I sang the ‘Sunday Night Football’ theme song two years in a row – my first part in American culture, although I still don’t know anything about American football.
Sometimes the worst thing that can happen is, ‘Oh, I’m on stage playing a song,’ because you’re daydreaming about something else, you’re on autopilot. You have to fight that.
‘Junglee’ was a magical journey. When you see the visuals of the film or the song ‘Fakeera,’ it reminds you of Dehradun.
Crossfire’s done very well. I knew it was a great song, but I didn’t know it would be so big.
Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I’ll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I’ve written a whole song in an hour.
The ‘Raining Gold’ video naturally took on one of the messages behind the song, which is you should never assume anything about someone or a situation just because it looks a certain way on the surface.
Three chords and the truth – that’s what a country song is.
Sometimes when I get home after a long day, I’ll turn on music – I love Latin, disco, and pop – and do my own workout, even if it’s a short one. Know a good song to work out to? ‘I Will Survive.’
I wrote my first song at 12 and remember someone asking, ‘What were you going through at 12 that you could write about?’ I get what you’re saying, but 11, 12, 13 were the hardest years of my life. You learn everything. You learn how horrible things feel.
IU and I hosted a music program together, and she had told me that she would be writing a song for me. My fans call me ‘Peach,’ so when her new song came out, I called to ask her about it, and she confirmed that the song was for me.
The Blues are the true facts of life expressed in words and song, inspiration, feeling, and understanding.
I want every song on it to be a hit.
Nashville, there’s people that are ten times more talented than me, ten times better singer than me, song writer than me, but for some reason you get the ball, and now – and now you run with it. And you do the best you can.
All men that date me have to know that their name may end up in a pop song.
My mother and father come from that post-Depression, middle-of-World-War -I kind of thinking that says, ‘Find a practical job. You know what I mean, Mr. Big Shot? So, you can sing a song …’
Words are important to me, but a song can work and function and be a good song with words that are fairly standard. But really great lyrics can’t rescue a dog of a song.
I never produce a song, whether writing it or making a beat, and give it a wack visual or wack performance. I’m like a trifecta.
Yeah. I’m amateurish. I can play enough to write a song, or strum on a little guitar to write out a song. But, I don’t play well at all. I wouldn’t even attempt for a second to play in public.
One day a whole damn song fell into place in my head.
I like books that aren’t just lovely but that have memories in themselves. Just like playing a song, picking up a book again that has memories can take you back to another place or another time.
I usually work on a film soundtrack for two years, turning in a song every few months, and that keeps my creative energy high, because I’m constantly rotating projects. The trick is to make sure I don’t work too hard and get exhausted.
When I was 13, I posted a video of myself singing a Bruno Mars song on YouTube.
I don’t know if any genuine, meaningful change could ever result from a song. It’s kind of like throwing peanuts at a gorilla.
There is a song called ‘I Refuse,’ and I get a bit scolding, I suppose, in a way. But it all comes back to elements of hope, and in the case of that song, it’s basically, ‘Okay, you’re trying to suck me into this world of negativity, and I’m not going to go there. I’m going to live my own life.’
I’ve always been jealous of rappers, because they can fit so many words into a song and tell a story with lots of details. But when you’re a songwriter, you have to fit the words to the melody and you can’t fit as much in. I’m just a big fan of storytelling.
When I heard ‘Moon River’, at first I thought it was just a nice song, but then I started paying attention to the words and realized this song was about Huck Finn. I just love the words, that it’s kind of you and me against the world, and we’re going to make it together.
‘Pretty Lady’ is the conversation piece where you just need to compliment your lady. If you are in a club setting, and you just been eyeing a beautiful woman, this song came from me trying to compliment women and them turning their face up at me.
Emily Dickinson never developed. She remained loyal to her persona and to that same little metrical song that stood her in such good stead. She is a striking example of complexity within a simple package. Her rhymes are like bows on the package.
‘Firecracker’ was such a fun song to write and to perform.
The main objective in any song, the songs that I write, has always been that it reflect the way I feel, that it touch me when I’m finished with it, that it moves me, that it can take me along with it and involve me in what its saying.
People knew that I was a disciple of Sivaji Ganesan and wanted to honour his memory. In fact, I did a movie and play adaptation of ‘Vietnam Veedu,’ and used the song ‘Un Kannil Neer Vadinthal’ as part of the play.
It was that famous joke: What’s the last thing the drummer said before he got kicked out of the band? ‘Hey, I wrote a song.’
Then all of a sudden, Quentin Tarantino comes along and puts a song from 40 years ago in one of his films and they’ve suddenly discovered you. That was a real gift that Quentin gave me.
I have perfected the art of the mean song to make me feel like I have a backbone.
You know that genie where you get three wishes? One that has never changed for me is I would like to sing, and move an audience through song.
‘Fool If You Think It’s Over’ is still the only song I’ve ever not played guitar on, but it just so happened to be my first single, and it just so happened to be a massive hit. It was in the U.S. Top 10 for seven weeks.
During the 2012 Olympics, I decided to put on some cheesy pop because I knew Ellen White liked it. The first song was ‘Reach for the Stars’ by S Club 7, and before I knew it, everyone was singing it – suddenly it was our song.
When you hear people scream because they’re about to hear a song that has been a part of their life, there’s nothing like that.
When I first went on the ‘Johnny Carson show’, the band did not want me, and Carson did not want me. If the audience had not received ‘Tiptoe’ so overwhelmingly, I do not believe Carson would have let me come over to be on the panel after the song.
It took me 29 years to finish that song. That’s a typical Jardine move.
Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!
To me, it’s all about the song. Songs are what make me excited. You hear a great song and you want to record it or get a great idea and you want to write it.
The purpose of my songwriting is to put the things I have been through in a song in order to help others who may be in a similar situation.
‘Faucet Failure’ was my favorite because I just had fun with it, and it was just 10 minutes, and I didn’t overthink anything, and I wanted to just have fun with the song.
Salman Khan gave me a break, and that proved to be a boon. By the grace of God, my first song was a blockbuster.
I just try to get inside the song and imagine what comes next.
‘My Name Is’ by Eminem was a song that changed my life.
Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.
What I love about ‘Culpables’ is that it’s a completely clean song. We do not speak ill of women or men. The song is clean. It does not have bad words.
Producers like to record all the drums first, then they do the bass, then all the guitars, so you’re constantly moving from one song to another.
I really get inspired by songs. Like, if I hear a thug ‘Want to kill ya’ song, I’m ready to go out and get crazy. Or if you hear this really sexual, sensual slow song, I want to go have sex. I’m very animalistic when it comes to stuff like that. Very basic emotions.
Each song has its own life.
When I was a little girl, my dream was just to hear my song on the radio. It was very fascinating to me, and I was like, ‘How do I do that?’ Now it’s like, ‘Oh my God, my song is on the radio!’
The song that starts with ‘Neene Rama, neene Shama, neene Allah, neene Yesu,’ is very profound. It exhorts people to stop looking for god everywhere and to instead look within themselves.
I actually admire the Indian artiste ‘Lost Stories.’ He made a remix of my song ‘Faded.’ That is really good and cool because it actually represented Indian music. I just loved the song; it so unique.
‘Time after Time’ is one of the best pop songs ever written, in my opinion. It’s an incredible, beautiful, timeless song.
You always will be singing a song or humming a line or a melody.
I played the coronet first, and then I upgraded to the trumpet. First song I learned on there was ‘Hot Cross Buns.’
As an independent artist, there can be nothing better than the fact that your song will be played and heard in different corners of the world.
Not every song of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s was a single, but songs like ‘Tuesday’s Gone’ and ‘The Ballad of Curtis Loew’ and ‘Made in the Shade,’ ‘I Need You,’ people learned those songs from the radio because radio played albums, not just singles.
