I'd like to do a completely off-the-wall collaboration. I would like one of my songs to be the hook to a rap song. That would be so much fun!
Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.
I work so I don't need to make rent through my songs, and I think if more people engaged with music without needing it to provide for their welfare, you're not beholden to anyone.
I find writing songs hard, because it does not come naturally to me. I never set out to be a songwriter or a singer.
On the first few albums the songs would grow into strange shapes.
I think the true test of a pop song, for me, and I've talked to a lot of other writers about this, is you take your demo, you pop it in your car and you drive down Sunset Blvd. to Santa Monica, and that's the Hollywood car test.
I do not know who sings my songs Before they are sung by me.
The songs of our ancestors are also the songs of our children
To me, the lyrics of the song define the kind of style it is.
We can't forget what happened on May 4th, 1970, when four students gave up their lives because they had the American constitutional right of peaceful protest. They gave up their lives. And to sing that song in that spot on that anniversary was very emotional for us.
You can drink pickle juice and imitate gorillas and do silly dances and sing stupid songs and wear funny hats and be as imperfect as you please and still be a good person. Good people are hard to find nowadays. And they're a lot more fun than perfect people any day of the week.
I write songs all the time in my room. I play them for my friends and family.
I put out Imaginaryland, I heard a lot of, "Oh she's copying Laurie Anderson," and I was like, wait. . . but I don't know her music! Maybe - didn't she have a song called "Superman"?
Walls have ears. Doors have eyes. Trees have voices. Beasts tell lies. Beware the rain. Beware the snow. Beware the man You think you know. -Songs of Sapphique
Yes, I did lock myself in my room for about two years and write some songs and things like that. But I don't feel like I missed out on a whole lot.
Name ten songs you want to hear again before you die, get all of your friends together and scream them. Because right now all you have is time, but someday that time will run out. That's the only thing you can be absolutely certain about.
When you play guitar you are drawing a frame around a moment and saying to the listener, 'Here is how I want you to experience this. How you begin and end a solo is framing, How you structure a song is framing, how you present yourself onstage is framing. See every corner, not just the center, framing should heighten the impact of the art and give clarity to your vision.
I recall this sergeant's informing me and my "room-mates" of this rather deplorable fact the army didn't have any official, excuse me, didn't have no official song and suggested that we work on this in our copious free time.
The songs themselves do broaden out as time passes and take on subtly different meanings, take on more meaning, I find.
. . . Surely, we must renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.