Quotes about song
A collection of quotes on the topic of song, likeness, singing, love.
Quotes about song

“There are alway going to be bad things. But you can write it down and make a song out of it.”

On listening to an early version of Billie Jean on an iPhone
Ebony interview (2007)

Source: Live Aid, 1985/07/13 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A22oy8dFjqc?t=12m5s

"I am the Champion" by Nick Ferrari in The Sun (19 July 1985).

“I don't sing my mother tongue
No, this is not a love song”
"Amerika"
Reise, Reise (2004)

As quoted in "I am the Champion" by Nick Ferrari in The Sun (19 July 1985) http://www.queenarchives.com/index.php?title=Freddie_Mercury_-_07-19-1985_-_The_Sun.

As himself talking about it being a yearbook, on 2017-05-10, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/artists/nobodys-reached-out--zayn-maliks-best-quotes/zayn-malik-in-quotes3/

Source: https://www.wmagazine.com/story/billie-eilish-new-ep/

As 'guy who has a twin sister' on 2017-03-20, https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2017/03/zayn-malik-interview-the-times-quotes

After hearing Walter Earl Brown's If I Can Dream, the song inspired on Martin Luther King Jr. that would close Elvis' comeback show in 1968, and the phrase was remarked to its producer, Steve Binder. http://elvis-tkc.com/forum2/lofiversion/index.php/t15948.html

"The Dance" - from inlay sleeve of Dangerous (1991)

On musical influences
Ebony interview (2007)

Ask Al Archives: May 2000 http://www.weirdal.com/aaarchive.htm#0500.

"The Man Who Would Be Queen" in Melody Maker (2 May 1981).

“What I have to say is all in the music. If I want to say anything, I write a song.”

“All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.”
Variant: All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.

“Won't you help to sing,
These songs of freedom?
'Cause all I ever had,
Redemption songs.”
Redemption Song
Uprising (1979)

Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984)
Context: A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. … For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."

St. 18
To a Skylark (1821)
Source: The Complete Poems

“Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought.”
Source: The Complete Poems

“You are an Universe of Universes and your soul a source of songs.”

“He who loves not wine, women and song remains a fool his whole life long.”
Variant: He who loves not Wine, Women and Song
Remains a fool his whole life long
Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

"Avril Lavigne Over the Hedge Interview" https://www.girl.com.au/avril-lavigne-over-the-hedge-interview.htm by Gaynor Flynn, in Girl.com.au (July 2006)

From interview with Komal Nahta

Samuel Taylor Coleridge "Monody on the Death of Chatterton" (1794) line 126.
Criticism

"Michael Jackson - Life in the magical kingdom" - Rolling Stone (February 17, 1983) http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/michael-jackson-life-in-the-magical-kingdom-19830217
"Michael Jackson - Life in the Magical Kingdom" Rolling Stone 1983
"God's Garden" lines 13–16, Poems, by Dorothy Frances Gurney (London: Country Life, 1913).

“I wasn't a woman, I was a song factory.”

Teardrops on My Guitar, written by Taylor Swift and Liz Rose.
Song lyrics, Taylor Swift (2006)

before playing "Between the Bars" at a concert in 1996. http://www.archive.org/details/esmith2006-09-25..flacf.

When asked how he can predict that a song will be a hit.
Scaggs, Austin (2007-05-31), "Adam Levine". Rolling Stone. (1027):36.

"Being James Brown," Rolling Stone Magazine, 2006-06-12.

“My idea in "My Sweet Lord," because it sounded like a "pop song," was to sneak up on them a bit.”
Interview with Mukunda Goswami (4 September 1982)
Context: My idea in "My Sweet Lord," because it sounded like a "pop song," was to sneak up on them a bit. The point was to have the people not offended by "Hallelujah," and by the time it gets to "Hare Krishna," they're already hooked, and their foot's tapping, and they're already singing along "Hallelujah," to kind of lull them into a sense of false security. And then suddenly it turns into "Hare Krishna," and they will all be singing that before they know what's happened, and they will think, "Hey, I thought I wasn't supposed to like Hare Krishna!"

“I'm crazy for love but
I'm not coming on.
I'm just paying my rent everyday
In the Tower Of Song.”
"Tower Of Song"
I'm Your Man (1988)
Context: My friends are gone and
My hair is grey.
I ache in the places where I used to play.
And I'm crazy for love but
I'm not coming on.
I'm just paying my rent everyday
In the Tower Of Song.

Foma Gordeyev (1899) [also translated as The Man Who Was Afraid; the English music group Led Zeppelin would later name their record label "Swan Song".
Context: There's a little book I'm thinking of writing — "Swan Song" is what I shall call it. The song of the dying. And my book will be incense burnt at the deathbed of this society, damned with the damnation of its own impotence.

“I'm tryin' to right my wrongs
But it's funny, them same wrongs helped me write this song.”
Touch the Sky
Lyrics, Late Registration (2005)

Zen Masters : The Wisdom of Frank Zappa (2003)

“The Departure Aria, a very important and romantic song”
Source: Maskerade

“I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth get cleaner?”

“The sweetest little song:
You go your way
I'll go your way too!”
Variant: You go your way
I'll go your way too
Source: Book of Longing

“Worse even
than your maddening
song, your silence." -”
Source: The Collected Poems

Source: The Great God Brown and Other Plays

Source: Rainer Maria Rilke's the Book of Hours: A New Translation with Commentary

Source: Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

“I'm a born entertainer, when I open the fridge and the light comes on, I burst into song.”

“Life is one grand sweet song so start the music”

“We think we understand a song's lyrics but what makes us believe in them, or not, is the music”
Source: The Angel's Game