Explore Quotes on Song

Both Springsteen and Michael Jackson, who had these huge productions, could always scale them back down to just a song and a melody. All of that influences me. I also try to be a fictional writer, and sometimes I get close, but the things that resonate the most with me - and with everyone else - is what's real.

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.

Lord knows, I love a brainless pop song.

Here's the thing: My hobby is to DJ. I just love music, so I can hear the beginning of a beat, the beginning of a melody, and think of the words, think of the name of the song, think of the hook, and just go there.

There's only so many things to sing about, so what's going to make a song appeal to you more than someone else's is just a unique way of saying the same thing.

Songs are not better just because they're emotionally honest. To write a song well, you have to put some work into it and grind it out.

I'm not somebody who carries around a notepad and writes songs all day long. I don't imagine everything I think of is worth being in a song. So I tend to collect notes, and I set time aside to go to work and write songs.

We've all had that experience where we hear a song that we've liked for many years, and we finally hear what the writer tells us what it's about, and you're often disappointed.

When you're in the middle of writing a song, you can come up with this whole web of stuff only you know how to get through. That's very entertaining for me to do that.

Every song you write you think is the last one you're going to manage. You put everything you've got into the song, and you've twisted it and pulled at it and dug in and found a way to complete it. To get another one is the trick.

The last name is pronounced Jill-en-hall. It's spelled with two l's, two a's. We have a song in my family; G-Y-Double L - EN - HAAL spells Gyllenhaal. It's a Swedish name. It's a family heirloom set to music.

'It's Everyday Bro' started with me talking about the things I do on a day-to-day basis. From there, the creativity was unleashed, and the song was the result.

If a song is longer than three and a half minutes, it'll need something to keep you entertained.

I believe a No. 1 song starts happening when it's believable and validating.

You can pick songs that sound like hits, but if it's not something that somebody wants to tell their friends, 'Hey man, have you heard this song?' then I don't think it's worth it. The only way to get your music out there, is for someone to tell their friends about it.

I've always been a fan of Five For Fighting's song 'Superman.' It's like an anthem, and I love it.

The song 'Why' was always in my head. Three or four years, I always wanted to do a song called 'Why' and just ask wild questions. And I guess, strategically, after the 9/11 thing, it worked.

With me having this raspy voice, people always asked when I was going to sing on a song. When I was going at it with 50, people were saying I don't sing on my own hooks. That always stuck in my head and people always told me I had to use my own voice not just to rap.

I always wanted to make a song like 'Why' even before my second album. It was just something I always had in my mind. But when I got the beat from Havoc, it was like the perfect beat, I felt... I wanted to get some questions I thought everybody... felt like 'why?' to.

'Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,' if you go through the lyrics, is such a haunting melody, and the words are, for a pop song, pretty deep and dark.

You'd walk by MTV an hour ago, and you come back, and it seemed like the same song was playing. I want to stay as far away from that as I can in my band.