

Slick Rick

#42. I got signed with the songwriting deal when I was sixteen and they were really great - my publishers, who to this day are still my publishers and are like my musical family, my second family - they took me in and taught me what a good song is.

Lights

#43. With my records, it's just a matter of trying to create something fresh for myself in a very finite context, which is the pop song. I don't know anything about the people who buy my records, and what, if anything, they get out of them.

Tom Verlaine

#44. When someone tells me what he or she was doing the first time they heard a song of mine, then I've done a good job. If my song becomes about your life, then I'm successful.

Lyle Lovett

#45. I wrote 'Fight Song' as this declaration to believe in myself, and that is similar to what you are taught to believe in Girl Scouts. Building confidence. Building character. And above all else, being there for each other as a community.

Rachel Platten

#46. Watch a movie that makes you laugh or listen to a song that makes you cry. Embrace your emotions and be proud of what you feel.

Demi Lovato

#47. The Song is a gritty, realistic, and powerful film. The acting and production quality are excellent, and the story is captivating. Although not for children, the story is a good reminder to adults of what really matters!

Alex Kendrick

#48. I want people to listen to the lyrics of each song and absorb the music fully before they look at me and make a judgment about what they think my music will or should sound like.

Darren Fletcher

#49. For a brief moment, I considered deconstructing the song and going down a cerebral road, but then I realized it would kill what is most powerful about it.

Annie E. Clark

#50. What is that song that Willie Nelson sang? 'Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few.' I think of that. No big deal. I've reached a stage in my life where I am content.

Gabriel Byrne

#51. What song would lull a snake into submission? "John Mayer?"
"Over my dead body."
"Could be, Tim, could be.

Gini Koch

#52. 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

#53. What rare days were those, When my chief duty was to write a song.

George Arnold

#54. When I'm sick of myself, and when I don't know what to say as a solo artist, I can write a song for a movie. When I don't know where to turn musically, being in a band - Rilo Kiley or Jenny & Johnny - the collaborative nature is really exciting.

Jenny Lewis

#55. With me, it's so eclectic and all over the map that no one knows what to expect, ... It may not be a great career move, but all these things - singing with the Funk Brothers and the Dead, singing a Dolly Parton song - is great. I'm welcome to all these different worlds, and that's been wonderful.

Joan Osborne

#56. 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

#57. 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

#58. Instead of feeling like there's two or three of us in this town of hostile crackers, I'm in a big church filled with people who believe the same thing I believe and the power of song is raising what we're trying to do, raising it up to the rafters.

Stanley Nelson Jr.

#59. I love songs, and I love songwriting, and there's a standard of songwriting within Chicago blues in particular. I don't like the sad blues, necessarily; the Chicago blues is what I like, which is the kind of blues you can dance to.

Sinead O'Connor

#60. You know what? I'm not always in a positive, happy place. But I'm able to concentrate enough to come up with a really good song.

Brian Wilson

#61. Not everybody is going to like what I do or get what I do. With as much positive, you always get the negative to deal with. I get that as well. Most of the time, I'm very honored to have a fan base that they react to my songs. My songs speak to a lot of them.

Hank Williams III

#62. That's really what was wonderful for me growing up, since I got to know so many of the songwriters who liked me and thought I had talent. They would then tell me how to read a lyric and sing a song, and challenge me to try and find a different end to a song.

Margaret Whiting

#63. I think what makes compelling fiction or cinema is when you're basically taking the most intense moments of experience and you're creating a song or a narrative out of it.

David O. Russell

#64. The studio's a collaborative environment. I just try to let people bring their own ideas to the songs and see what happens.

John Darnielle

#65. On our first record, man, I didn't know what I was doing. I was just playing. I was over playing. You're as green as you can be with no experience in recording or knowing how sometimes a song can work: when it's too much, when it's not enough, when it's not right.

Tommy Lee

#66. So writing a song is much harder than doing a classical piece for me, because in a classical piece, I can just let the mood dictate what's going to happen.

Glenn Danzig

#67. Now everyone dreams of a love faithful and true,
But you and I know what this world can do.
So let's make our steps clear so the other may see.
And I'll wait for you ... should I fall behind wait for me.

Bruce Springsteen

#68. 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

#69. Sometimes it takes time to get into what ideas actually mean to you. Even when you're not writing a song, it's like that.

Boots Riley

#70. I don't need to hear Bill to go through a song. I need to hear Keith to go through a song. I know Bill will be playing what I'm playing anyway. I need to hear Keith because it's all there: the time, the chord changes, and all the licks you have to follow.

Charlie Watts

#71. Traditionally, with a DJ set, you just go hear DJ that has a good reputation and let the DJ take you somewhere. It was up to the DJ what he wanted to play. Typically in dance music, people didn't know most of the songs a DJ played.

A-Trak

#72. I liked his voice, rich and unself-conscious even when he forgot words and hummed to fill in the gap. What I didn't understand, I imagined, and thus it became a love song.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

#73. In my world, history comes down to language and art. No one cares much about what battles were fought, who won them and who lost them - unless there is a painting, a play, a song or a poem that speaks of the event.

Theodore Bikel

#74. That got her up on stage pretty quick, and she sang a song, which was in Spanish, so I don't know what it was about, except she seemed to be singing it mainly to Sharisse and it had a word that sounded like "poota" in it a lot.

Dave Barry

#75. I very rarely sit down with a guitar and try to write a song. I usually think about it a lot and then I'll try to re-create what was in my head at the time.

Sune Rose Wagner

#76. -What is the song about? I asked.
-Death, he answered with a laugh. But don't worry, nobody dies, it is the death of love.

Patti Smith

#77. Because my musical training has been limited, I've never been restricted by what technical musicians might call a song.

Neil Diamond

#78. From long familiarity, we know what honor is. It is what enables the individual to do right in the face of complacency and cowardice. It is what enables the soldier to die alone, the political prisoner to resist, the singer to sing her song, hardly appreciated, on a side street.

Mark Helprin

#79. There's a little book I'm thinking of writing - "Swan Song" is what I shall call it. The song of the dying. And my book will be incense burnt at the deathbed of this society, damned with the damnation of its own impotence.

Maxim Gorky

#80. Even if we lose, what of it? We have made a song of freedom that will ring for a thousand years. No one will forget the Iceni or their red-haired queen.

Kate Quinn

#81. Normally what I do is I'll record something that I really like which will be part of a song or an idea. I kind of just record things and then I'm done with them. It takes discipline to actually carve out a song.

Michael Cera

#82. Growing up female in America. What a liability! You grew up with your ears full of cosmetic ads, love songs, advice columns, whoreoscopes, Hollywood gossip, and moral dilemmas on the level of TV soap operas. What litanies the advertisers of the good life chanted at you! What curious catechisms!

Erica Jong

#83. 'Can't Get Closer' I originally recorded in about half an hour, just on my bed with a microphone. I actually re-recorded the song with a cleaner vocal take, but I decided to leave the demo version on there, just because I felt that instant where it was created is what captured the most emotion.

Sampha

#84. You'll almost encounter a superstition amongst musicians, people sort of go through strange rituals, what they need to do to write a song.

Dar Williams

#85. 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

#86. We didn't want to worry about the formula that has been implanted into our brains - this verse/pre-chorus/chorus format. When we were writing 'The Papercut Chronicles,' we had no idea about any of that. We didn't know how to count bars or how to write what's considered a well-formatted pop song.

Travie McCoy

#87. 'If You Could Read My Mind' was written during the collapse of my marriage. It's a great song. No one has any gripes about it. I wondered what my wife and daughter might think. My daughter is the one who got me to correct 'The feelings that you lacked' to 'The feelings that we lacked'.

Gordon Lightfoot

#88. I find it interesting when I look back at songs and it's what I've been thinking and feeling for the past two years. There's some sexual stuff in this record and I'm sometimes like, "Is that too far?" There's a confidence in it. It's over-sharing, but in a really therapeutic way.

Elena Tonra

#89. I'm very soulful. I grew up singing in church. When I sing a song, I like to feel what I'm singing.

Fantasia Barrino

#90. A friend of mine called and said they're interested in having you do a song for the new Pokemon. All my kids are grown up, so I'd heard of it, but I didn't really know what it was.

Donna Summer

#91. What do you want me to do,
To watch for you,
To see you through?
A box of rain will ease the pain,
and love, will see you through.

Robert Hunter

#92. I'm not a real good musician, but I can write [a song] pretty well. I experiment once in a while to see what I can do. I find out the best I can do is stay with ballads.

Marty Robbins

#93. There's so much more you can do with the dynamics of songs when they're simple ... I think it was what I needed in my life - there was a lot going on, a lot of layers.

Sarah Blasko

#94. Honestly, musicals? I just can't. What if this was real life and I was just walking down the street on Rodeo Drive and all of a sudden I just burst into song about how much I love shoes?

Miley Cyrus

#95. I wonder what the High Septon would have to say about the sanctity of oaths sworn while dead drunk, chained to a wall, with a sword pressed to your chest?

George R R Martin

#96. There was a moment when Prince did rock & roll with a sponge-y seductive sound. I think that's what was in our head for 'Get On Your Boots.' But actually, the song is much more punk rock.

Bono

#97. Jordan [Ruddes], he learned that way, and that's what he knows how to do. That's how he kind of approaches all music, whether it's to learn a cover song that we're going to play, or to review Dream Theater music - he always uses charts. That's what he knows. I really rely a lot more on memory.

John Petrucci

#98. I don't sing a song unless I feel it. The song don't tug at my heart, I pass on it. I have to believe in what I'm doing.

Ray Charles

#99. People have habits about what they think songs should be like. There's the folky thing of: "Poor me, I'm a sensitive person in a cruel world." Or the pop thing of: "Hey, look at me, I'm sexy."

Robert Wyatt

#100. It's that feeling when you hear your favourite song. That feeling, whether you're in a car, at a party or alone at home or in bed and you hear this song and it just hits you so strong - that's what we aim for.

Julian Casablancas