“Paul McCartney may be the closest thing our generation has produced to Franz Schubert -- a master of melody, writing tunes anyone can sing, songs that seem to have been there all along. Most people don't realize that "Ave Maria" and "Serenade" were written by Schubert (or that his "Moment Musical in F" so resembles "Martha My Dear"). McCartney writes with similar universality. His "Yesterday" has been recorded by more musicians than any other song in history. Its stepwise melody is deceptively complex, drawing from outside the diatonic scale so smoothly that anyone can sing it, yet few theorists can agree on exactly what it is that McCartney has done.”

— Daniel Levitin

The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/31/AR2007053101848.html (June 1, 2007)

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Daniel Levitin 76

American psychologist 1957

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“There is a limited supply of excellent songs, but I am not the only one. Paul McCartney, one of the best songwriters of all time, has only produced manure for the past 25 years. Rock musicians over 30 only produce unimportant material.”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Noel Gallagher cited in ‘Sir Paul has just written manure for years’ http://www.scotsman.com/what-s-on/music/sir-paul-has-just-written-manure-for-years-1-611044 at scotsman.com, originally published 2 July 2002 (see here http://www.scotsman.com/what-s-on/music/sir-paul-has-just-written-manure-for-years-1-611044)
Controversy with other artists

“God sings, we hum along, and there are many melodies, but it's all one song - one same, wonderful, human song.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: Have a Little Faith: a True Story

“Roger: It depends.. A song is melody and lyrics and the music, you know? For our band, Vinnie the drummer writes like 95% of the lyrics so he's the main songwriter if you want to look at it that way. But he doesn't write any chords or melodies or any of that kind of stuff. So, it's kind of hard to split up or dissect a song that way, you know? On this record.. it's pretty fair, you know, pretty even between myself and Chris.. Actually JR and I. JR's the first song writer outside of Chris, Vinnie or I to like actually sit down and reword a song for the record. So he's becoming like a bigger part of that sort of thing. I don't know. It just depends. I definitely write a bunch of them!”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

laughs

“If my serenade of song and story should serve as a pillow for some composer's head, as yet perhaps unborn, to dream and build on our fond melodies in his tomorrow, I have not labored in vain.”

W. C. Handy (1873–1958) American blues composer and musician

Profiles In Black http://www.theblackmarket.com/ProfilesInBlack/WCHandy.htm

“I write all my own songs and they are just simple melodies with a lot of lyrics. They usually have to do with current events and what is going on in the news. You can call them topical songs, songs about the news, and then developing into more philosophical songs later.”

Phil Ochs (1940–1976) American protest singer and songwriter

Testimony http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Chicago7/ochs.html at the Chicago Seven trial (11 December 1969)

“In India, the measure of a singer's freedom is in his own creative personality. He can sing the composer's song as his own, if he has the power creatively to assert himself in his interpretation of the general law of the melody which he is given to interpret.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Interview with Einstein (1930)

“With Moondance, I wrote the melody first. I played the melody on a soprano sax and I knew I had a song so I wrote lyrics to go with the melody. That's the way I wrote that one. I don't really have any words to particularly describe the song, sophisticated is probably the word I'm looking for. For me, Moondance is a sophisticated song. Frank Sinatra wouldn't be out of place singing that.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

As quoted in Celtic Crossroads: The Art of Van Morrison (1997) by Brian Hinton, p. 106

“Music has taken a bad turn; these young people have no idea how to write a melody, they just give us shavings”

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) German composer, conductor

21 June 1880
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (1978)
Context: Music has taken a bad turn; these young people have no idea how to write a melody, they just give us shavings, which they dress up to look like a lion's mane and shake at us... It's as if they avoid melodies, for fear of having perhaps stolen them from someone else.

“Mozart's melodies, Beethoven's symphonies, Schubert's songs, acts two and three of Tristan are symbols in which are revealed the most profound spiritual truths. They are not "invented", but are "given in their dreams"to those privileged to receive them. Whence they come no one knows, not even their creator, the unconscious mouthpiece of the demiurge.”

Richard Strauss (1864–1949) German composer and orchestra director

Recollections and Reflections

“A good song is a good song, and if I'm lucky enough to write it, well….! I get more kick out of writing than I do singing. I reckon I've written a thousand songs and had over 300 published.”

Hank Williams (1923–1953) American country music singer

Gleason, Ralph (06-28-1969). 1952 interview of Hank Williams. Rolling Stone.

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