Quotes about song
page 8

“Chris Rock: I love the story of how you turned down an offer to appear in Michael Jackson's music video for, Bad.
Prince: You know that Wesley Snipes character? That would've been me. Now you run that video in your mind. The first line in that song is "your butt is mine." Now I said to Michael, who's gonna sing that to whom? 'Cause you sure ain't singing it to me and I sure ain't singing it to you so right there we got a problem.”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

VH1 interview (1997) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9ZN9nKQqe0

Love, Music, Problem, Appearance

“Ooh, he's a moody old man.
Song of Summer in his hand.
Ooh, he's a moody old man.
…in…in…in his hand.
…in his hand.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Never for Ever (1980)

Summer

“There are no bridges in folk songs because the peasants died building them.”

Eugene Chadbourne (1954) American musician

Mark Michaels Quoted in The Billboard Book of Rock Arranging (1990)

“I used to wish that I could write songs, like the others—and I've tried, but I just can't. I can get the words all right, but whenever I think of a tune the others always say it sounds like such-a-thing, and when they point it out, I see what they mean.”

Ringo Starr (1940) British musician, former member of the Beatles

The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 96

Thinking

“"The theme song states "YOU GOT THE POWER TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE… YOU GOT THE POWER TO MAKE A CHANGE." Wow, thank you MTV, for making me feel empowered and independent, like only a multinational media conglomerate can."”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

I hate Cameron Diaz http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=trippin The Best Page in the Universe

Feeling, Change

“I did all my real growing up in France, which I was almost not allowed to do at home. They liked my voice, they found me sexy, they didn't know anything about my childhood. In England, you’d come on to a bright cheerful song, do a bit of comedy, finish on a big ballad and wear a sparkly dress. That was about it. Suddenly I saw people like Aznavour and Piaf, songs coming from your heart, your soul, your guts, your sex, whatever, songs about everything, life and death, love and hate, wow! I realised you can use all of you when you perform.”

Petula Clark (1932) British actress and singer

Calgary Herald, 14 Feb 2013

Love, Life, Death, Hate

“Recognizing that the world is governed by a minority, the sexually active, and that they hold sway of a huge majority of the nonsexual, those people too young or too old or too poor or too homely or sick or crazy or powerless to be able to afford sexual partners (or the luxury of systematic, sustained and shared introspection, so sexual in its own way). All advertisements and films and songs are addressed to sexuals, to their rash whims and finicky tastes.”

Edmund White book A Boy's Own Story

Source: A Boy's Own Story (1982), Chapter Six (p. 167).

People, World, Way, Home

“It's New Mexico-style. But, it's not -- I don't want to call it "traditional". We can do traditional songs, but you got to be "modern" in what you do.”

Al Hurricane (1936–2017) American singer-songwriter

"Local Legends" on the CBS Early Show (December 26, 2011)

“Young Ones.
Darling we're the Young Ones.
Young Ones shouldn't be afraid
To live, love, there's a song to be sung,
Cause we may not
Be the Young Ones
very long.”

Sid Tepper (1918–2015) American songwriter

Song The Young Ones

Love

“The wine of Love is music,
And the feast of Love is song:
And when Love sits down to the banquet,
Love sits long:

Sits long and rises drunken,
But not with the feast and the wine;
He reeleth with his own heart,
That great, rich Vine.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

Part XVIII
Sunday Up the River (1865)

Love, Music, Wine, Heart

“Kierkegaard said that the only way we can be released from the enchantment, the siren song of the myths, is to play the music through backwards. To break the spell of the ego I must recover my personal and political history, I must demythologize the private, family, and public myths that have informed me.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 140

Family, Music, Way, History

“[Writing songs] is no different than explaining to somebody what you dreamed last night: No one ever gives you crap for what you dreamed last night. "I was laying in my bed, and all of a sudden a stallion jumped on my bed and the next thing I know I was in Mars but it looked like my kitchen"... That's kind of what I do with my songs, write them in a dream-like manner. It's up to people to swallow it however they want.”

Jason Mraz (1977) American singer-songwriter

[Christina, Fuoco, http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7600127/jason_mraz_goes_to_school, Jason Mraz Goes to School, Rolling Stone, 2 September 2007, 2007-09-28]

People, Dreams, Night

“I only know three songs by REM and guess what? I don't like two of them! That's right, I'm not cool- I don't like REM. Don't hang out with me, I'm a nerd.
I saw REM, they're the best. The lead singer is so serious and heavy, he comes out, all, 'This next song is about the overcommercialization of rock and roll and how corporations have come and' -- hey, just sing the goddamn songs, alright buddy? I'm already depressed, I want you to make me shiny and happy!
The thing about Showtime is, it's basically softcore porn. I'm into it. I forget I have Showtime, until like, Saturday mornings when I get home from work, and it's: cartoon, cartoon, cartoon, 'Warning: This program contains massive nudity.”

David Spade (1964) American stand-up comedian

Yeeeah!
David Spade: Take the Hit, HBO Special, 1997

Happiness, Home, Singing, Forgetting

“Whom could this operetta offend? Only those of us who, despite the fact that we may respond, loathe being manipulated in this way and are aware of how cheap and ready-made are the responses we are made to feel. We may become even more aware of the way we have been turned into emotional and aesthetic imbeciles when we hear ourselves humming the sickly, goody-goody songs. The dauntless, scrubbed-face heroine (Julie Andrews), in training to become a nun, is sent from the convent to serve as governess to the motherless Von Trapp children, and turns them into a happy little troupe of singers before marrying their father (Christopher Plummer). She says goodbye to the nuns and leaves them outside at the fence, as she enters the cathedral to be married. Squeezed again, and the moisture comes out of thousands--millions--of eyes and noses. Wasn't there perhaps one little Von Trapp who didn't want to sing his head off, or who screamed that he wouldn't act out little glockenspiel routines for Papa's party guests, or who got nervous and threw up if he had to get on a stage? The only thing the director, Robert Wise, couldn't smooth out was the sinister, archly decadent performance by Christopher Plummer--he of the thin, twisted smile; he seems to be in a different movie altogether.”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

"The Sound of Music," p. 697
5001 Nights at the Movies (1982)

Happiness, Children, Smile, Way

“Well, I think it is accidental. It’s just something I started doing naturally and it had a lot to do with reading. I think that Dylan Thomas, his prose and poetry, was a big influence on me. Just his use of words… He would use so many odd words: like these three- and four-syllable words that you just don’t normally hear. And they’re not used in a manner that sets the text apart from the reader. Rather they’re drawing the reader in. It’s entirely based on the alliteration of the word itself—onomatopoeia and things like that. I feel like a lot of the words I use don’t stick out in the song because they keep the feel of the song in mind. The rhythm—that’s the primary thing. They’re put in there for rhythm and alliteration as much as they are for meaning. And as long as they are not used extraneously, they’re real lightning rods for people listening to the lyrics. If the words are really helping out the rhythm of the song then all they’re going to do is draw the listener in even more”

Colin Meloy (1974) American musician

On his songwriting technique. Interview with Colin Meloy, 2004-06 http://www.believermag.com/issues/200406/?read=interview_meloy,

People, Feeling, Nature, Thinking

“Where do you hear the songs? In the space between wake and passing out, the hiss down the left of the dial, the faces of the kids when we pull up to the show, in answering machine hang up messages, in glasses colliding, transmissions whining, where the music doesn't belong—where it lives. Everywhere, it's all I hear.”

Jack Terricloth (1970)

What Would Jack Do?

Music

“Uh oh. I don't think that I can tell who it [the person "Mr. James Dean" references] is, but it was definitely an experience that I went through that was interesting and I learned a lot from that time in my life. I think the song is very funny when I think about it.”

Hilary Duff (1987) American actress and singer

Goodman, Abbey. "Hilary Duff: The Nicest Brat" http://www.mtv.com/bands/d/duff_hilary/news_feature/041115/index.jhtml. MTV News. November 12 2004. Retrieved October 27 2006. On Hilary Duff (2004).

Life, Thinking, Learning, Time

“I wanted just a song to sing, and there came a certain point where I couldn't sing anything. So I had to write what I wanted to sing 'cos nobody else was writing what I wanted to sing.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Interview http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/84-jul30.htm with Bert Kleinman (30 July 1984). Cf. C. S. Lewis: "People won't write the books I want, so I have to do it for myself."

Singing

“Nobody wants to be dancing to political songs. Every bit of music out there that’s making it into the mainstream is really about nothing. I wanted to see if I could write songs about something important and make it sound like nothing. And it kind of worked.”

M.I.A. (1975) British recording artist, songwriter, painter and director

Interview http://niralimagazine.com/2004/10/not-so-missing-in-action/ with Nirali magazine (October 2004) Sourced quotes

Music, Dance

“You always have to keep pushing to innovate. Dylan could have sung protest songs forever and probably made a lot of money, but he didn’t. He had to move on, and when he did, by going electric in 1965, he alienated a lot of people. His 1966 Europe tour was his greatest…. The Beatles were the same way. They kept evolving, moving, refining their art. That’s what I’ve always tried to do — keep moving. Otherwise, as Dylan says, if you are not busy being born, you’re busy dying.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

As quoted in Steve Jobs (2011) by Walter Isaacson, p. 570
2010s

Money, People, Art, Way

“I'd like to protect children, too, but… is everything worth sacrificing to that? I mean, drugs have done a lot of good. […] They've midwived a lot of good ideas… lot of great songs, you know? I think "Penny Lane" is worth 10 dead kids. […] I think Dark Side of the Moon is worth 100 dead kids. There, I said it.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

I'm Swiss (2005)

Children, Idea, Thinking, Dead

“This little Collection differs, it is believed, from others in the attempt made to include in it all the best original lyrical pieces and songs in our language, by writers not living, and none besides the best. The Editor will regard as his fittest readers those who love poetry so well, that he can offer them nothing not already known and valued.”

Francis Turner Palgrave (1824–1897) English poet and critic

Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics (1861) Preface.

Love

“Sing us a song you're the piano man
Sing us a song tonight.
Well we're all in the mood for a melody
And you've got us feeling alright.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Piano Man.
Song lyrics, Piano Man (1973)

Feeling, Mood, Singing

“Song sung blue, everybody knows one.
Song sung blue, every garden grows one.Me and you are subject to
The blues now and then.
But when you take the blues
And make a song,
You sing 'em out again.”

Neil Diamond (1941) American singer-songwriter

Song Sung Blue
Song lyrics, Moods (1972)

Singing

“And you, fair nymphs of Tagus, parent stream,
If ever your meadows were my pastoral theme,
O come auspicious, and the song inspire
With all the boldness of your hero's fire:
Deep and majestic let the numbers flow,
And, rapt to heaven, with ardent fury glow.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

E vós, Tágides minhas, pois criado
Tendes em mi um novo engenho ardente,
Se sempre em verso humilde celebrado
Foi de mi vosso rio alegremente,
Dai-me agora um som alto e sublimado,
Um estilo grandíloco e corrente,
Por que de vossas águas Febo ordene
Que não tenham enveja às de Hipocrene.
Stanza 5 (tr. William Julius Mickle)
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto I

Parent

“Roger: New bands.. old bands - whatever. It's kind of weird. I guess I stay out of the loop on new bands, younger bands an who's getting signed or how many records this band is making. Persoanlly I don't care about things like that. I like melodies and lyrics and songs and energy. Isn't that what's it all about?”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

“I'd like to take you now, on wings of song as it were, and try and help you forget for a while your drab, wretched lives.”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

Introduction to "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park"
An Evening (Wasted) With Tom Lehrer (1959)

Help, Forgetting

“I found myself at the top of the the ladder, with everything, but with one thing missing: that one thing was a companion. Because, it's cliché to say, but nothing really means anything in the end unless you're really doing what you want to do, and… I walked off a huge world tour, with a yacht and television specials, and record deals, and film deals. I walked away and my whole thing collapsed. I shocked my business world and walked back to my cottage, which I had been renting to two American girls. One of them was Cynthia, and I stayed with her for two days, then her friend Lori came back from Clapton's house, where there had been a party going on for almost a week. Lori came in with another friend, and it was Linda, my Sunshine Supergirl from 1965 whom I'd written all my songs for. We hadn't married then, because she had a child with Brian Jones and wasn't ready for another relationship. And it was good that we didn't marry back then, because my four years of '60's fame would have wrecked the marriage. But we met again, and I went away from fame and into the arms of my muse, my lover, and then my wife, and then the mother of my children.”

Donovan (1946) Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist

Grip interview (1997)

Marriage, Children, World, Girl

“I'm on the Internet a lot more than I watch TV and most everybody I know is, and yet if you watch most late-night talk shows, it's as if it doesn't even exist. So the Internet, it's just something I wanted to make use of in some way. I was fascinated by what appeared to be a child singing this song. It just struck me as funny.”

Jimmy Kimmel (1967) American talk show host and comedian

On his initial impression of Andy Milonakis — reported in Susan Carpenter, Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times (May 3, 2006) "Making a fool of himself for video - Andy Milonakis' success story", Chicago Tribune, p. 8A.

Way, Appearance, Singing, Night

“Whilst my country remains in sorrow and subjection, it would be indelicate of me to participate in the festivities you propose. When she lifts her head and nerves her arm for a bolder struggle — when she goes forth like Miriam, with song and trimble, to celebrate her victory — I too shall lift up my head, and join in the hymn of freedom. Till then, the retirement I seek will best accord with the love I bear her, and the sadness which her present fate inspires. Nor do I forget the companions of my exile. The freedom that has been restored to me is embittered by the recollection of their captivity. My heart is with them at this hour, and shares the solitude in which they dwell. Whilst they are in prison a shadow rests upon my spirit, and the thoughts that otherwise might be free throb heavily within me. It is painful for me to speak. I should feel happy in being permitted to be silent for these reasons you will not feel displeased with me for declining the honours you solicit me to accept.”

Thomas Francis Meagher (1823–1867) Irish nationalist & American politician

Declining to accept any public entertainment in his honour, after his escape (1852)

Love, Pain, Fate, Happiness

“Indeed the Idols I have loved so long
Have done my credit in this World much wrong:
Have drown'd my Glory in a shallow Cup
And sold my Reputation for a Song.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

Source: The Rubaiyat (1120)

Love, World

“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)

“C is for Cute
A is for Adorable
R is for Ravishing
M is for Gorgeous
E is for Excellent
L is for Lovable
I is for I'm the best!
T is for Talented
A is for "A tap dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian! NOW LET'S START MY WHOLE WONDERFUL SONG ALL OVER AGAIN!”

Daniel Handler book The Grim Grotto

The Grim Grotto (2004)

Dance, Princess

“I'm better suited to doing this because I enjoy dancing and performing, so I can incorporate a whole bunch of different elements of my personality into the performance component of Vitamin C and it turns out, without trying, there was a certain positive spirit and strong point of view [in the songs] that fairly well represented my personality. So it all came together quite nicely.”

Colleen Fitzpatrick (1972) American singer and actress

About the Vitamin C project
Attributed

Strong, Dance, Personality

“Nothing in the entire world is worthy but for that day on which The Song of Songs was given to Israel”

Akiba ben Joseph (50–136) Tanna

Mishnah https://www.sefaria.org.il/Mishnah_Yadayim.3.5?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en|

World

“Funny the way it is, if you think about it.
Somebody's going hungry, someone else is eating out.
Funny the way it is, not right or wrong.
Somebody's heart is broken, it becomes your favorite song.”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

Funny the Way It Is
Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King (2009)

Way, Thinking, Heart

“Thank you, Donald, for that well-meant but rather pedestrian introduction. Regarding yourself, I quote from the third part of Shakespeare's Henry VI, Act Two, Scene One. Richard speaks, "Were thy heart as hard as steel/ As thou hast shown it flinty by thy deeds/ I come to pierce it, or to give thee mine." To translate into your own idiom, Donald; you're a yo-yo. Now I direct my remarks to Dean Martin, who is being honored here tonight… for reasons that completely elude me. No, I'm not being fair to Dean because - this is true - in his way Dean, and I know him very well, has the soul of a poet. I'm told that in his most famous song Dean authored a lyric which is so romantic, so touching that it will be enjoyed by generations of lovers until the end of time. Let's share it together. [Opens a songsheet for Dean's "That's Amore" and reads in a monotone] "When the moon hits your eye/ Like a big pizza-pie/ That's amore" Now, that's what I call 'touching', Dean. It has all the romanticism of a Ty-D-Bol commercial. "When the world seems to shine/ Like you've had too much wine/ That's amore" What a profound thought. It could be inscribed forever on a cocktail napkin. Hey, there's more. "Tippy-tippy-tay/ Like a gay tarantella" Like a gay tarantella? Apparently, Dean has a 'side Dean' we know nothing about. "When the stars make you drool/ Just like a pasta fazool…. Scuzza me, but you see/ Back in old Napoli/ That's amore" No, Dean; that's infermo, Italian for "sickened". Now, lyrics like that - lyrics like that ought to be issued with a warning: a song like that is hazardous to your health. Ladies and gentlemen… [motions to Dean] you are looking at the end result!”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Speech given at a Dean Martin Celebrity Roast. Viewable here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlKR0i-51S4.

Health, World, Way, Quotes

“My obsession was the preservation of the Gaelic language so that there would be people left in the world who could hear its great songs as they really were. No poetry could be translated, still less could song poetry, and the great language of Gaelic song made me fanatical about the beauty of the Gaelic language and its astonishing ability to indicate shades and positions of emphasis with natural inversions and the use of particles.”

Sorley MacLean (1911–1996) Scottish poet

Sorley MacLean, 1982, quoted in Krause, Corinna. Eadar Dà Chànan: Self-Translation, the Bilingual Edition and Modern Scottish Gaelic Poetry https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1842/3453/Krause2007.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Letters and interviews

People, World, Beauty, Nature

“I had his poster on my wall. He had me moonwalking around my bedroom. I'd love to have written any Michael Jackson song, so maybe start with one of the greatest.”

50 Cent (1975) American rapper, actor, businessman, investor and television producer

As quoted in "Soundtrack of my life" (1 October 2015), by Gavin Haynes, NME, p. 48

Love

“Here sees he the illustrious dead
Who fighting for their country bled;
Priests who while earthly life remained
Preserved that life unsoiled, unstained;
Blest bards, transparent souls and clear,
Whose song was worthy Phoebus' ear;
Inventors who by arts refined
The common lot of human kind,
With all who grateful memory won
By services to others done:
A goodly brotherhood, bedight
With coronals of virgin white.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book VI, p. 217

Life, Art, Soul, Memory

“I have discovered a goodness and decency in people as exhibited in all the letters, e-mails, flowers, gifts and prayers that have been directed my way. I am overwhelmed and humbled. I offer you my most sincere thanks and my deep and abiding gratitude. If I ever write my memoirs, I have some spellbinding material. How does the Joni Mitchell song go? "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone"? One thing I've discovered is that I love my job more than I thought I did, and I love my wife even more!”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

"Roger writes to readers" Chicago Sun Times (11 October 2006)

Love, People, Way, Flowers

“I really hate it when I think I’m on the precipice of saying something deep and empowering when it’s actually more or less a quote from Rocky IV (“If I can change and you can change, everybody can change”) or a lyric from an M People song (“search for the hero inside yourself”) but I’ve really got very little to add to these scattered and perennial pop cultural artifacts.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Hate, People, Quotes, Search

“Coming, as I do, from mountain folk on one side and sea followers on the other, there are few old songs of the hills or the sea with which I am not familiar.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to Robert W. Gordon (February 4, 1925)
Letters

Mountain, Sea

“Things are not always as old songs tell them to be—especially when it is concerning dragons.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Stone of Farewell (1990), Chapter 8, “On Sikkihoq’s Back” (p. 176).

“Heartbroken the dead bird’s mate cried – Your long feathers! Your tuneful songs. A bird hunter came from the forest holding a bow. Valmiki’s heart was pounding and he cursed the killer.”

Vālmīki Ramayana

Source: Ramayana, p. 7.

Bird, Heart, Dead

“In the lifetime that has passed since Calvin Coolidge gave his speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in which he famously proclaimed that “the chief business of the American people is business,” the dominion of the ants has grown enormously. Look about: The business of business is everywhere and inescapable; the song of the buyers and the sellers never stops.”

Mark Slouka (1958) author

Quitting the paint factory: On the virtues of idleness

People, Business

“Give me bitter years of sickness,
Suffocation, insomnia, fever,
Take my child and my lover,
And my mysterious gift of song —
This I pray at your liturgy
After so many tormented days,
So that the stormcloud over darkened Russia
Might become a cloud of glorious rays.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

"Prayer," translated by Judith Hemschemeyer in Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova (1989)

Lovers

“And it's the same sad song coming back again. The same old song, flows back again. ~ "So Much Work"”

Pete Yorn (1974) American musician

Song lyrics

Sadness

“Past, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future. These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy. The Past is the region of sobs, the Future is the realm of song. In the one crouches Memory, clad in sackcloth and ashes, mumbling penitential prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope flies with a free wing, beckoning to temples of success and bowers of ease. Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one--the knowledge and the dream.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Dreams, Hope, Disappointment, Knowledge

“I know we live in troubled times, my friends, I know things which once stood up suddenly don't stand up anymore. I know that innocent people shopping or buying gas are often shot down, shot down for no reason. And it makes a nation nervous. Now, personally, I like the nation to be nervous. And in these nervous times, sometimes people come up to me, and they say, "Perhaps, Jack, you should tone down your rhetoric a bit. Perhaps, the stuff you say in between songs might be construed as, well, not very patriotic. Well, actually, Jack, you might get yourself in some big trouble." And I say to myself, "Oh! Trouble is my business, friend." In these uncertain times, it's not a good idea to give up on your values, and change your mind about the things you hold dear. It's not. I want to talk about someone who fell pretty damn hard, and this song is called "I Shot President Reagan, and I'm Gonna Do It Again and Again and Again and Again!"”

Jack Terricloth (1970)

Introducing "Secret Service Freedom Fighting U.S.A."
Live

People, Idea, Business, Change

“Well, I think you just have to be prepared to be weirder and weirder. I follow the example of Robyn Hitchcock who, I think, has created a career out of this world he has constructed. It’s very much his world, and he continually builds upon it. I think he’s received criticism in the past along the lines of, “Oh, here’s another Robyn Hitchcock record about flesh and fish,” and things like that, but in fact if you really look at the songs, they’re just the building blocks for this very complex, very vibrant, and very real world that exists within his songwriting. So I look to him for inspiration.”

Colin Meloy (1974) American musician

Interview with Colin Meloy, 2004-06 http://www.believermag.com/issues/200406/?read=interview_meloy,

World, Thinking, Fish, Past

“You recall a girl that's been in nearly every song?
This is what I heard of course the story could be wrong.She's the one — I've been told
Now she's wearing a band of gold.
Peggy Sue got married not long ago.”

Buddy Holly (1936–1959) American singer-songwriter

Peggy Sue Got Married (1959)
Song lyrics, Singles

Girl

“…I don’t think of myself as a pop star. I started out as a jazz singer. And I love having the chance to just jump in and sing songs that touch me or move me.”

Helen Reddy (1941) Australian actress

On her comeback to singing before a live audience with "album cuts"
Freeman interview (September 2012)

Love, Star, Thinking, Singing

“Is life worth living? Yes, so long
As Spring revives the year,
And hails us with the cuckoo's song,
To show that she is here;”

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet

Source: Is Life Worth Living? http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/9/3/1/19316/19316.htm (1896)

Life, Spring

“The song was finished. His lyre and his celestial voice had ceased together. Yet even so there was no change in the company; the heads of all were still bent forward, their ears intent on the enchanting melody. Such was his charm – the music lingered in their hearts.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book I. Preparation and Departure, Lines 512–515; of Orpheus.

Music, Change, Heart

“O lay me, ye that see the light, near some rock of my hills! let the thick hazels be around, let the rustling oak be near. Green be the place of my rest; let the sound of the distant torrent be heard. Daughter of Toscar, take the harp, and raise the lovely song of Selma, that sleep may overtake my soul in the midst of joy; that the dreams of my youth may return, and the days of the mighty Fingal.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

"The War of Inis-thona"
The Poems of Ossian

Love, Youth, Dreams, Soul

“And as the moon rises he sits by his fire
Thinking about women and glasses of beer.
And closing his eyes as the dogies retire,
He sings out a song which is soft but it's clear,
As if maybe someone could hear.Goodnight you moonlight ladies.
Rockabye sweet baby James.
Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose.
Won't you let me go down in my dreams?
And rockabye sweet baby James.”

James Taylor (1948) American singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Sweet Baby James"
Song lyrics, Sweet Baby James (1970)

Women, Dreams, Color, Beer

“Be serious. Folk songs are serious. That's what Pete Seeger told me. "Arlo, I only wanna tell you one thing. Folk songs are serious."”

Arlo Guthrie (1947) American folk singer

And I said "Right."
Spoken on the Track "The Story of Reuben Clamzo" on the album One Night.

“I love Gloria Estefan, though -- she is cool. It's always just been about the music with her and they've been really good fun pop songs and really great ballads. And she's still going strong. She's quite classy and true to her Latin roots.”

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

comments by Welsh singer Charlotte Church, BBC online news (September 26, 2005)
2007, 2008

Love, Music, Strong

“When John Lennon sings, "Oh, my love/For the first time in my life/My eyes are wide open" — these songs have an intimacy for me that's not just between people, I realize now, not just sexual intimacy. A spiritual intimacy.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

Rolling Stone interview (2005)

Love, Life, People, Singing

“No more, America, in mournful strain
Of wrongs, and grievance unredress'd complain,
No longer shalt thou dread the iron chain,
Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand
Had made, and with it meant t' enslave the land.
Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song,
Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,
Whence flow these wishes for the common good,
By feeling hearts alone best understood,
I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
Was snatch'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat:
What pangs excruciating must molest,
What sorrows labour in my parent's breast?
Steel'd was that soul and by no misery mov'd
That from a father seiz'd his babe belov'd:
Such, such my case. And can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?”

Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784) American poet

"To The Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth" st. 2-3, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773)

Love, Life, Fate, Happiness

“And sings a solitary song
That whistles in the wind.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Lucy Gray, or Solitude, st. 16 (1799).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

Singing

“We had one night where I wanted a bunch of percussion noises at the end of song. We went into this room with three cases of percussion. Everybody just grabbed different shakers and things and was just throwing them around.
A few of the guys in the band got a little carried away and I just remember looking up and somebody was running into a wall. Another guy was leaping head first about three of four feet in the air. But other than that it was pretty sedated.”

Beck (1970) American Musician (b.1970)

The Aquarian Weekly, 15 December 1999

Guy, Night

“I like the heat the tenderness the edible the lusciousness the song of a single person the bathtub full of water to bathe myself beneath the water. I like Ucello, Grunewald, Ingres, the drawings and sketches for paintings of Seurat and that man [=Pablo Picasso ]. I measure all things by weight.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

1942 - 1948
Source: text for MoMA, describing the 'Garden in Sochi' - series, 26 June 1942

Water, Drawing, Painting, Personality

“I could write songs as bad as Wham's if I really felt the urge to, but what's the point? (The Hit magazine 1985)”

Robert Smith (musician) (1959) English singer, songwriter and musician

“In the garden of tabloid delight, there is always a clean towel and another song.”

Lewis H. Lapham (1935) American journalist

In The Garden Of Tabloid Delight, p. 195
Waiting For The Barbarians (1997)

“I have a faculty of memorizing any song or poem as I hear it, many, especially the old Scotch and Irish ballads I heard my grandmother sing when I was but a child.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to Robert W. Gordon (February 15, 1926)
Letters

Singing

“p>Dear Land of Flowers, forgive me!—that I took
These snatches from thy glittering wealth of song,
And twisted to the uses of a book
Strains that to alien harps can ne'er belong.Thy gems shine purer in their native bed
Concealed, beyond the pry of vulgar eyes;
And there, through labyrinths of language led,
The patient student grasps the glowing prize.Yet many, in their race toward other goals,
May joy to feel, albeit at second-hand,
Some far faint heart-throb of poetic souls
Whose breath makes incense in the Flowery Land.”

Herbert Giles (1845–1935) British sinologist and diplomat

Chinese Poetry in English Verse http://library.umac.mo/ebooks/b25541080.pdf, Dedication (dated October 1898)

Books, Feeling, Soul, Flowers

“New Song rapidly accumulated a nucleus of talent, and its best-known group was Els Setze Jutges, The Sixteen Judges, whose odd-sounding name came from a phrase used as a password by Catalan patriot troops during the rising against and occupation army in 1640 during the Reapers' War: "Setze jutges d'un jutjat menjen fetge d'un penjat" ("Sixteen judges on a tribunal eat the liver of a hanged man"). No lisping Castilian, it was believed, could pronounce this barrage of fricatives.”

Robert Hughes (1938–2012) Australian critic, historian, writer

Page 11
Barcelona (1992)

War

“Fierce warres and faithfull loves shall moralize my song.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Introduction, stanza 1
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I

Love

“One of the loveliest daughters of that land,
Divinest Greece! that taught the painter's hand
To give eternity to loveliness;
One of those dark-eyed maids, to whom belong
The glory and the beauty of each Song
Thy poets breathed, for it was theirs to bless
With life the pencil and the lyre's dreams,
Giving reality to visioned gleams
Of bright divinities.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Leander and Hero from The London Literary Gazette (22nd February 1823)
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Life, Beauty, Dreams, Reality

“And I made a rural pen,
And I stained the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Introduction, st. 5
1780s, Songs of Innocence (1789–1790)

Happiness, Water, Joy

“I am yours. If you feed me garbage,
I will sing a song of garbage.
This is a hymn.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

"Pig Song" http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=21982 Selected Poems 1965-1975 (1976)

Singing

“On a prayer,
In a song,
I hear your voice,
And it keeps me hanging on.
Oh, raining down, against the wind,
I'm reaching out,
'Till we reach the circle's end.
When you come back to me again.”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

When You Come Back to Me Again, written by Jenny Yates and G. Brooks.
Song lyrics, Scarecrow (2001)

“The song of the wind singer will set you free.”

William Nicholson (1948) British screenwriter, playwright and novelist

Source: The "Wind on Fire" Trilogy (2000-2003), The Wind Singer (Book 1), p. 77

“Trying to find a peaceful song”

Ryan Adams (1974) American alt-country/rock singer-songwriter

Peaceful Valley
29 (2005)

Peace

“These are the sort of things that push you on in music — the curiosity, a passion for new ideas. It's important to keep restoring that, and at the same time, hold on to the core things about music that whenever you pick the simplest form of instrument; guitar or piano, you can find a song that's worthwhile.”

Elvis Costello (1954) English singer-songwriter

dig interview (2004)

Music, Idea, Passion, Time

“What should be most significant to us are not physical artifacts, but the meaning they embody. …whenever we create paintings, songs, poems, books, computer programs—or ideas in the minds of children—we do something of this sort.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

Children, Books, Idea, Painting

“I put one on the turntable and when the needle dropped, I was stunned — didn't know if I was stoned or straight… All these songs together, one after another made my head spin. It made me want to gasp. It was like the land parted.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Referring to the first Woody Guthrie record he ever heard, p. 243
Chronicles: Vol. One (2004)

Parting

“There is a world of visual beauty open to the one willing to undergo the practice and striving necessary to the understanding of its language.
This world is a important as culturally as is the world of words or of music. My ideal is to form and to paint as Schubert sings his songs and as Beethoven creates his world in sounds. That is to say, creation of one’s own inner world through the same human and artistic discipline.
An inner sensation can find external expression only through spiritual realization.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Painting and Culture' p. 58
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

World, Beauty, Music, Understanding

“The song cycle is the most original musical form created in the first half of the nineteenth century. It most clearly embodies the Romantic conception of experience as a gradual unfolding and illumination of reality in place of the Classical insistence on an initial clarity. The form of Schubert's song cycle is not less precise than that of a Classical sonata, but its precision is only gradually comprehended as it unfolds.”

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

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 3 : Mountains and Song Cycles

Music, Reality

“My songs always sound a lot better in person than they do on the record.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

The Rolling Stone Interview: Bob Dylan http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bob-dylan-talks-a-raw-and-extensive-first-rolling-stone-interview-19691129 (29 November 1969)

Personality

“To what may youth's first joyance be compared?
To daylight, and the glad song of the lark
Bursting together, — to a sudden gush
Of perfume, till the giddy senses link
With overmuch delight,— a dream,— a tale
Of Paradise, told in fair poesy.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(13th December 1823) Poetic Sketches. Fourth Series. Sketch V.— The Island.
The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Youth, Dreams, Sense

“The song ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’ was written speciﬁcally for me, but they had one line that I wouldn’t sing. It was ‘What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and throw tomatoes at me?’ I said, ‘There’s not a chance in hell am I going to sing this line,’ because we still had lots of really deep memories of the kids throwing jelly beans and toys on stage; and I thought that that if we ever did get out there again, I was not going to be bombarded with tomatoes.”

Ringo Starr (1940) British musician, former member of the Beatles

The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 242

Hell, Memory, Singing, Chance

“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

“Oh, that's a good question because what I would consider essential may be different than what my record company and the fans might have in mind. But when you do a retrospective of 20 years like this (album) and realize that you had so many hit singles, it's really an honor. There's a couple of songs that I wrote, one is called "Along Came You" for my daughter Emily; and the other, "Nayib's Song (I Am Here for Your) for my son. Both are in the 'slow disc.' I put them in even if they were not singles or hits because for me my being a mother is an essesntial part of who I am."”

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

answer to question "The title of your new album is "The Essential Gloria Estefan. What is the essential Gloria Estefan?"
2006

Question, Parting, Daughters

“My experience of the original Edison phonograph goes back to the period when it was first introduced into this country. In fact, I have good reason to believe that I was among the very first persons in London to make a vocal record, though I never received a copy of it, and if I did it got lost long ago. It must have been in 1881 or 1882, and the place where the deed was done was on the first floor of a shop in Hatton Garden, where I had been invited to listen to the wonderful new invention. To begin with, I heard pieces both in song and speech produced by the friction of a needle against a revolving cylinder, or spool, fixed in what looked like a musical box. It sounded to my ear like someone singing about half a mile away, or talking at the other end of a big hall; but the effect was rather pleasant, save for a peculiar nasal quality wholly due to the mechanism, though there was little of the scratching which later was a prominent feature of the flat disc. Recording for that primitive machine was a comparatively simple matter. I had to keep my mouth about six inches away from the horn and remember not to make my voice too loud if I wanted anything approximating to a clear reproduction; that was all. When it was played over to me and I heard my own voice for the first time, one or two friends who were present said that it sounded rather like mine; others declared that they would never have recognised it. I daresay both opinions were correct.”

Herman Klein (1856–1934) British musical critic journalist and singing teacher

The Gramophone magazine, December 1933

Music, Singing, Time, Personality

“My voice in combination with the harp - which, by the way, I use because I've played it my entire life, not to make some statement about the harp - somehow has … coloured people's interpretations of the music and projected an idea of childlike or fairytale quality or innocence. Which sometimes prevents people from listening to the songs the way I would like them to be listened to.”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

Sydney Morning Herald, 10 October 2005

Life, People, Music, Way

“So is the song of life being sung/ By us and by all the living beings/ A melodious and harmonious song,/ Where the singer loses her own self/ And absorbs in the wonderful harmony of the song!/ An almost ecstatic experience.”

Kuruvilla Pandikattu (1957) Indian philosopher

Life: Relish It!
Life: Relish It! (2012)

Life

“There is no rope can strangle song
And not for long death takes his toll.
No prison bars can dim the stars
Nor quicklime eat the living soul.”

Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918) American poet, editor, literary critic, soldier

"Easter Week"
Main Street and Other Poems (1917)

Death, Soul, Star

“[Ramsay MacDonald was] a man of great stature, capable of inspiring massive affection and massive attack—a man who created and led a great party and who has become a legend in that party equally for the manner of his leaving it as for the years he gave its creation. … They drew their inspiration from Merrie England and dry statistics, they sang their widely differing battle songs, and Ramsay MacDonald had to fashion from the strains of Edward Carpenter's 'England Arise', from the 'Internationale', from 'Jerusalem', from the 'Red Flag', from 'These Things Shall Be', a new harmony. In 1906 in MacDonald's fortieth year, he saw the victory—the dawn of the new era.”

Harold Wilson (1916–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at a luncheon in the House of Commons to commemorate the centenary of Ramsay MacDonald's birth (12 October 1966), quoted in The Times (13 October 1966), p. 12.
Prime Minister

Fashion, Victory

“I wanted your songs.
You wanted my songs more than you wanted my happiness. So you took my happiness, and stole my songs.”

Orson Scott Card Songmaster

Songmaster (1979)

Happiness

“If I fuckin' die without having written two, three, or four brilliant rock songs… I don't know why I lived my life.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

Remarks about her ambitions early in her career (1991), Not Bad for a Girl documentary (1995)
1991–1995

Life

“Such a price
The Gods exact for song;
To become what we sing.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

" The Strayed Reveller to Ulysses http://www.poetry-archive.com/a/the_strayed_reveller_to_ulysses.html"

God, Singing

“What is our life but a succession of preludes to that unknown song whose first solemn note is sounded by death?”

Alphonse de Lamartine book Méditations poétiques

Méditations Poétiques (1820), Second series, Sermon 15

Life, Death, Success

“Basically, the whole thing of the project is to take it back to my old sound, the old DJ Paul sound. Before Three 6 Mafia when I was just DJ Paul and it was just me and my brother Lord Infamous. It was like a mix of songs and it was either me or members of my crew and some of it would be my signature “Crunkstrumentals” which would be instrumentals with crunk chants and sampled hooks and this and that on it. I brought those back a little bit on my last album Yots (Year Of The Six) Pt. 2 that dropped last quarter of last year, 2016. So, there will be more of those on there, like I said it’s just the original OG Paul sound that’s what the fans been asking for and I see that what a lot of people are back into these days, there using that old three six sounds and a lot of people are sampling it and clear samples from me. They sampled the creator it takes the king to bring it back himself. I never left it alone, to be honest with you, but I just didn’t do full albums of it. It would just be a track on my albums or mixtapes, not a single but this whole Volume 17 mixtape is going to be like that.”

DJ Paul (1977) American rapper and record producer

Interview with Three 6 Mafia Founder DJ Paul http://therapfest.com/behind-lyrics-interview-three-6-mafias-founder-dj-paul/

People

“From a magician's midnight sleeve
the radio-singers
distribute all their love-songs
over the dew-wet lawns.”

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) American poet

Poem: Late Air

Love

“The lark is with triumphant song
Singing the rose-touched clouds among:
'Tis there that lighted song has birth,
What hath such hymn to do with earth?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Birth, Light, Singing

“I've seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you've gone through all that, the girl's got up and left! You're much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you're connected with about two feet of headphone cable.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

When asked whether he was concerned over Microsoft Zune's wireless capability, as a product competing with Apple's iPod, as quoted in Newsweek (14 October 2006)
2000s

Girl, Time, Personality

“She slides in and you rode down Main Street, you turn right when that red light turns green.
Sun sets now, you're half way to heaven.
She picks a song, you turn it up to 11, you say "Do you wanna?" and she says "Hell yeah." So you hit the party, all your buddies are jealous.
Someday, you'll be looking back on your life at the memories, this is gonna be one of those nights.”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

One of Those Nights
Song lyrics, Two Lanes of Freedom (2013)

Life, Way, Hell, Light

Quotes about song page 8

Quotes about song
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