Top 525 Songs Quotes

Spotify favors hits. It’s very much a meritocracy: It’s not like radio, where whatever is being played is what you hear. We offer songs up, and from there, it’s up to consumers to stream the music or not.

There are a couple different factors that play into the decision of which songs to cover. It could either be we’re really inspired by a song that’s just come out or inspired by an international classic, but either way we bring it to the band.

I love the sad songs with their maudlin, self-deprecating, almost funny lyrics. As an Englishman, they make a lot of sense.

I’d experimented with so many different types of music. I had these folky songs I’d written and recorded, but something wasn’t quite right.

My ambition, a long time ago, was to be a film music writer. A compromise then was to be the guy who wrote songs for a band and played slide guitar. Then the singer didn’t turn up for an audition, and I was the only one who knew the words. That was it – bingo! Life took a different course.

You write in songs what you’re too scared to write in real life, and then you sing the songs to loads of people instead of telling it to the person you should be telling it to… Songs are a great way of dealing with those issues but kind of a coward’s way as well.

Somewhere around the fifth, sixth album, we got this little formula together where we knew how to record Too $hort songs. You need the bassline, a good drum pattern, call in the keyboard, the guitars – it’s just a way we mixed it all together.

I want to only sing songs that I have lived with; that can’t happen with six tracks at the same time.

I really love rap music. I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s with Public Enemy, N.W.A., LL Cool J – I’m a hip-hop encyclopedia. But I got kind of frustrated with the chauvinistic side of rap music, the one that makes it hard to write songs about love and relationships.

Starship was a whole different thing. It was pop rock. It made more money and had more hit songs than Airplane. There was no cultural or social ethic behind it. For me, it was like selling out. I was the only one selling out. The rest enjoyed doing what they were doing.

The thing with Led Zeppelin songs is that they were never the same. They were very fluid and tight but loose.

I’m not going to be rockin’ n’ rollin’ when I’m 50 years old. But you can be in your prime on television, compose songs, or write a Broadway play when you’re 50.

You know, Nirvana used to start rehearsals with the three of us just jamming. For, like, a half an hour, just noise and freeform crap – and usually it was crap. But sometimes things would come from it, and some songs on Nevermind came from that, and ‘Heart Shaped Box’ and stuff on ‘In Utero’ just happened that way.

At first, I was using my sister Susan’s lyrics, as I could not write myself, only the music. And then one day, she and I had a fight, and she threatened to take away the lyrics from all the songs that I put the lyrics to, so it was that day that I began writing my first lyric to the music.

Great songs stand out wherever they’re from.

Every year we celebrate the holy season of Advent, O God. Every year we pray those beautiful prayers of longing and waiting, and sing those lovely songs of hope and promise.

Whenever I listen to songs, I rewrite them in my head.

If you can’t get your songs to people one way, you have to find another.

I’ve established this kind of wild persona and these redneck party songs and a live show that’s kind of rowdy, but I don’t want people to think that’s what I’m all about.

My art is not limited to the songs I create but also to the reaction it creates. I like to sit back and look at the whole thing as if it’s a tornado that I’m controlling. It’s creating chaos. When you create chaos, ideas are turned upside down, and everybody looks at things in a different way.

I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best – I mean, when I’m at my best – of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.

Queen songs are not about the life of a rock star – they tend to be about the lives of normal people, which is why I think the songs connect so much. We’re very lucky that they seemingly connect with every generation.

I just love writing songs and singing them. People seem to enjoy them, and that’s all you can really ask for. I didn’t get into it to try to be a celebrity or whatever.

I’m just a wee, chubby boy that happens to sing songs.

Everyone who knows me knows that I’m a hopeless romantic who listens to love ballads and doo-wop songs all the time.

I met Arcade Fire on their first record, ‘Funeral.’ I loved that record, and it was a record I was listening to while I wrote ‘Where the Wild Things Are.’ Those songs – especially ‘Wake Up’ and ‘Neighbourhood’ – there’s a lot of that record that’s about childhood.

My mum would play Stevie Wonder around the house, and I remember just loving the songs and feeling so blown away by how much was going on.

The words of the songs speak for themselves.

When I trained with the Japanese team, there we’d be singing Oasis songs at the top of our voices at the top of the jumps. People thought we were daft.

Singing your own songs is all about individual expression.

If I can’t sing them myself, there’s nothing better than writing songs for other people and watching them be performed. It’s kind of more thrilling than doing it yourself.

When I write music, it’s very strange: maybe it’s normal, but I see things in songs in different colors.

If you break down most rock songs and look at the lyrics on a piece of paper, it’s all about melody. It’s all about presentation. And a lot of bands are really great, but you can’t understand a word of what they say.

I’d like just to be remembered as a guy that came along and did his music, did his best and showed up on time, clean and ready to do the job, wrote a few songs, and had a hell of a time.

Sometimes I don’t go into the studio for quite a while because I haven’t found enough good songs. They have to have a certain caliber and connect with me because I’m going to be playing them for the rest of my life. I start off with a circle of friends whose songs I love anyway.

I grew up in the entertainment industry, and I think being around that gave me a different perspective on people and what’s real and what’s fake. I think about that a lot, and it comes out in my songs.

The Bowery was a place that would let us do original songs – not just covers – but we would have to work for tips, so we learned how to work an audience. In order to keep our jobs, we had to keep people happy, so that meant playing the latest Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top or Merle Haggard.

Love songs are the most complex to write because everyone knows about it.

I don’t play the traditional Charlie Parker songs. But I do improvise and I do create with my instrument, and that to me is jazz. But there are people who use the word ‘jazz’ only in a traditional sense, and they would be offended by that, and that’s fine.

My songs are like my children – I expect them to support me when I’m old.

You know, Tupac would go into the studio and make like six or seven songs in one day. That’s how he operated. He was real quick with his pen.

It’s challenging to open for someone: You’ve got to prep the audience, get them in the mood, and get their attention if they don’t know you. You’re going to show them what songs you’ve got. You’ve got to leave your mark.

I write most of my songs when I’m in a bad mood.

I say, ‘Yeah, Taylor Swift.’ I think she is a smart, beautiful girl. I think she’s making all the right moves. She’s got a good head on her shoulders. She’s surrounded with wonderful people. Her songs are great. She keeps herself anchored. She knows who she is, and she’s living and standing by that.

If I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often.

I love grooves and dance music, but I like the feeling behind songs too.

I love to play guitar. I’ve been writing my own songs on the axe since I was nine years old. I suck at leads.

I sing songs that I have lived or I write them because I have lived them. I think the believability factor is key.

As a political weapon, it has helped me for 30 years defend the rights of American blacks and third-world people all over the world, to defend them with protest songs. To move the audience to make them conscious of what has been done to my people around the world.

Sometimes my songs wander off a bit and are not always coherent.

I guess all songs is folk songs. I never heard no horse sing ’em.

I’ve got songs that’ll make a gangster cry.

I was trying to make my name just Artist in the beginning, but it was weird at first, because I wasn’t an R&B singer or nothing. Not an R&B singer. I didn’t do no melodic songs, none of that yet.

I would never put my songs in a commercial.

When songs make me wanna throw up, it makes me ashamed to even be in the same genre as those songs.

I do disagree with the way videos of my songs have been made. ‘Afreen Afreen’ is a very powerful song; it did not require such a video. The emphasis should be on the song. Again, I have told my recording company, and in the future, they will screen the video only after my approval.