Explore Quotes on Song

The best way to write a song is to think of something else and then the song kind of creeps in.

Don't get stuck in a rut. If you started yesterday's practice playing arpeggios, start today's with scales. Also, try to make a song out of what you're practicing to help break the tedium.

When my song came on the radio for the first time, that was one of the heaviest things I remember.

I think it's kind of difficult to write a good Christmas song because you have a narrow framework of references that you have to work within, and at the same time you want to do something that's personally original and hopefully somewhat unique.

I don't listen to music. I very rarely listen to music. I only listen for information. I listen when a friend sends me a song or a new record.

Everything I see and hear... I will take ideas from anyplace, anywhere, anytime, and life has become a song to me. I'm always looking for a song.

'Crumbling' Down' is a very political song that I wrote with my childhood friend George Green. Reagan was president - he was deregulating everything, and the walls were crumbling down on the poor.

I was one of those guys, you know, playing and singing, and there was no reason for me to write a song, because there were so many beautiful songs out. And Bob Dylan was always the ultimate songwriter, and nobody could ever write a song as good as him, and nobody ever has written a song as good as him.

'Jack & Diane' was originally about race. I was playing nightclubs, and I was seeing new American couples, mixed-race couples. I thought it was cool. The song was my effort to make a song about that, but of course the record-company guy didn't like it.

All I want a song to do is just to kind of present an idea.

When I was 16 or 17, anyone could have had me if they sang the right song and recruited me in the right way. Which is why I've always had a sneaking understanding for people who took the wrong route. That doesn't mean to say I took it or even contemplated it myself.

I just get an idea and then all of a sudden I've got a song.

Well, what's interesting, I try not to think about the radio when I'm writing a song. I want people to love the song, and that means it might not be exactly thinking about the radio, but it's thinking about your audience and saying, 'I want people to like this song after it's done.'

To have a song work for the movie, it can't just be written apart and shoved in. It's got to come out of the action. It's got to talk about the characters, not the story: it has to augment that action.

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.

If a musician wants to be an actor, everyone thinks that's pretty cool. But if an actor wants to play a song, even if they've been doing it for 40 years, that's bad news.

I like work, I like song writing, and I like the history of Atlantic Records. They've sat in the studio with so many artists - like Ray Charles, for example - and created something amazing. As a label, they seem to be great at growing bands rather than telling you how to do it.

'Feel It Still' came around pretty much as organically as you can put a song together.

I just feel like this guy who's visiting the music business over the weekend. Every time I write a song, I feel like it's never going to happen again.

I just like to switch things up all the time. Like when it comes to singing, I try to find a different character for each song.

I write songs because I have to write them, and if I didn't I'd be doing some other kind of music that didn't require a song.