Quotes about lyrics
page 2

“Enya is more than just me. It's also Nicky, who arranges my melodies, and his wife Roma, who writes the lyrics. They believed in my music from day one”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

You interview (2006)

Music

“well well boss there is
something to be said
for the lyric and imperial
attitude
believe that everything is for
you until you discover
that you are for it
sing your faith in what you
get to eat right up to the
minute you are eaten
for you are going
to be eaten”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

the robin and the worm

Faith, Singing

“I started writing instrumentals but Roma pointed out they were very visual, so she started writing lyrics.. and Nicky had this idea of creating a wall of sound and started multi-tracking my voice.”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

The Times Magazine interview (2005)

Idea

“I hand him a lyric and get out of his way.”

Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960) American librettist, theatrical producer, and (usually uncredited) theatre director of musicals

On his partnership with Richard Rodgers, widely quoted, for example in Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II, 2007-12-12, 2004 http://c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/remarkable_columbians/rodgers_hammerstein.html,

Way

“I'm always trying to understand myself, but it's like there's a point in the centre of the room, and there's a hundred windows to look at the same point from. All I can do is give you different angles on the same thing. God, you know, if I could find one conclusive thing in anything I would probably have something to put an anchor down on. But I can't, and I haven't met anyone that can. You can pick out anything you like in my lyrics, I don't seek to be cryptic. I love words for the sake of words, for me they're kind of free standing, and they don't really need to be explained. I think every word has its own character and colour and picture and the result you get with lyrics just depends how you put them together.”

KatieJane Garside (1968) English singer

On writing, Repeat https://web.archive.org/web/20031101121528/https://www.repeatfanzine.co.uk/interviews/queen%20adreena.htm fanzine (2003)

Love, God, Understanding, Thinking

“Joseph Brodsky, writing about Mandelstam, called lyricism the ethics of language. Larkin's wit is the ethics of his poetry. It brings his distress under our control. It makes his personal unhappiness our universal exultation. Armed with his wit, he faces the worst on our behalf, and brings it to order.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'On Larkin's Wit'
Essays and reviews, From the Land of Shadows (1982)

Universe, Personality

“One of the biggest box-office successes in movie history — probably because for young audiences it's like getting a box of Cracker Jack that is all prizes. Written and directed by George Lucas, the film is enjoyable in its own terms, but it's exhausting, too: like taking a pack of kids to the circus. There's no breather in the picture, no lyricism; the only attempt at beauty is in the image of a double sunset. The loudness, the smash-and-grab editing, and the relentless pacing drive every idea out of your head, and even if you've been entertained, you may feel cheated of some dimension — a sense of wonder, perhaps. It's an epic without a dream.”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

"Star Wars," p. 714.
5001 Nights at the Movies (1982)

Beauty, Dreams, Feeling, History

“There's a track called 'Why' that I really like. It's in the rock style again and I'm very satisfied with the lyrics. I wrote it after looking at a painting which had lots of things going on at the same time. Another song I really like is called 'I Still Love', because it's a little bit harder than the other ones.”

Basshunter (1984) Swedish singer, record producer and DJ

DigitalSpy interview with Alex Fletcher (7 September 2009) http://www.digitalspy.com/music/interviews/a175727/basshunter/ Bass Generation

Love, Time, Painting

“We covered "Hey Jude." My father panicked, misunderstanding the lyrics and thinking our lead singer was belting out "Hey, Jew" to a roomful of Holocaust survivors.”

Ben Stiller (1965) actor, Comedian, director, writer

As quoted in The Best Book of Useless Information Ever (2007) by Noel Botham, p. 19

Thinking

“Because his living presence became such an uncommonly global one, that ministry [Jackson’s individual spiritual concerns] reflected universal ecumenical principles dressed up in ultra-modern dance grooves, love songs to nature, lyrical eulogies in the form of musical elegies, and sermons sung with passionate intensity and suffering eloquence.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(from Work and Soul in Michael Jackson’s This Is It).
From Articles, Essays, and Poems, On Michael Jackson

Love, Music, Nature, Suffering

“Once I have lyrics, being able to shape them around a song is nothing new for me, I've been doing that for 25 years. The soul searching part of it, the spontaneous part of it, that was, and remains, a really terrific process.”

Geddy Lee (1953) vocalist, bassist, and keyboardist for the Canadian rock group Rush

Global Bass interview (2000)

Soul, Search, Parting

“Unfortunately, much of the post-Homeric poetry—called lyric poetry because it was usually sung to a lyre—was lost in the upheavals of subsequent centuries, especially in the depredations and decay that would follow the barbarian incursions into the Greco-Roman world in the fifth century A. D.”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch. III The Poet: How to Party

World

“It no longer matters what song he is singing, or who wrote the words — they are all his words, his sentiments, they are chapters from the lyrical novel of his life.”

Gay Talese (1932) American writer

"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" (Esquire, April 1966)

Life, Singing

“English translation of Spanish lyric in Cuba Libre”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

2007, 2008

“My family was musical on both sides. My father's family had a famous flautist and a classical pianist. My mother won a contest to be Shirley Temple's double -- she was the diva of the family. At 8, I learned how to play guitar. I used to play songs from the '20s, '30s and '40s in the kitchen for my grandmother. After my dad was a prisoner in Cuba for two years, we moved to Texas, where I was the only Hispanic in the class. I remember hearing "Ferry Cross the Mersey," by Gerry and the Pacemakers, and thinking, "that had bongos and maracas -- that was really a bolero." And the Beathles song, "Till There was You"… also Latin. I wrote poetry, which got me into lyrics. Stevie Wonder, Carole King, Elton John pulled me into pop. I started singing with a band -- just for fun -- when I 17. And pretty soon, I was thinking I could sing pop in English as well as Spanish. And as you know, we did that and we broke through. But we waited until 1993 to release "Mi Tierra" -- we wanted my fans to be rady for the traditional Cuban music. And then we kept adding: more Cuban influences, more Latin America. And, underneath it all, African drums and rhythm. The concept of "90 Millas" starts with the songs of the '40s. We invited 25 masters of Latin music -- giants on the cutting edge of creativity, musicians who pushed it out to the world, young Cuban artists and Puerto Ricans who are huge -- so we could blend cultures and generations. So it is like coming home, but not exactly to the old Cuba.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

www.huffingtonpost.com (September 7, 2007)
2007, 2008

World, Family, Music, Home

“I'm here touring with my latest record, Bass Generation. I produced and wrote all the songs, and I was really focused and wrote all the lyrics from the bottom of my heart. Each song is different, but if people listen they'll know it's a Basshunter song.”

Basshunter (1984) Swedish singer, record producer and DJ

Colorado Daily interview with Wendy Kale (5 April 2010) http://www.coloradodaily.com/music-news/ci_15016085 Bass Generation

People, Heart

“Once we reject lyricism, to blacken a page becomes an ordeal: what's the use of writing in order to say exactly what we had to say?”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“As the writer of the lyric of the song ‘God’s Country’, I am outraged by the suggestion that somehow I am connected with, believe in, or am sympathetic with Communist or totalitarian philosophy.”

Yip Harburg (1896–1981) American song lyricist

Letter to the House Un-American Activities Committee (1950), as quoted in "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", by Scott Jacobs, in The Week Behind (23 September 2009) http://www.theweekbehind.com/2009/09/23/somewhere-over-the-rainbow/

God, Country

“Well, fortunately, I am bilingual and I have really two cultures. So when you have that to draw on, you are able to write from one extreme to the other, or anywhere in-between. If you look at my discography, you will notice that one of my favorite albums is "Gloria!", which is totally dance-oriented, with very sensual lyrics; and then there's "Mi Tierra which is totoally roots-oriented and really promoted our culture worldwide through music, and that's important for me and also for people of Cuba to know that even though we were in exile and I grew up in the States, our culture and our music are very much a part of my life.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

answer to the question "How do you reinvent yourself through the years?"
2007, 2008

Life, People, Music, Dance

“I'm frustrated by what I hear. Maybe it's not meant for me. Personally, I'm way too bright for a lot of the hip-hop lyrics to affect. I'm much too smart to think that jewelry or how cool I am is really going to change much about my personality. If you're dumb enough that it entertains you, have a great time. But I am seeking more than that.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Rolling Stone interview (2002)

Way, Thinking, Change, Time

“I've got miracle lyrical capability all in me / With the agility to escape a killer bee colony.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Tonite"
1990s, Infinite (1996)

Bee

“Prokofiev’s playing of lyrical music is especially noteworthy. His phrasing can be exquisitely beautiful in its dynamic molding (second theme of the Andante assaifrom Sonata No. 4; the middle section of Vision fugitive, op. 22, no. 11), and his polyphonic voicing can be clear and expressive”

Boris Berman (1948) Russian/American musician

Sonatina pastorale, op. 59, no. 3
Prokofiev’s piano sonatas : a guide for the listener and the performer (2008), Prokofiev the pianist

Beauty, Music

“We decided that my character had a pre-show tradition, like a ritual, which was to sing the lyrics to "I Want You To Want Me" by Cheap Trick into the mirror. Because, more than anything else, as much as he says he's bringing the truth, he just wants to be liked.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

Parade web exclusive interview http://www.parade.com/celebrity/articles/070923-stephen-colbert.html (19 September 2007)

Truth, Singing

“I look at the lyrics, and if that's something honest for me at the moment, I'll sing it.”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

On how she chooses her songs, in "ysabellabravetalk #2" (12 March 2007) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYtBFV0z6dk

Singing

“The dichotomies which are the signature of their work – the esoteric and the exoteric, the civil and the managerial, the friend and the foe, the lawful and the legislative – are so many cordons. Their function is to hold popular sovereignty at bay. The different gifts displayed in this enterprise, whatever view is taken of it, were remarkable. For all his later tendency to textual dressage, Strauss's range and subtlety as a master of the canon of political philosophy had no equal in his generation. Schmitt's moral instability never impaired an extraordinary capacity to fuse conceptual insight and metaphoric imagination in lightning flashes of illumination around the state. Hayek could seem tactically ingenuous, but he fashioned a theoretical synthesis out of his epistemology and economics whose scope and strength has yet to be supplanted. Oakeshott was the literary artist in this gallery. His writing varies considerably in quality, and can be whimsically arch at one moment and curiously crude at another, disconcertingly close to Punch or Cross-Bencher. But at its best, when it moves into high register, it can rise to a lyrical beauty.”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

Source: Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Ch. 1. "The Intransigent Right, Michael Oakeshott, Leo Strauss, Carl Schmitt, Friedrich von Hayek" (1992), p. 27

Law, Beauty, Imagination, Fashion

“Mr. Sandburg possesses a powerful imagination, which plays over and about his realistic themes and constantly ennobles them. …strikes, and factories, and slaughter-houses, and railroad trains, all take on a lyric quality under his touch. …When Carl Sandburg left college, he was no longer an unskilled labourer, working with his hands. He was a thinking man, with a brain charged with ideas and emotions, determined to do his part in bringing about the millennium. For Carl Sandburg… is a revolutionary; he must push the world to where he is convinced it ought to be. …again and again, he deserts the seer's mountain peak for the demagogue's soap-box. …Mr. Sandburg is like a man striving to batter down a jail with balls of brightly coloured glass. …Whether constant preoccupation with disease is a healthy form of literature, whether it acts as a curative, is open to question. But we can surely say that to be curative the disease must be treated unsentimentally and truly. Mr. Sandburg has aimed at doing this, has striven hard to do it. For this, one honours him above his fellows. For this, and the spirit of beauty which pervades his work.”

Amy Lowell (1874–1925) US writer

"Edgar Lee Masters and Carl Sandburg," Tendencies in Modern American Poetry http://books.google.com/books?id=UgZaAAAAMAAJ (1917).

World, Disease, Beauty, Imagination

“There were definitely lyrics and they were very meaningful. I think.”

Beck (1970) American Musician (b.1970)

Rolling Stone magazine, February 2008, on the song .000.000

Thinking

“Where do babies come from? Don't bother asking adults. They lie like pigs. However, diligent independent research and hours of playground consultation have yielded fruitful, if tentative, results. There are several theories. Near as we can figure out, it has something to do with acting ridiculous in the dark. We believe it is similar to dogs when they act peculiar and ride each other. This is called "making love". Careful study of popular song lyrics, advertising catch-lines, TV sitcoms, movies, and T-Shirt inscriptions offers us significant clues as to its nature. Apparently it makes grown-ups insipid and insane. Some graffiti was once observed that said "sex is good."”

Matt Groening (1954) American cartoonist

All available evidence, however, points to the contrary.
Bongo in Childhood Is Hell (1988)

Love, Lie, Making love, Dogs

“For five hundred years after Walther's death – until Goethe – no German lyric poet was his equal.”

Walther von der Vogelweide (1170–1230) Middle High German lyric poet

Frederick Goldin German and Italian Lyrics of the Middle Ages (New York: Anchor, 1973) p. 101.
Praise

Death

“No matter how many times people try to pick my lyrics apart … nobody will really understand what these songs truly mean to me because I would rather not get into it.”

Bert McCracken (1982) American musician

Jonathon Moran, Lawrie Masterson, Brett Debritz (May 13, 2007) "Inside Entertainment", Sunday Mail, News Limited, p. 2.

People, Understanding, Time

“I won't get over that in a hurry: my least favourite atrophied Hazel McWitch lookalike in the world, singing "I just want to make love to you", right there on primetime telly. She has to be the only person on Earth who can take a lyric like that and make it seem like a blood-curdling threat without changing any of the words.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

On Gillian McKeith singing
[Screen Burn, http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguide/columnists/story/0,,1788457,00.html, The Guardian, 3 June 2006, 2007-08-19]
Guardian columns, Screen Burn

Love, World, Making love, Change

“This short book, where joy and sadness are twins, like the ears of Platero, was written for … I have no idea for whom! … For whomever lyric poets write …”

Juan Ramón Jimenéz (1881–1958) Spanish poet

"A NOTE TO THOSE GROWNUPS WHO MIGHT READ THIS BOOK TO CHILDREN", as translated by Antonio T. de Nicolas (1985), p. xv.
‪Platero and I‬ (1917)

Books, Sadness, Idea, Joy

“I write the lyrics first, then the music," he says. "I don't want to try to be someone I'm not, because people easily see through that. So I only write about my own experiences, things I know and enjoy. Like my pets. I can't write about lovey or coupley things.”

Joseph McManners (1992) British singer, actor

In regards to his own music:

People, Music

“Yes. I battle with that all the time. "Let Me Drown" is probably one of the most disturbing songs I've ever written. Usually, if I write lyrics that are bleak or dark, it usually makes me feel better. That one didn't. It made me question whether it was a song that was all right to play. Should we even do this? It was so negative. But that's the only one I can think of that's like that. Otherwise, it's like watching a horror movie: It makes you feel better after feeling worse.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

When asked if he considers himself to be a pessimist and a cynic ** Interview with Request Magazine, October 1994 http://web.stargate.net/soundgarden/articles/request_10-94.shtml, Soundgarden Era

Feeling, Question, Thinking, Time

“We have all shared the treat of your lovely Lyrics, your tuneful compositions, your friendly presentation and your spontaneous sense of sharing with your followers, your treasury of talent. Keep going, keep growing, keep glowing.”

Vernon Corea (1927–2002) The legendary broadcaster – a pioneer with Radio Ceylon/Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation and the BBC.

'Remembering Clarence,' in the Sunday Times newspaper, Sri Lanka http://sundaytimes.lk/971221/plus8.html Vernon Corea on Sri Lanka's King of Pop, Clarence Wijewardena, introducing a Lotus LP with Clarence's top hits.

Love, Sense

“Mendelssohn was the greatest child prodigy the history of Western music has ever known. Not even Mozart or Chopin before the age of nineteen could equal the mastery that Mendelssohn already possessed when he was only sixteen. Most astonishing is the nature of Mendelssohn's precocious talent: not only a gift for lyrical melodic lines and delicate, transparent textures, but, above all, a control of large-scale structure unsurpassed by any composer of his generation.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 10 : Mendelssohn and the Invention of Religious Kitsch

Age, Music, History, Nature

“I don’t really remember writing it [The Day I Tried To Live]. I vaguely remember the verse. It was based on a tuning that Ben Shepherd had came up with. Lyrically, it was one of those songs that I thought everyone could connect with. ‘Fell On Black Days’ is maybe a sister song to it. It’s this feeling that could come over anyone, and has probably happened to everyone. ‘Fell On Black Days’ is the feeling of waking up one day and realizing you’re not happy with your life. Nothing happened, there was no emergency, no accident, you don’t know what happened. You were happy, and one day you just aren’t, and you have to try to figure that out.
With ‘The Day I Tried To Live,’ the attitude I was trying to convey was that thing that I think everyone goes through where you wake up in the morning and you just don’t know how you are going to get through the day, and you kind of just talk yourself into it. You may go through different moments of hopelessness and wanting to give up, or wanting to just get back into bed and say f— it, but you convince yourself you’re going to do it again. And maybe this is the last time you’re going to do it, but it’s once more around.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Interview with Entertainment Weekly, June 3, 2014 http://ew.com/article/2014/06/03/soundgarden-superunknown-spoonman-black-hole-sun-stories/, On depression and suicide

Life, Happiness, Feeling, Thinking

“I’m the authentic poet to get lyrical
For you to beat me, it’s gonna take a miracle.”

Big Daddy Kane (1968) American musician

"Ain't No Half Steppin'"
Albums, Long Live the Kane (1988)

“Rapping and my style, we're brothers. If you go round now and ask rappers about Shabba, they know me as well as I know them. It's similar. The only difference is that they're using a funky beat. I'm on a reggae beat. I don't use the amount of lyrics that they use but it's definitely rapping.”

Shabba Ranks (1966) Jamaican dancehall musician

[Rap Attack 2, New York, Serpent's Tail, ISBN 1852422432, 1991, Toop, David]

“There is always this criticism that the lyricism and the poetry and the language and the dialogues of the past, the written word, is not so prevailing now. To some extent, yes. For somebody that has lived through those years and come back, I feel that when I go to concerts and when I go to public events, nobody asks me to recite dialogues from Baghban or Paa (laughs), they say ‘can we have Deewar?’ or ‘Can we have Agneepath?’ or whatever. So I’m assuming, therefore, that there was a lot more strength and value in those dialogues than what we have now. But I think that, in defense of today’s generation, maybe they don’t want it. They don’t like too many words. This generation is very cryptic in the way it communicates, they’ll have just one or two words where we used to use four of five sentences in our time. That attention span has become very short. So they use one or two words, ‘it’s cool’ or ‘you’re rocking’, to describe the whole feeling. That is the style of the younger generation and if this is what they want, we must make films that follow it.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Way, Feeling, Communication, Thinking

“Roger: That is true to a degree; I usually have songs ideas demoed out, and I will pass them off to vinnie, and he will focus on the lyrics. Then we all get together, work out the nuts and bolts of the song, kick around some changes and everyone is involved in the finishing touches. Chris will do the same, bring in a song idea, and we'll all throw in ideas and the songs just evolve. Some songs change very little from the initial conception, (like a new song called "In-dependence Day") and others really go through many arrangement changes/lyric changes,”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

like "Still Life"

Life, Idea, Change, Dependency

“I don’t spend my time perusing message boards to find out what people think about me or if people think my songs are good or if people love that lyric or this or that. I just want to be happy with it myself — and if other people like it, that’s great.”

Ben Gibbard (1976) American singer, songwriter and guitarist

Source: The Meaning Of Life, III

Love, Happiness, People, Thinking

“What is imagination? Psychologists tell us that it is the plastic or creative power of the soul; but materialists confound it with fancy. The radical difference between the two, was however, so thoroughly indicated by Wordsworth, in the preface to his Lyrical Ballads, that it is no longer excusable to interchange the words. Imagination, Pythagoras maintained to be the remembrance of precedent spiritual, mental, and physical states, while fancy is the disorderly production of the material brain.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I, Chapter XI

Soul, Imagination

“I never for a moment considered not doing the show. When I did the show I became very emotional. Some of the lyrics suddenly took on an entirely different meaning. Words like, 'as if we never said goodbye' became more real.”

Elaine Paige (1948) English singer and actress

Regarding Paige's battle with cancer; as quoted in "Elaine's close curtain call" by Rebecca Hardy in The Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/womenfamily.html?in_article_id=301138&in_page_id=1799 (8 May 2004)

“Anyway I be, holding this mic
And I'm restless
Lyrical bars, it comes quick like my first sex
I'm raw, no latex
I aint a slave, I'm a grown man
Fvck the chains and the necklace
Gat bad chicks everywhere, Casablanca
Noah flow, leave you in a state like Bayelsa
I poo in your mouth, you can talk that shyt
Guns like a cinema, it got clips”

Slim Burna (1988) Nigerian singer and record producer

"Real Recognize Real" (track 10)
I'm On Fire (2013)

Sex

“In art progress does not consist in extension, but in the knowledge of limits.
Limitation of means determines style, engenders new form, and give impulses to creation.
Limited means often constitute the charm and force of primitive painting. Extension, on the contrary, leads the arts to decadence.
New means, new subjects.
The subject is not the object; it is a new unity, a lyricism which grows completely from the means.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1908 - 1920, quotes from Artists on Art...(1972), p. 423 - short quotes by Georges Braque on 'Means' - Paris, 1917

Art, Knowledge, Painting

“Interviewer: Everybody's always wondering about the anal retentiveness of the lyrics. Are you guys really into anal sex? Is that really a large part of your life?
Dr. Heathen Scum: Only heterosexual anal sex.”

Steve Broy (1958) American musician

El Duce, The Man, The Myth, The Video (1993) by Reverend Cuntbag

Life, Sex, Guy, Parting

“I don't want to change my music, but I like to play around with my style of music. I've always been a big fan of guitars. The beats are still quite hard and the riffs are still Basshunter, but I wanted to do something special. The lyrics are from a true story as well. It's based on me dating a girl who I thought was the one, but it didn't work out. I woke up one morning and she was doing something in the kitchen and then came through with a cup of coffee for me. I just went, 'Wow! I have to write a song now!”

Basshunter (1984) Swedish singer, record producer and DJ

Bass Generation

Music, Girl, Coffee, Change

“The most important of the beat poets. He was a really true poet with an original voice, probably the most lyrical of those poets.”

Nancy Peters (1936) American writer and publisher

Carol Ness, "Beat Poet Gregory Corso, 70, Dies of Cancer" http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/01/18/MN143830.DTL, San Francisco Chronicle, 2001-01-18. : On Gregory Corso. 2000s

“To me, Pollock is the height of American painting. It's very lyrical. Gorky, who is very passionate, can copy a drawing or take a drawing and copy it exactly as a painting, and Miro can too, it's amazing. Miro can do a drawing to paint and that's another training in a sense. So there's a certain mannerism that comes in both of them [three], and probably everything becomes obvious in time. But I don't have that. The line is illustrated or the colour. I'm sure it has great feeling when they're doing it, but it's more towards defining something. It has a certain clarity because it's a complex thing. I'm a painter and my whole balance is not having to think about things. So all I think about is painting. It's the instinct for the placement where all that happens. I don't have to think about it. So I don't think of composition; I don’t think of colour here and there. Sometimes I alter something after. So all I could think is the rush... I cannot make a picture unless everything is working. It's like a state.”

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) American painter

Source: 2000 - 2011, Cy Twombly, 2000', by David Sylvester (June 2000), p. 179

Feeling, Thinking, Sense, Passion

“It was my agenda — value our faith, value our opportunity to grow and better ourselves as believers and citizens of the world. Singing to and for myself and Muslims, I can be more explicate in my lyrics, drawing directly from Islamic sources. Some of my music is naturally a little bit more sensitive to the opinions and feelings of a broader audience — still Islamic in its essence, but more "holistic" and "organic" than dogmatic.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

Beating the drums of hope and faith (2004)

World, Faith, Music, Feeling

“The term "chorus form" is often used to denote a type of performance - typically in jazz or rhythm 'n' blues, but also sometimes in country music and rock 'n' roll - where a given structural unit is repeated an indefinite number of times. The unit itself may be sectionally elaborate, as in the case of most Tin Pan Alley ballads. It may be twelve-bar blues, or something similar, as in the case of many R&B and rock 'n' roll numbers: here, a three-line AAB lyric, set to a three-phrase melody, is underpinned by a single gestural sweep in the harmony. Occasionally - as in some funk, dub reggae, and hip-hop, for example - it may approach the status of open-ended process.”

Richard Middleton British musicologist

[Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture, ISBN 0631212639, Middleton, Richard, 1999]

Music, Time, Country

“Rhyme is the native condition of lyric verse in English; a rhymeless lyric is a maimed thing.”

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic

Essays and Studies (1875), p. 162.

“Roger: It’s complicated. It kind of has different phases. It will be like Chris [Demakes, guitarist/singer] or I will have a song idea and Vinnie Fiorello [drummer/lyricist] will write lyrics that go with that song idea or Vinnie will just have words that he wrote down and we’ll take that and sort of mold it into a song. I mean it kind of happens in different ways and not everyone is always involved, and sometimes everyone is involved it just depends. There’s no like formula for writing songs at least not in our band. It’s pretty much however it comes apart and falls apart and everything if it feels right it feels right the song is the ultimate guide. Am I being too hippie for you?”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

Way, Feeling, Idea, Dependency

“The Goldberg Variations have always enjoyed a special status, with pianists regarding them as a touchstone of their technical and interpretative powers. At stake are the ability to light up the work from within, a tightrope walk that at the same time describes a vast circle, starting out and returning to a state of apotheotic stillness, the ability to find one’s bearings within a particular concentration of inner and outer complexity, an inner and outer coherence and homogeneity that are all-embracing, the ability, finally, to produce an explosion of inner cells by reduced means and, hence, a particular sensitivity, sinewy tension, and color. The performer must play a game with particular devices, finding solutions to the problems posed by the work not in octave doublings and other playful expedients but in a tightly structured inner rigor and order. What is demanded is a particular form of internalization, of inner and outer lyricism. It is this that makes the Goldberg Variations so unique - and so demanding.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings on Bach

Color, Game, Problem, Light

“The whole of time would not be long enough to tell you of my joy in being married to you. Joy is not measured just by lovely things: the birth of babies, the song of birds heard together, the fun of holidays — the lyrical-love of lying with you. Joy is to be found, too, in the relief after pain shared, in the good news following bad, in the knowledge of greater closeness after disaster.”

Valerie Hobson (1917–1998) actress

David Profumo, "Bringing the House Down", (John Murray, 2006), serialised in the Daily Telegraph, 2 September 2006.
In her 10th Wedding Anniversary letter to her husband John Profumo, written in 1965, two years after the scandal in which his adultery was revealed.

Love, Pain, Lying, Birth

“And then [after the break with Clem [Greenberg], c. 1955] I investigated something which is related to what I talked about in 'Number 14', [of Jackson] Pollock, a side of me that --.... Well, I always use this word and I'm always dissatisfied with it because it's not what I mean at all, but a 'surreal' side. There are two words that are applied to me often that I think are very wrong but there aren't any other words that I can think of at the moment that would --. But one is 'lyrical' and the other is 'surreal'.... I understand what's meant when that word [lyrical] is used in relation to my pictures. And I don't think 'lyric' is a put down but 'lyric' never implies the profound enough.... In other words, 'lyric' can imply light, untouched, angelic, witty. Which are marvelous qualities. But 'light' can also imply simple, which is not a marvelous quality. I don't know..”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

quote about 'surreal' / 'lyrical', after 1955
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

Angels, Understanding, Thinking, Light

“There is also, for instance, a direct symbolic strength in the words 'Say it with flowers', which makes that poem one of the cornerstones of Danish lyricism. It has stood out like a boot of an exceptionally fine fit..”

Asger Jorn (1914–1973) Danish artist

1940 - 1948, Intimate Banalities' (1941)

Flowers

“I had been doing the same kind of stuff for 15-16 years and was desperately seeking a change. But there was no opportunity to reinterpret Indian music. With Roja, we wanted to strike a new note. Mani's amazing visuals, Mutthu's romantic lyrics, relatively unknown singers… we wanted to impart to Roja an international flavour — and we succeeded.”

A. R. Rahman (1966) Indian singer and composer

A R Rahman: In tune with life

Music, Change

“Joy can come alive like that, when random pieces of history and rhythm, pause and expectation, melody and lyric, suddenly rearrange themselves into a pattern that leaps up, back against the wall, and catches your heart.”

Andrea Lewis (writer) Microsoft employee

"Forty Years" Slow Trains Vol.7, Issue 3 (2008)
2000-09

History, Heart, Joy

“There is another earthquake in Kyoto. We appreciate it lyrically. A slide of dust slips along a roof gully. A large tree of golden petals shakes and the petals drift to the floor. Birds fly up. Bottles of clear liquid in a shop quiver on a shelf. The water in a puddle shimmers reflections up a wall. A collection of grey roof tiles shift and -- ever faster -- begin to slide down a roof slope.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Section 56
8 1/2 Women

Bird, Tree, Water, Flying

“The gullible European has only too credulously listened to these temptations, sung to the lyrics of the sirens' song—freedom, justice, brotherhood. The fruits of this subversion are apparent today. They are so nakedly apparent that even the most unbiased person, a person who has no idea of the necessary historical relationships, must become aware that he has placed his confidence in crafty and glib leaders, who intended, not his good, but the destruction of all laboriously acquired civilization, all culture.”

Alfred Rosenberg (1893–1946) German architect and politician

"The Russian-Jewish Revolution", Auf Gut Deutsch magazine, February 1919. Quoted in Roderick Stackelberg, Sally A. Winkle, The Nazi Germany Sourcebook: An Anthology of Texts. Routledge, 2013 (p.50). Also in Barbara Miller Lane and Leila J. Rupp, Nazi Ideology Before 1933: A Documentation. University of Texas Press, 2014 (p.12).

Justice, Confidence, Idea, Freedom

“Regarding my childhood, my grandmother could play by ear and she loved to hear me practice and would say after every piece, "That was pretty. Play that one again." She was a booster. I had two women piano teachers who encouraged me to compose--Margie Murphy and Helen Lipscomb. Helen was also a composer and we used part of my lessons for composition.
When I was in high school, I read John Cage's books and fell in love with the ideas and the excitement of the avant garde. My music, as a result, moved over to what has been called post-Cagian, non-academic. That lasted until about 1979 at which point I changed. My music is now quite lyrical, sometimes called neo-Romantic, and full of cut-ups/collage of newly composed materials. Since 1985 I have been composing mostly swales for various instrumental combinations.
A swale is a meadow or a marsh where there is nourishment and moisture and therefore, a rich diversity of plant life. My work, since 1984, has been made from swatches (of newly composed music, rather than found music) which are reminiscent of this diversity…”

Beth Anderson (1950) American neo-romantic composer

Anderson (1996-2011) "Beth Anderson, Composer, Miscellany From The Dark Past" at beand.com http://www.beand.com/, Last Updated January 3, 2011

Love, Life, Women, Books

“I've always believed that any instrumentalist is basically just an accompanist to the singer and the words. That's born out of being a fan of records before I was a fan of guitar players -- I'm interested in melody, lyrics, and the overall song. I don't like to waste notes, not even one. Who was it that said, "The reason why all those guitar players play so many notes is because they can't find the right one"? I like to put the right note in the right place, and my influences have always been those kinds of players. Keith Richards comes to mind, and I really like Nils Lofgren's soloing, because he's so melodic. I love John Lennon's rhythm playing, and George Harrison was an incredible guitarist.
There's a lot of guitar culture that I don't like at all. I find the traditional idea of the guitar hero to be really irrelevant to the 1990s. I don't think that young people are that impressed with some guy brandishing Spandex trousers and a hideously shaped guitar, playing that kind of masturbatory, egotistical noise. Being a soloist who wants to just display virtuosity is a dated philosophy, and I don't think there's any room for it in pop music. It's the last stand of late-'60s/early-'70s rockism, and it should have gone a long time ago.”

Johnny Marr (1963) musician

from an interview by Joe Gore, Guitar Player(January 1990).

Love, People, Music, Guy

“The genius of Jamie is NOT that she wrote the lyrics on her hands, but that she didn't think we'd notice”

Colleen Fitzpatrick (1972) American singer and actress

Discussing Jamie, a contestant on The Wb's Superstar USA
Attributed

Thinking

“For me the music is a vehicle for my lyrics. It's a chance to get some really good words across.”

Joe Strummer (1952–2002) British musician, singer, actor and songwriter

As quoted in [Coon, Caroline, w:en:Caroline Coon, 1988: The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion, http://homepage.mac.com/blackmarketclash/Bands/Clash/Clash%20gigography/1976%20DATES.html, 2011-09-21, 1977, Hawthorn, London, 0801561299., 79262599, http://web.archive.org/20071026052834/homepage.mac.com/blackmarketclash/Bands/Clash/Clash%20gigography/1976%20DATES.html, 2007-10-26]

Music, Chance

“I can't remember those words (Lyrics) even when we were on tour.”

Phil Collins (1951) English musician, songwriter and actor

From "Telling Stories", when Collins was asked to sing "Home By The Sea", a song by the band Genesis from the album "Genesis"

“One man's vulgarity is another's lyric.”

John Marshall Harlan II (1899–1971) American judge and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (1899-1971)

Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971).

“On the project The Celts I was asked to … to write a song. And, at the time I was … arranging with Nicky, and writing the music and performing … so, no desire whatsoever to write lyrics!… But Roma was actually writing poetry at the time, and she was involved, with listening in the studio … being the audience in the studio … so she was involved with the project. So, it was very obvious that she would write the lyrics.”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

KSCA interview (1996)

Music, Time

“Roger:I think everyone can take different things from the lyrics, so it's up to you if you feel there is a theme,, to me, it's obviously LTJ lyrics and so it's always sort of dark, yet positive at the same time. I think the lyrics usually have some sort of light at the end of the tunnel ideal going on”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

Feeling, Thinking, Light, Time

“Nature has a million answers. Even as I observe tree trunks, roots, branches, idling in some corner, to be burnt down as wood, it affords an excellent laboratory to the mind. It is exciting, sensuous and intoxicating. If one submits oneself to the form and the raw energy of the tree even when it can no longer bear fruit and leaves, one can see great poetry and lyricism in its intertwining branches and roots. The functional sculptures and paintings are a result of this experiment. The process takes over thereafter, but it is just an ode to nature's beauty.”

Manav Gupta (1967) Indian artist

As quoted in "Indian Design and Interiors" IDI Magazine (October 2006)
2000s

Beauty, Nature, Tree, Painting

“From the poet's viewpoint a lyric is a poem which embodies a single or simple emotional attitude that expresses directly an uninterrupted mood or inspiration.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

Form in Modern Poetry(1932)

Mood

“Q: You seem relatively upbeat and sociable. It’s funny, because I’ve always had this idea of you, like, always crying in the dark.
A: Most people do.
Q: Do you care about that?
A: Oh, no. It doesn’t bother me. Whatever people think of me is fine, however they want to envision me. I find it curious. I’m always intrigued by who people think I am and the persona they have created for me, what they think I’m into, what they think I’m not into. But I certainly understand that consideration, that I would be a bleak and miserable person, because a lot of my lyrics are very despondent. Luckily, I have the music to use as catharsis. If I didn’t, I might spend more time sitting and crying in a corner than I need to. Also, I think manners are very important. To be a sullen rain cloud when conversing with someone, be they your friends or a journalist, I think is inappropriate.”

Davey Havok (1975) American singer

Fly magazine, November 2009

People, Music, Idea, Understanding

“My problem was that I felt ashamed of feeling sad or angry. Now, I don't hide my vulnerability in my lyrics. There's no way I was going to get raped and not get something out of it. I learned about power and hope and forgiveness. I like who I am now and I wouldn't be who I am if that hadn't happened.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

ELLE, "Fiona Apple is NOT the next Alanis, thank you" October [1996]

Sadness, Hope, Way, Feeling

“If people want to call us emo, that’s totally cool. We started out as a pop punk band, because we were very much interested in giving the band a sound like Green Day or The Descendents, but I think we’ve turned into a rock band. Some of our lyrics are definitely emotional, but some Zeppelin lyrics are pretty emotional, too. You could call them an emo band as well.”

Joe Trohman (1984) American musician

My Heart Will Always Be The B-Side To My Tongue (2004), Ultimate Guitar Interview (2008)

People, Thinking

“Women are still a relative rarity in rock bands, and studies of women's experiences with pop and rock music have indicated that girls are socialized to pop and rock music differently from boys: boys and young men tend to learn songs by ear and talk about popular music's technical aspects, while girls and young women tend to focus on lyrics rather than on equipment and instrumentation, and to resist learning songs by ear. Miki Bernyi's experience testifies to the truthfulness of those findings:”

Holly Kruse

'Girls don't have the patience to spend six years learning someone else's music. Me and Emma [Anderson] can't jam because we only know how to play our own songs. Jamming's more of a boy's thing....I think that women play more imaginatively because they learn to play while they're writing songs, instead of waiting to be technically good first.'
Quoted in Evans, 1994, p. 44.

Women, Men, Truth, Music

“In those days, dances were dances and songs were songs. Film dances always had a semi-classical or folk element to them and songs were all about soul-stirring lyrics and haunting music. These days, they are more about technique and technology, often it's the camera that's dancing, the synthesiser that's singing. Not my cup of tea.”

Vyjayanthimala (1936) Indian actress, politician & dancer

Vyjayanthimala still cuts a striking figure tall

Music, Soul, Singing, Dance

“Through instrumental music, I’m allowed to come up with musical ideas that allow the listener to create their own impression of my song. If you add lyrics about a girl in the song, the listener doesn’t have a choice of what the song is about, it’s told to them. My musical writings allow me to express anything. It’s easier for me to tell a story of something I’ve encountered this way then to verbalize it. And my feelings are explored more in my compositions compared to what I could ever say in a few sentences.”

Bradley Joseph (1965) Composer, pianist, keyboardist, arranger, producer, recording artist

[Janus, Cicily, Radinsky, Ned, http://newfaceofjazz.com/?page_id=594, New Faces of Jazz: Bradley Joseph, (newfaceofjazz.com), 2010-08-01]

Music, Way, Feeling, Girl

“There's a lyric in the middle of the song that says, "I want to decide between survival and bliss." Basically I'm talking about the difference between really being alive and really embracing the reason why I'm here on this earth versus my just being asleep and sleep walking and accepting the status quo and accepting somewhat of a suffering mentality to being here. It really is my responsibility to distinguish the difference between the two and choose which one I want. It's so easy for me to want to not take responsibility for my life and relinquish it and look outside of myself for the answers that I know very well are within me. It's so scary to be silent and it's so scary to go within, until I do it. And once I'm doing it, I just wonder why I wasn't doing this all the time. So that decision to be fully alive is one that is preceded by some pretty intense decisions and some choices and responsibility-taking that at times can be very intimidating, again, before I do it.”

Alanis Morissette (1974) Canadian-American singer-songwriter

On her song "Precious Illusions", in "Alanis Morissette talks about songs from 'Under Rug Swept'", in MSO (23 Jun 2002) http://web.archive.org/web/20020623040236/http://msopr.com/mso/morissette-cutbycut.html

Life, Decision, Sleep, Suffering

“Distortive or even totally false reporting on communally sensitive issues is a well-entrenched feature of Indian journalism. There is no self-corrective mechanism in place to remedy this endemic culture of disinformation. No reporter or columnist or editor ever gets fired or formally reprimanded or even just criticized by his peers for smearing Hindus. This way, a partisan economy with the truth has become a habit hard to relinquish. And foreign correspondents used to trusting their Indian secularist sources have likewise developed a habit of swallowing and relaying highly distorted news stories. Usually, the creation of a false impression of the Indian communal situation is achieved without outright lies, relying rather on the silent treatment for inconvenient facts and a screaming overemphasis on convenient ones. (…) So, moral of the story: feel free to write lies about the Hindus. Even if you are found out, most of the public will never hear of it, and you will not be made to bear any consequences.(…) These days, noisy secularists lie in waiting for communal riots and elatedly jump at them when and where they erupt. They exploit the anti-Hindu propaganda value of riots to the hilt, making up fictional stories as they go along to compensate for any defects in the true account. John Dayal is welcomed to Congressional committees in Washington DC as a crown witness to canards such as how Hindus are raping Catholic nuns in Jhabua, an allegation long refuted in a report by the Congress state government of Madhya Pradesh and more recently in the court verdict on the matter. Arundhati Roy goes lyrical about the torture of a Muslim politician's two daughters by Hindus during the Gujarat riots of 2002, even when the man had only one daughter, who came forward to clarify that she happened to be in the US at the time of the “facts.””

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

Harsh Mander has already been condemned by the Press Council of India for spreading false rumours about alleged Hindu atrocities in his famous column Hindustan Hamara. Teesta Setalwad has reportedly pressured eyewitnesses to give the desired incriminating testimony against Hindus in the Gujarat riots.
K. Elst: Religious Cleansing of Hindus, 2004, Agni conference in The Hague, in The Problem with Secularism (2007)
2000s, The Problem with Secularism (2007)

Truth, Lie, Way, Feeling

“"The Itch" was an accident. I responded to [co-writer] Billy Steinberg's lyric because I thought even though we set it in this particular story of a girl in a relationship who isn't getting what she needs, it's really a metaphor for desire. Everything just coincided without my realizing it. I was playing Lucy in Dracula 2000, and she's a character who is totally open, sexual and curious and definitely has "The Itch" on many different levels. And it was just coincidence that all this stuff kind of like came together for me. Because I get the itch all the time. And to me that really means something.”

Colleen Fitzpatrick (1972) American singer and actress

Attributed

Girl, Time

“Well, if you compare my album even as late as two years ago, I think as a writer I am much more at the forefront. I wrote all the lyrics and lots of the music on that album. It shows humor of the writer side of me. But I have evolved since then.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

answer to question "How different is your music now from what it was 20 years ago?"
2006

Music, Thinking

“When Andy [Andrew Wood] died, I couldn't listen to his songs for about two years after that, and it was for that reason — his lyrics often seem as though they can tell that story. But then again, my lyrics often could tell the same one. In terms of seeing everything as a matter of life and death — if that's what you're feeling at the time, then that's what you're going to write. It's sort of a morbid exchange when somebody who is a writer like that dies, and then everyone starts picking through all their lyrics. In Kurt [Cobain]'s case, whatever he was thinking and whatever he was writing, there wasn't an arrow pointing at what his demise was. It's a stream of thought, it's a possibility — it's definitely something that somebody was feeling when they were writing. It doesn't mean that it's going to happen. But it doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't, either.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Chris Cornell: The Rolling Stone Interview, Alec Foege, Rolling Stone, 29 December 1994 http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/the-rolling-stone-interview-chris-cornell-19941229, Soundgarden Era

Life, Death, Feeling, Thinking

“"On the club scene we rate about two out of ten and 'Must try harder.' "We've had problems with our equipment and we can't get the P. A. to work because we play extremely loudly. It's a pity because Syd (singer Syd Barrett) writes great lyrics and nobody ever hears them."”

Roger Waters (1943) English songwriter, bassist, and lyricist of Pink Floyd

Melody Maker, August, 1967
Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett

Problem

“I am not a good enough writer to have an agenda or come up with a message and try to put it into a song, […] It's more like you write what comes to you… You try to reflect the mood of the songs. Take 'Rearviewmirror', we start off with the music and it kinds of propels the lyrics. It made me feel like I was in a car, leaving something, a bad situation. There's an emotion there. I remembered all the times I wanted to leave…”

Eddie Vedder (1964) musician, songwriter, member of Pearl Jam

L.A. Times 5/1/94, "He Didn't Ask for All This".

Music, Cars, Feeling, Mood

“I said I knew a very wise man so much of Sir Christopher's sentiment, that he believed if a man were permitted to make all the ballads he need not care who should make the laws of a nation, and we find that most of the ancient legislators thought that they could not well reform the manners of any city without the help of a lyric, and sometimes of a dramatic poet.”

Andrew Fletcher (1961–2022) English musician, member of Depeche Mode

An ACCOUNT of A CONVERSATION concerning A RIGHT REGULATION of GOVERNMENTS For the common Good of Mankind: In A LETTER to the Marquiss of Montrose , the Earls of Rothes, Roxburg and Haddington , From London the first of December, 1703'. Later variants express the sentiment in the first person, e.g.: Let me make the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws. Give me the making of a people's songs, and I care not who makes its laws. They may also substitute equivalent words, such as "songs" for "ballads" or "country" for "nation". The sentiment is sometimes attributed to Plato, but does not appear in his works. Austin Matzko has discovered http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/2006/10/20/what-plato-might-have-said-but-didnt/ that the mistaken attribution probably originated in an ambiguous sentence in Donald J. Grout's A History of Western Music (1973, p. 8).

Law, Help

“A good poem is a tautology. It expands one word by adding a number which clarify it, thus making a new word which has never before been spoken. The seed-word is always so ordinary that hardly anyone perceives it. Classical odes grow from and or because, romantic lyrics from but or if. Immature verses expand a personal pronoun ad nauseam, the greatest works bring glory to a common verb.”

Alasdair Gray (1934–2019) Scottish writer and artist

"Prometheus", pp. 208-9.
Unlikely Stories, Mostly (1983)

Personality

“Roger: Well no I think it goes a long way with people who are actually fans of the band. I understand that people who do buy the records are stoked when it’s something that has some value and some thought and actually looks cool. Hopefully slowly that will start to get people motivated to buy vinyl again. Not only does it sound better but you get more of an experience with the artwork and stuff and the lyric sheet in your hand rather than on your computer screen. There’s something more intimate about that. I think slowly but surely vinyl will continue to kind of hold steady even with people not buying CDs anymore.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

People, Way, Motivation, Understanding

“It is no longer possible for lyric poetry to express the immensity of our experience. Life has grown too cumbersome, too complicated. We have acquired values which are best expressed in prose.”

Borís Pasternak (1890–1960) Russian writer

Interview in Writers at Work, Second Series (1963) edited by George Plimpton.

Life

“Like I said, I grew up with punk, and the lyrics of the songs I liked were about reality, and young people were expressing themselves by playing music. It's always been more about attitude, for me. Expressing yourself within society.”

Mattin (1977) Spanish musician

Interview by Dan Warburton (July 2009)

People, Music, Reality

“The truth lies somewhere between these two aesthetics [static Cubism and dynamic Futurism]. The 'pure form' of w:Ingres led inevitably to a life-less Platonism; the lyricism and Romanticism of Eugène Delacroix no longer tailed with our cerebral and geometric age.... as in all great ages, today's artwork must be the synthesis of these two things”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

quote, 1917
In the 'Preface' of the exhibition catalogue, Photo Secession Gallery, New York, March 1917

Life, Truth, Age, Quotes

“"The only trend I do not like in rap right now is the message rap. I consider the message rap the equivalent of what strings were to rock 'n' roll in the late '50s - a capitulation to the adult norm who can't accept the music on its own terms. The people who considered "Sixty Minute Man" by Billy Ward and the, "Annie Had a Baby" - as the pinnacles of '50s R&B now are super uptight over the - in quotes - hotel/motel lyrics of rap. Rap is definitely as true to the essence of rock 'n roll as anything that's out there today."”

Aaron Fuchs

Aaron Fuchs quoted by David Toop (1991). Rap Attack 2, p. 120. New York: Serpent's Tail. .

People, Music, Quotes, Baby

“The first was the classical line, which could be traced back to my early childhood and the Beethoven sonatas I heard my mother play. This line takes sometimes a neo-classical form (sonatas, concertos), sometimes imitates the 18th century classics (gavottes, the Classical symphony, partly the Sinfonietta). The second line, the modern trend, begins with that meeting with Taneyev when he reproached me for the “crudeness” of my harmonies. At first this took the form of a search for my own harmonic language, developing later into a search for a language in which to express powerful emotions (The Phantom, Despair, Diabolical Suggestion, Sarcasms, Scythian Suite, a few of the songs, op. 23, The Gambler, Seven, They Were Seven, the Quintet and the Second Symphony). Although this line covers harmonic language mainly, it also includes new departures in melody, orchestration and drama. The third line is toccata or the “motor” line traceable perhaps to Schumann’s Toccata which made such a powerful impression on me when I first heard it (Etudes, op. 2, Toccata, op. 11, Scherzo, op. 12, the Scherzo of the Second Concerto, the Toccata in the Fifth Concerto, and also the repetitive intensity of the melodic figures in the Scythian Suite, Pas d’acier[The Age of Steel], or passages in the Third Concerto). This line is perhaps the least important. The fourth line is lyrical; it appears first as a thoughtful and meditative mood, not always associated with the melody, or, at any rate, with the long melody (The Fairy-tale, op. 3, Dreams, Autumnal Sketch[Osenneye], Songs, op. 9, The Legend, op. 12), sometimes partly contained in the long melody (choruses on Balmont texts, beginning of the First Violin Concerto, songs to Akhmatova’s poems, Old Granny’s Tales[Tales of an Old Grandmother]). This line was not noticed until much later. For a long time I was given no credit for any lyrical gift whatsoever, and for want of encouragement it developed slowly. But as time went on I gave more and more attention to this aspect of my work. I should like to limit myself to these four “lines,” and to regard the fifth, “grotesque” line which some wish to ascribe to me, as simply a deviation from the other lines. In any case I strenuously object to the very word “grotesque” which has become hackneyed to the point of nausea. As a matter of fact the use of the French word “grotesque” in this sense is a distortion of the meaning. I would prefer my music to be described as “Scherzo-ish” in quality, or else by three words describing the various degrees of the Scherzo—whimsicality, laughter, mockery.”

Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) Ukrainian & Russian Soviet pianist and composer

Page 36-37; from his fragmentary Autobiography.
Sergei Prokofiev: Autobiography, Articles, Reminiscences (1960)

Age, Dreams, Music, Search

“Which one of us has not dreamed, on ambitious days, of the miracle of a poetic prose: musical, without rhythm or rhyme; adaptable enough and discordant enough to conform to the lyrical movements of the soul, the waves of revery, the jolts of consciousness?Above all else, it is residence in the teeming cities, it is the crossroads of numberless relations that gives birth to this obsessional ideal.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Quel est celui de nous qui n'a pas, dans ses jours d'ambition, rêvé le miracle d'une prose poétique, musicale sans rythme et sans rime, assez souple et assez heurtée pour s'adapter aux mouvements lyriques de l'âme, aux ondulations de la rêverie, aux soubresauts de la conscience?C'est surtout de la fréquentation des villes énormes, c'est du croisement de leurs innombrables rapports que naît cet idéal obsédant. "Dédicace, À Arsène Houssaye" http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Petits_Po%C3%A8mes_en_prose Le spleen de Paris (1862)

Dreams, Music, Soul, Birth

“Morning View is I think collectively probably our favorite record that we have made as a band because it was the most effortless… um… in its conception… you know? It was a lot less slaving over parts and trying to just get together in this big beautiful room with a view of the ocean and parts and sounds and melodies and lyrics would just happen… they would just sort of spill out of us without us really trying… so to me that's sort of the most amazing way to write music or do any kind of art, which is by letting it happen… but one of the most important parts in any sort of.. uh… journey so to speak.. Is uh… the ride… and we've had a really good time riding to where ever it is we are going… and I don't even think any of us know particularly where it is going to take us… But it's been really fun sort of chasing it.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Discussing Morning View on Boogie TV interview was done the day of their concert at Vega, Copenhagen

Beauty, Art, Music, Way

“What hours I spent of precious time,
What pints of ink I used to waste,
Attempting to secure a rhyme
To suit the public taste,
Until I found a simple plan
Which makes the lamest lyric scan!When I’ve a syllable de trop,
I cut it off, without apol.:
This verbal sacrifice, I know,
May irritate the schol.;
But all must praise my dev’lish cunn.
Who realise that Time is Mon.”

Harry Graham (1874–1936) British writer

Source: Other verse, Poetical economy, Lines 1-12

Time

“I think he Pollock responded to rhythm more than anything else in art. Indeed, perhaps it is not to much to assert that his greatest works are marked by the intensity and violence of his rhythm, modified by an incorruptible respect for the work's flat surface, an art masculine and lyrical and, as in a Celtic dance, measured, despite its original primitive impulse. That he also meant to me, his rhythm…”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

'Jackson Pollock: An Artists' Symposium', in 'ARTnews', Vol. 66, no. 2 April 1967
1960s

Art, Thinking, Dance

“Don’t let me get grand with you; I’m not someone who was, from day one, turning himself into a philosophical academic or anything; I was, from day one, someone who was determined to survive, and to pay attention to what was going on around him, period, and when Elvis Presley came along, my heart stood still, to borrow the Larry Hart lyric. The first note I heard from him, I said, “Well, this is it, this is a sufferer like me, this is something new, this is what I want, this is who I am, in a way,” and Elvis had that gift. That’s why there are so many Elvis imitators.”

George W. S. Trow (1943–2006) American writer

My Pilgrim’s Progress (1999)

Way, Suffering, Heart

“I first listen to someone who speaks the language and who reads the lyrics to me. I pay great attention to pronunciation. Once I hear the words spoken, I write the song lines phonetically in Hindi and then sing. By the grace of god, my songs in other languages – including Bengali – have been appreciated. People say they are good and the words have been correctly pronounced.”

Lata Mangeshkar (1929) Indian singer

Above two quotes about her singing in Urdu and other languages in Lata Mangeshkar has to thank Dilip Kumar for her Urdu skills!, 29 Npvember 2013, India Today http://www.deccanherald.com/content/10118/,

God, People, Singing, Reading

“The realist, then, would seek in behalf of philosophy the same renunciation the same rigour of procedure, that has been achieved in science. This does not mean that he would reduce philosophy to natural or physical science. He recognizes that the philosopher has undertaken certain peculiar problems, and that he must apply himself to these, with whatever method he may find it necessary to employ. It remains the business of the philosopher to attempt a wide synoptic survey of the world, to raise underlying and ulterior questions, and in particular to examine the cognitive and moral processes. And it is quite true that for the present no technique at all comparable with that of the exact sciences is to be expected. But where such technique is attainable, as for example in symbolic logic, the realist welcomes it. And for the rest he limits himself to a more modest aspiration. He hopes that philosophers may come like scientists to speak a common language, to formulate common problems and to appeal to a common realm of fact for their resolution. Above all he desires to get rid of the philosophical monologue, and of the lyric and impressionistic mode of philosophizing. And in all this he is prompted not by the will to destroy but by the hope that philosophy is a kind of knowledge, and neither a song nor a prayer nor a dream. He proposes, therefore, to rely less on inspiration and more on observation and analysis. He conceives his function to be in the last analysis the same as that of the scientist. There is a world out yonder more or less shrouded in darkness, and it is important, if possible, to light it up. But instead of, like the scientist, focussing the mind's rays and throwing this or that portion of the world into brilliant relief, he attempts to bring to light the outlines and contour of the whole, realizing too well that in diffusing so widely what little light he has, he will provide only a very dim illumination.”

Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957) American philosopher

Chap XXV.
The Present Conflict of Ideals: A Study of the Philosophical Background of the World War (1918)

World, Dreams, Hope, Question

Quotes about lyrics page 2

Quotes about lyrics
page 2