Quotes about song
page 9

Bouck White photo
Shepard Smith photo

“J. Lo's new song 'Jenny From the Block', all about Lopez' roots. About how she's still a neighborhood gal at heart. But folks from that street in New York, the Bronx section, sound more likely to give her a curb job than a blow job. Or, uh. A block party. […] Sorry about that slip-up there. I have no idea how that happened, but it won't happen again. And that's your news and the G Block as Fox reports this Monday, November the 4th, 2002.”

Shepard Smith (1964) television news anchor from the United States

"The G Block" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra7MTconlEE (November 4, 2002), Fox Report, Fox News. As quoted in "Trading places" https://web.archive.org/web/20140820072850/http://www.salon.com/2002/11/12/nptues_108/ (November 12, 2002), by Amy Reiter, Salon, Salon Media Group, Inc.
2000s

“There is much to weep about. But it is a sin to permit our tears to drown out our song of gratitude and joy in the gift of creation.”

Richard John Neuhaus (1936–2009) Canadian-American Christian writer

"Wild Moralists in the Animal Kingdom" https://www.firstthings.com/article/2003/04/wild-moralists-in-the-animal-kingdom, in First Things (April 2003).

Jean Toomer photo
Rufus Wainwright photo
Ryan Adams photo
Rosa Luxemburg photo
George W. Bush photo
George Harrison photo

“If you're listening to this song
You may think the chords are going wrong
But they're not
We just wrote it like that”

George Harrison (1943–2001) British musician, former member of the Beatles

Only a Northern Song (1967)
Lyrics

Geddy Lee photo
Elton John photo
Bob Dylan photo

“I am a writer an a singer of the words I write I am no speaker nor any politician an my songs speak for me because I write them in the confinement of my own mind an have t cope with no one except my own self.”

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

Letter sent to the ECLC after Dylan received the Tom Paine Award at the Bill of Rights dinner on December 13, 1963, as reported in "Mr. Dylan Regrets" http://www.hotpress.com/Bob-Dylan/music/interviews/Mr-Dylan-Regrets/2836632.html by Niall Stokes, Hot Press (11 November 2005)

Arlo Guthrie photo

“We went back, afterward, after the show was over that night, I took my kids backstage and said, "You know what? I know my dad's songs…"”

Arlo Guthrie (1947) American folk singer

Talking about an unsuccessful performance of Alice's Restaurant Massacre, and how his children who were onstage for the performance did not know how to help him. (Live in Sydney)

Brandon Flowers photo

“What song do I hate? I think "Daughters," by John Mayer, would be a good candidate. I don't know why he bugs me so bad."”

Brandon Flowers (1981) American indie rock singer

Brandon Flowers on what song would be playing if he went to hell. (2005) ( Rolling Stone Magazine http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7235375/thekillers?pageid=rs.Artistcage&pageregion=triple3)

“[M]ost of the pop music out today I consider to have become a homogenized product. It gets to the point that so much of what is going on is copying everything else that is out, because there is a businessman that knows what he has just sold millions of records with, and so he keeps trying to get every group that comes in to do it, you know. You know, you approach somebody who is well known as a booker or manager, and the first remark will be, "I love what you do, but you would have to change this to this, and that to that, and this to this, in order for me to be able to sell it." Well, by the time you've changed that, of course, it's like everything else that is out there. And when Prince first started sending me songs, I thought maybe that by the time I had done four arrangements that I would have started getting some sort of a repetitive something or other. I have been extremely surprised to find that each one is as different from the last as the next one is going to be different. Some of them are like little art songs. Some of them have dealt with heavy things like friendship and death. I mean, death of a friend. And yet, some of them are as baudy as…”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Radio interview, circa 1985, by Ben Sidran, as quoted in Talking Jazz With Ben Sidran, Volume 1: The Rhythm Section https://books.google.com/books?id=O3hZDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT456 (1992, 2006, 2014)

“Not only the qualitative world bursts forth in song, but so does the quantitative.”

Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903–1993) American theologian

Source: Halakhic Man (1983), p. 84

Ai Weiwei photo
Langston Hughes photo
Hilary Duff photo

“I love the song ["Weird"] too. It is really weird when you listen to the beat and the words. It's about someone that she's still obsessed with. And everything he does is like he says this, but he does this. And he does this but he says this. It's all twisted around and backwards. She's not really sure who he is or what he does, but she likes it.”

Hilary Duff (1987) American actress and singer

"Hilary Duff comes clean" http://www.hilaryontheweb.com/news/2005/january/21012005_Hilary%20Duff%20comes%20clean.html. News Times. January 21 2005. Retrieved October 25 2006.
On "Weird", a song from Hilary Duff (2004).

Billy Joel photo
Norodom Sihanouk photo
Ernest Gellner photo
Pete Doherty photo
Giorgio de Chirico photo
Bono photo

“How long, how long must we sing this song?”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

"Sunday Bloody Sunday"
Lyrics, War (1983)

Bayard Taylor photo

“Knowledge alone is the being of Nature,
Giving a soul to her manifold features,
Lighting through paths of the primitive darkness,
The footsteps of Truth and the vision of Song.”

Bayard Taylor (1825–1878) United States poet, novelist and travel writer

Kilimandjaro (1852), Stanza 2; later published in The Poetical Works of Bayard Taylor (1907), p. 73.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
John Dryden photo
Gay Talese photo
Ravi Shankar photo
Tom Lehrer photo
Paul Simon photo

“Two disappointed believers
Two people playing the game
Negotiations and love songs
Are often mistaken for one and the same.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Train In The Distance
Song lyrics, Hearts and Bones (1983)

John Updike photo

“[Harry listening to car radio] …he resents being made to realise, this late, that the songs of his life were as moronic as the rock the brainless kids now feed on, or the Sixties and Seventies stuff that Nelson gobbled up – all of it designed for empty heads and overheated hormones, an ocean white with foam, and listening to it now is like trying to eat a double banana split the way he used to. It's all disposable, cooked up to turn a quick profit. They lead us down the garden path, the music manufacturers, then turn around and lead the next generation down with a slightly different flavour of glop.
Rabbit feels betrayed. He was reared in a world where war was not strange but change was: the world stood still so you could grow up in it. He knows when the bottom fell out. When they closed down Kroll's, Kroll's that had stood in the centre of Brewer all those years, bigger than a church, older than a courthouse, right at the head of Weiser Square there,… […] So when the system just upped one summer and decided to close Kroll's down, just because shoppers had stopped coming in because the downtown had become frightening to white people, Rabbit realised the world was not solid and benign, it was a shabby set of temporary arrangements rigged up for the time being, all for the sake of money. You just passed through, and they milked you for what you were worth, mostly when you were young and gullible. If Kroll's could go, the courthouse could go, the banks could go. When the money stopped, they could close down God himself.”

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Omar Khayyám photo

“The Hokey Pokey. Think about it. At the end of the song, what do we learn? What is it all about?… You put your whole self in!”

Martin de Maat (1949–2001) American theatre director

As quoted in "Community Mourns the Death of Martin de Maat" by Lisa Lewis (2 March 2001)

Pete Doherty photo
Philip K. Dick photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Beck photo
Philip Sidney photo

“Certainly, I must confess my own barbarousness, I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet.”

Philip Sidney (1554–1586) English diplomat

Page 99.
The old song is usually known as "The Ballad of Chevy Chase" or "The Hunting of the Cheviot".
An Apology of Poetry, or The Defence of Poesy (1595)

“Nepotism. My brother’s son, André Fischer, was the drummer in the band Rufus, with Chaka Khan. Apparently, the arrangements I made for their early records were appreciated, so in the following years I was hired almost exclusively by black artists. I am surprised that my arrangements are now considered one of the prerequisites for a hit album. People feel that they make a song sound almost classical.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

On how a white American of German extraction became the orchestral 'sweetener' of choice for R&B artists, as quoted in "Clare Fischer: The Best Kept Secret in Jazz" http://www.artistinterviews.eu/?page_id=5&parent_id=22/

Andrew Sega photo

“Unfortunately Sting's jazz work isn't nearly as inventive as his rock songs.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Static Line interview, 1998

Gloria Estefan photo
Tom Robbins photo
George Eliot photo
Max Stirner photo
Czeslaw Milosz photo

“Only when two times, two forms are drawn
Together and their legibility
Disturbed, do you see that immortality
Is not very different from the present
And is for its sake. You pick a fragment
Of grenade which pierced the body of a song
On Daphnis and Chloe.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"A Book in the Ruins" (1941), trans. Renata Gorczynski and Robert Hass
Rescue (1945)

Amy Poehler photo

“Britney Spears is recording a rap song about the recent controversies in her life. "I can't wait to hear that!", said no one.”

Amy Poehler (1971) American actress

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/04/04bupdate.phtml
Weekend Update samples

Billy Joel photo
Bon Scott photo

“The scariest thing in it may be the way the clock radio has a way of turning itself on, loudly, of its own accord. The song is always the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun."”

Stephanie Zacharek (1963) American film critic

Now that's horror.
Review http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2007/06/22/1408/index.html of 1408 (2007)

Gloria Estefan photo

“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

Peter Gabriel photo
James Macpherson photo
Bob Dylan photo

“But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’.”

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

Song lyrics, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall

Charles Seeger photo
Johannes Grenzfurthner photo

“I think my great book is Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song.”

Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000) Philosopher

In Herbert F. Vetter, " Not The Average Philosopher http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/hartshorne.html", Harvard Magazine, May/June 1997, Volume 99, Number 5. Vetter was surprised by this, given Hartshorne's dozens of substantial books on theology.

Patsy Cline photo
Waylon Jennings photo

“They oughtta give me the Wurlitzer Prize
For all the silver I let slide down the slot.
Playin' those songs sung blue
That help me remember you.
I don't wanna get over you.”

Waylon Jennings (1937–2002) American country music singer, songwriter, and musician

The Wurlitzer Prize (I Don't Want to Get Over You) (1977).
Song lyrics

William Makepeace Thackeray photo

“Then sing as Martin Luther sang,
As Doctor Martin Luther sang,
“Who loves not wine, woman and song,
He is a fool his whole life long.””

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) novelist

A Credo, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Basshunter photo

“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

Gloria Estefan photo
Basshunter photo
Nathaniel Hawthorne photo

“In heaven, all ordinary thought is higher and more melodious than Milton's song. Then, would he add another verse to any strain that he had left unfinished here?”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

“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/

Homér photo
Hayley Jensen photo
Robert Barron (bishop) photo
Bob Dylan photo

“Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song,
'Bout a funny ol' world that's a-comin' along
Seems sick an' it's hungry, it's tired an' it's torn
It looks like it's a-dyin' an' it's hardly been born”

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

Song lyrics, Bob Dylan (1962), Song to Woody

Bernard Cornwell photo
Kid Cudi photo
Richard Wilbur photo

“A thrush, because I'd been wrong,
Burst rightly into song
In a world not vague, not lonely,
Not governed by me only.”

Richard Wilbur (1921–2017) American poet

"Having Misidentified a Wild-Flower"

Clement of Alexandria photo

“To me, therefore, that Thracian Orpheus, that Theban, and that Methymnaean,--men, and yet unworthy of the name,--seem to have been deceivers, who, under the pretence of poetry corrupting human life, possessed by a spirit of artful sorcery for purposes of destruction, celebrating crimes in their orgies, and making human woes the materials of religious worship, were the first to entice men to idols; nay, to build up the stupidity of the nations with blocks of wood and stone,--that is, statues and images,--subjecting to the yoke of extremest bondage the truly noble freedom of those who lived as free citizens under heaven by their songs and incantations. But not such is my song, which has come to loose, and that speedily, the bitter bondage of tyrannizing demons; and leading us back to the mild and loving yoke of piety, recalls to heaven those that had been cast prostrate to the earth. It alone has tamed men, the most intractable of animals; the frivolous among them answering to the fowls of the air, deceivers to reptiles, the irascible to lions, the voluptuous to swine, the rapacious to wolves. The silly are stocks and stones, and still more senseless than stones is a man who is steeped in ignorance. As our witness, let us adduce the voice of prophecy accordant with truth, and bewailing those who are crushed in ignorance and folly: "For God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham;" and He, commiserating their great ignorance and hardness of heart who are petrified against the truth, has raised up a seed of piety, sensitive to virtue, of those stones--of the nations, that is, who trusted in stones. Again, therefore, some venomous and false hypocrites, who plotted against righteousness, he once called "a brood of vipers."”

Clement of Alexandria (150–215) Christian theologian

But if one of those serpents even is willing to repent, and follows the Word, he becomes a man of God.
Exhortation to the Heathen

Francis Picabia photo
Rachel Trachtenburg photo

“It's fun hitting on the drums and singing songs.”

Rachel Trachtenburg (1993) American musician

Rachel on performing.
Off & On Broadway documentary (2006)

Beck photo
Avner Strauss photo
Maddox photo

“"This sounds like the soundtrack of a coma." (On U2's song One Step Closer)”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

The Best Page in the Universe

Herbert Read photo

“True poetry was never speech, but always song.”

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

What is a Poem - Endword - Selected Poems (1926)

Donald Barthelme photo
Paul Verlaine photo

“Let's hear the music first and foremost,
And that means no more one-two-one-twos…
Something more vague instead, something lighter
Dissolving in air, weightless as air.
When you choose your words, no need to search
In strict dictionaries for pinpoint
Definitions. Better the subtle
And heady Songs of Imprecision.”

Paul Verlaine (1844–1896) French poet

De la musique avant toute chose,
Et pour cela préfère l'Impair
Plus vague et plus soluble dans l'air
Sans rien en lui qui pèse ou qui pose.
Il faut aussi que tu n'ailles point
Choisir tes mots sans quelque méprise:
Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise
Où l'Indécis au Précis se joint.
Source: "Art poétique", from Jadis et naguère (1884), Line 1; Sorrell p. 123

Sara Teasdale photo

“Make songs for Death as you would sing to Love —
But you will not assuage him. He alone
Of all the gods will take no gifts from men.”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"Erinna"
Helen of Troy and Other Poems (1911)

A. C. Benson photo
Hartley Coleridge photo
Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield photo

“Unlike my subject will I frame my song,
It shall be witty, and it shan't be long.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

Epigram on ("Long") Sir Thomas Robinson

Kate Bush photo

“Who knows who wrote that song of summer,
That blackbirds sing at dusk,
This is a song of colour,
Where sands sing in crimson, red and rust,
Then climb into bed and turn to dust.”

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

Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sky of Honey (Disc 2)

Amit Ray photo
Anastacia photo
Carlos Drummond de Andrade photo

“p>I'm making a song
where my mother and all mothers
will see themselves mirrored,
a song that speaks like two eyes.I'm walking on a road
that runs through many countries.
They may not see me, but I see
and salute old friends.I'm spreading a secret
like a man who loves or smiles.
Affection seeks affection
in the most natural way.My life, our lives,
form a single diamond.
I've learned new words
and made others more beautiful.I'm making a song
for waking up men
and putting children to sleep.”

Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902–1987) Brazilian poet

<p>Eu preparo uma canção
em que minha mãe se reconheça,
todas as mães se reconheçam,
e que fale como dois olhos.</p><p>Caminho por uma rua
que passa em muitos países.
Se não me vêem, eu vejo
e saúdo velhos amigos.</p><p>Eu distribuo um segredo
como quem ama ou sorri.
No jeito mais natural
dois carinhos se procuram.</p><p>Minha vida, nossas vidas
formam um só diamante.
Aprendi novas palavras
e tornei outras mais belas.</p><p>Eu preparo uma canção
que faça acordar os homens
e adormecer as crianças.</p>
"Canção amiga" ["I'm Making a Song"]
Novos Poemas [New Poems] (1948)