Quotes on Songs

I do want people to know that the songs that I wrote when I was with women were really about women. And the songs that I've written since have been fairly obvious about men.

I don't write songs about a specific, elusive thing. I write about love, and everyone knows what it is like to have your heart broken.

When I first started, my songs were the politics of anger. As I got older and hopefully wiser, I wanted to be part of the politics of answers.

That's the thing: There are so many art songs in jazz. It's a much more rich experience for the singer than people think.

I found it easier to make up songs than to learn other people's songs.

I'm a method actress in my songs, which is why it's hard to sing them.

Trans people should be able to fall in love and sing love songs too, and have that be just as valid. You turn on the radio and every other song is some guy singing about some girl who broke his heart, or vice versa. And there's not a lot of trans representation with that.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

If somebody wants to sing my songs after I'm gone, nobody will be happier than my dead body.

Music was never just a hobby for me. I'd pick up a guitar every day to work on whatever I was writing at the time. I would put my ideas in songs the way some people might put them in diaries or journals.

What's so powerful about the Psalms are, as well as they're being gospel and songs of praise, they are also the blues.

I realized at a young age that sequence in an album is almost as important as the songs that are on the album.

I had a vague idea of the song's impact in the '60s, but that was tempered by the hate mail and threats I was receiving. It was only about ten years ago, when I finally put it back in my show because so many people were asking for it, that I understood 'Society's Child' real impact.

The radio has so many rules, and songs don't. You don't necessarily write to a rule book unless you're, like, just doing it professionally, which has never been my thing.

From dancing around to Michael Jackson and Madonna as a kid to having my mind blown by the first sounds of punk and indie rock, to getting to play my own songs and have people listen, music is what got me through.

A lot of people don't realise I came out of the Smoky Mountains with a load of songs.

I still have my first paycheck. It was just, I think, a dollar or two that I got when I started as a songwriter with BMI, and I had some songs there that I had through the company, and in the mail I got this big old check for, like, a dollar and a half or something. Somebody had recorded one of my songs.

Writing songs used to be my hobby; it used to be my getaway.

I've never done anything but what I wanted to do with my life. I don't think too many people can say that. I wrote the songs I wanted to write, for me. I had no idea that 'American Pie' would relate to anybody.

In America, at the beginning of talkies, they pulled Fred Astaire from the theaters and put him on the screen and had all of these great composers write songs for him. They call it the Great American Songbook; I call it the Fred Astaire Songbook because they were written for him.

I think the problem with people, as they start to mature, they say, 'Rap is a young man's game,' and they keep trying to make young songs. But you don't know the slang - it changes every day, and you're just visiting. So you're trying to be something you're not, and the audience doesn't buy into that.