Quotes & Sayings About Lyrics Of Songs

If you listen to most of my songs, the lyrics are pretty kind of dark, but I like to put it behind happy music because then it evens it out ... I'm really happy, actually. Obviously I have my bad moments, but I always challenge myself to not put negativity out there because there's already enough. — Shamir

I've always been a fan of country music. It's America's music - I love the songs, love the lyrics. — Charles Koppelman

I never wrote music or arranged songs or lyrics when I was under the influence of anything but coffee. That's not gone away. — Chris Cornell

We're going to sing about things that matter to us. The balancing act is to present these ideas but also make the music exciting and sort of fun enough that even if you're not paying attention to the lyrics, you might still like the songs anyway. That's the idea. — Conor Oberst

I find I always throw limbs here and there in my lyrics. I kind of put my physical self into the songs. — Martina Sorbara

A lot of Woody Guthrie's songs were taken from other songs. He would rework the melody and lyrics, and all of a sudden it was a Woody Guthrie song. — John Mellencamp

I've always written poetry and lyrics. My first husband, who was a musician, we wrote a bunch of songs together. — P. J. Soles

You were playing the song we like..."
"That was the song?" A smile lit his face.
"Yes. What was it?" I asked
"Bob Dylan."
"What?!" I wailed. "I thought it was going to be Beethoven or something. Now I know I'm white trash."
Wilson bopped me on the head with his bow. "It's called 'Make You Feel my Love.' It's one of my favorite songs. I embellish it a bit, but it's all Dylan, definitely not Mozart. The lyrics are brilliant. Listen." Wilson sang softly as he played. His voice was as rich as the moaning cello .
"Of course," I said sourly.
"What?" Wilson stopped, startled.
"You can sing. You have a beautiful voice. I can't even pretend that you suck. Why can't you suck at something? It's so unfair."
"You clearly haven't seen me try to carve something intricate and beautiful out of a tree stump," Wilson said dryly, and started playing again. — Amy Harmon

I write lyrics everyday as I go. I'm always taking notes in my phone whenever I am inspired by something. Most of my writing starts out as poetry before I put it into songs. — Vic Fuentes

I like songs that have like a little bit of quirkiness to them. What I like to do with songs, is kind of throw a little curveball in the lyrics or in the arrangement, to kind of give it a little twist to it. — John Legend

Instead of singing in the shower, I would write out the lyrics of my favourite songs, the ink would turn the water blue or red or green, and the music would run down my legs. — Jonathan Safran Foer

People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words. — Brian Eno

I change lyrics to the songs all the time, too. I don't know if it matters in a lot of ways because you can take what you want from it. — Matt Corby

It's just like an idea, like a chorus, and then we just jam on it - it happens in loads of different ways. The best songs I find always come from the subconscious, like when you don't think. Not to be pretentious about it, but usually songs just blurt out rather than thinking about it. I never write lyrics and then do a song, I find that really hard - that's like a real skill. — Luke Pritchard

I live alone in a house, so for me it's very good to just be able to re-charge and just disappear and escape from reality and that's usually when I write most of my lyrics and my songs. It's a very happy productive place. — Adam Young

'Appetite for Destruction' was the only thing written with lyrics and melody fitting the guitar parts at the same time. After that, I got a barrage of guitar songs that I was supposed to put words to, and I don't know if that was the best thing for Guns. — Axl Rose

Sometimes I need to reject the music proposed for my songs because the musicians misunderstand that the Fanny Crosby who once wrote for the people in the saloons has merely changed the lyrics. Oh my no. The church must never sing it's songs to the melodies of the world. — Fanny Crosby

I don't have any favourite lyrics. Honestly, all of them I love 'em to death - it's the same with songs. I don't have just one favourite lyric, I love them all. — ASAP Rocky

No matter what I do, my songs come out in a certain style, and if that sounds like Dead Kennedys, then there's probably a reason for it. Don't forget, I wrote most of those songs, music and lyrics. — Jello Biafra

I wrote all the lyrics on 'Good Vibrations' and most of them in 'Kokomo.' 'Kokomo' was extremely popular and fun to sing - it's probably one of the bigger sing-along songs in our show. But then 'Help Me Rhonda,' 'Surfin' USA' and 'California Girls' and 'I Get Around' and 'Fun, Fun, Fun' are great songs as well. — Mike Love

Too many times you come across lyrics that sound like you've heard them before or you can't really relate to them. And I think that I write songs that sound fresh and sensual in kind of a layered, lush way. But I also think that they are real, and that's why I wanted to call the record 'Inside Out.' — Emmy Rossum

I was going on this desert adventure with some friends and we were like, "How amazing would it be to just drag all these mirrors out there?" A lot of times I do things as an impulse and find out my inspirations afterward. Even with songs and lyrics, it can take me years to find out what I was actually trying to do. — Lykke Li

I have a folder that's labeled "The Folder of 24." Inside it are letters from twenty-four people who were actively in the process of planning their suicide, but who stopped and got help - not because of what I wrote on my blog, but because of the amazing response from the community of people who read it and said, "Me too." They were saved by the people who wrote about losing their mother or father or child to suicide and how they'd do anything to go back and convince them not to believe the lies mental illness tells you. They were saved by the people who offered up encouragement and songs and lyrics and poems and talismans and mantras that worked for them and that might work for a stranger in need. There are twenty-four people alive today who are still here because people were brave enough to talk about their struggles, or compassionate enough to convince others of their worth, or who simply said, "I don't understand your illness, but I know that the world is better with you in it. — Jenny Lawson

When I was younger, I was terrified to express anger because it would often kick-start a horrible reaction in the men in my life. So I bit my tongue. I was left to painstakingly deal with the aftermath of my avoidance later in life, in therapy or through the lyrics of my songs. — Alanis Morissette

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

The words we construct, the poems we write and the songs we sing, become the love story of a stranger we have never seen. — M.F. Moonzajer

The music and lyrics of Rodgers & Hammerstein connect seamlessly. Singing those beautiful songs was a joyous experience for me, and one that I will never forget. — Julie Andrews

Just because I said lyrics are a sign of the inability to sing doesn't mean ... A) I believe that, or B) I don't think they're cool. They are cool. Words are great. I sing along with my favorite songs, but when I am drumming and singing, the words become a note that for me. In the process of playing they have more emotional impact as notes then an actual word. — Brian Chippendale

Then his voice resonates over the speakers again. 'A good friend helped me find these lyrics again, and I told her if she ever fell, I'd be there to catch her. She told me if I ever sang this song like I just did, it'd be a success. Well, I'm keeping up my end of the deal. — P.K. Hrezo

I would say the songs that have different lyrics. I always write the music first, and there's a couple of songs on this box set that have different lyrics from what ended up on the final recording. — Billy Joel

I started writing lyrics out of desperation. I was broke and wondering where my next job, my next meal was coming from, although I had had several successful revue songs on Broadway. — Sheldon Harnick

A lot of my fans are young and hip and enjoy my pop album and know the lyrics to those songs as well, which is a real compliment to me. — Idina Menzel

Finally I started really opening up as a songwriter and an interpreter and taking songs from all kind of genres and stripping them down to just lyrics and the story inside the lyrics, and trying to make them really mine. — Lizz Wright

My songs are all about celebrating poignant music. While some of them focus on fun and revelry, they are fortunately backed by powerful lyrics. Put together, the lyrics, tune and my voice strive to take the songs to the next level. — Kailash Kher

My father used to tape 'Top of the Pops' for me every Sunday, and I would sit in my bedroom, write down the lyrics of all of my favourite songs, and sing along. I was always singing in my bedroom with a hairbrush. — Bonnie Tyler

I'm writing a record of comedy songs. I'm doing all these collaborations with artists. I bring them lyrics and they write the music to it. — Margaret Cho

A lot of people listening to music now don't listen to the songs or lyrics at all. They just go, "Good tones ... " and that's it. — Alex Scally

In most of my films I write the music into the script. I'm listening to songs and lyrics that empower the themes of the film. There's a lot of Indigenous music that has not been heard widely and I love the idea of giving that music to the rest of the world. — Warwick Thornton

Roughly 90 percent of songs have mating as their central theme, and this holds true regardless of cultural setting or historical period. — Gad Saad

You cannot taste a song
but you can feel the tune relishing your heart
where strings of music belong. — Munia Khan

I write most of my own lyrics for my album and I am helping to produce some of the songs as well. — Lindsay Lohan

The first set of lyrics for the first songs I ever wrote, which are the ones on 'Pretty Hate Machine,' came from private journal entries that I realized I was writing in lyric form. — Trent Reznor

Every day another miracle
Only death will tear us apart
To sacrifice a life for yours
I'd be the blood of the Lazarus heart
The blood of the Lazarus heart — Sting

Will sat where he was, gazing at the silver bowl in front of him; a white rose was floating in it, and he seemed prepared to stare at it until it went under. In the Kitchen Bridget was still singing one of her awful sad songs; the lyrics drifted in through the door:
"Twas on an evening fair I went to take the air,
I heard a maid making her moan;
Said, 'Saw ye my father? Or ye my mother?
Or saw ye my brother John?
Or saw ye the lad that I love best,
And his name it is Sweet William?"
I may murder her, Tessa thought. Let her make a song about that. — Cassandra Clare

One of the nice things about being in a band is that you depend on each other for ideas, so it's not all up to me to do everything myself. There's always that fear that you'll run out of stuff. The most difficult part for me is writing lyrics, and that starts to get difficult after you've written, like, 120 songs. — Dean Wareham

As a song writer when I first was aware of the Beatles and started, you couldn't avoid hearing it, not that I, I tried. And what, what struck me was not so much the songs or the part of the songs that, that seemed unique to me were, was more melodic at the beginning than, than the lyrics because they were still talking about, you know, I love you, I don't love you and I need you or don't need you. — Jeff Barry

It is perhaps one of those imponderables of life that many people declare their dislike for poetry, yet it surrounds us in the lyrics of the songs and hymns we love, the catchy advertising jingles, in picture books, and remembered snippets from Shakespeare or remembered and much loved verses. " Jeanette O'Hagan 1 May 2017 — Jeanette O'Hagan

Music critics think of lyrics first and don't consider melody but so many songs are lyrically depressing but musically great, and that's why they become classics. — Aloe Blacc

If I said in one of my songs that my English teacher wanted to have sex with me in junior high, all I'm saying, is that I'm not gay, you know? People confuse the lyrics for me speaking my mind. I don't agree with that lifestyle, but if that lifestyle is for you, then it's your business. — Eminem

Since I write the lyrics, I don't want to be pigeonholed into a person who's out there preaching these songs. If you read the lyrics, there isn't a story being set up for you. You have to use your imagination to get the best out of the songs - if you choose to do that. — Linda Perry

Love lyrics have contributed to the general aura of bad mental health in America. — Frank Zappa

My way of communicating with God as a boy (and often even now) was through the lyrics of a song ... So I didn't have the problem some people do who say, "I don't know how to pray." I used the songs to communicate with God ... To me, songs were the telephone to heaven, and I tied up the line quite a bit. — Johnny Cash

I think I have a vested interest in thinking that the lyrics are important, but I think for us it's important that we all write things that mean something to us, and I think we're not really in the business of writing la-la-love-you chart pop songs. It needs to have a personal pulling in the gut for me, to want to write anything about it. — Lauren Mayberry

Walt Disney was a great believer in the use of song to convey story. He was primarily a storyman & story-driven songs were his 'pets.' He always asked what was going on with the song - he hated 'singing heads.' He loved learning about character & motivation thru music & lyrics. — Richard Sherman

I don't think any of our lyrics have ever been erotic in a sexual term, because I haven't really written, touched on, that subject too often. But, uh ... I mean, I suppose they could point the finger at us for violence maybe in certain songs. — Scott Ian

As long as music survives, poetry will never die. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Probably some of the songs I never even really listened to the lyrics. Half of them I'd hear off the radio and was probably singing the wrong words and didn't even know it. — Alan Jackson

Physiological confirmation of such "filling in" by involuntary musical imagery has recently been obtained by William Kelley and his colleagues at Dartmouth, who used functional MRI to scan the auditory cortex while their subjects listened to familiar and unfamiliar songs in which short segments had been replaced by gaps of silence. The silent gaps embedded in familiar songs were not consciously noticed by their subjects, but the researchers observed that these gaps "induced greater activation in the auditory association areas than did silent gaps embedded in unknown songs; this was true for gaps in songs with lyrics and without lyrics. — Oliver Sacks

So while I drove my little and planned his fantasy night of how I was going to give Otter the key to my soul (his words, not mine), I silently panicked and wrote lines of bad poetry. Normally, I am quite adept at writing poems and lyrics to songs I'l never sing, but this stuff was just atrocious. For example:
I love you
You love me
Thank God for that
I'm so happy
And Ty's personal favorite (which he helped me on):
Otter! Otter! Otter!
Don't lead cows to slaughter
I love you and I know
I should've told you soon-a
But you didn't buy the dolphin-safe tuna!
TY asked me if I got the hidden message in his poem. I told him it was loud and clear. — T.J. Klune

I write my own lyrics completely on my own. Sometimes I have people helping me with concepts or like choruses and stuff sometimes, but mostly I write all my own songs by myself, especially the verses and a lot of the choruses. — Big Sean

There's a certain power in vague language, but I started to get more into the idea of really trying to have a discrete thought in the lyrics and to have songs that were about stuff - to try to make things more coherent. — David Longstreth

The only thing that made the music different was that we were taking lyrics to places they had never been before. The thing that makes art interesting is when an artist has incredible pain or incredible rage. The New York bands were much more into their pain, while the English bands were much more into their rage. The Sex Pistols' songs were written out of anger, wheras Johnny was writing songs because he was brokenhearted over Sable... — Legs McNeil

My parents have always had a great sense of humor. And I really appreciate good humor in songs, witty lyrics that sneak up on you and then you listen again, and say: 'That's so funny.' John Prine's songs have always had this really witty tone. — Kacey Musgraves

I made myself famous by writing 'songs' and lyrics about the beauty of the things I did and ugliness, too. — Jack Kerouac

Unfortunately, we are living in an era where plenty of songs with vulgar, objectionable lyrics are also becoming popular. It's a disturbing trend, and I feel really sad when I see small kids dancing to such numbers in television shows. In my career so far, I have refused any song whose lyrics I haven't been comfortable with. — Shreya Ghoshal

Way back in the day, when I first started and had delusions of adequacy as a cartoonist, I would listen to music. When I switched to a career as a writer, I would try to listen to music, but if the songs had lyrics they would get in the way of the words I was trying to write. So I switched to listening to purely instrumental pieces. — Alan Moore

I love lyrics. I've always been averse to the straight lyric idea. I guess a big part of it is, that songs that are literary always turn me off. Because they feel so abstract. Like a song. What is a song? We have to remember what the function of a concert and the function of playing a song for people are. It's all become really abstracted. — Ian Svenonius

There's lots of bands where somebody will write lyrics and somebody else will sing them. It works for a lot of people, but that feels weird to me. I don't mean this in a bad way at all but it just feels fake.. I guess in my heart of hearts, whether the person has a good voice or not I want [the songs] to come from them. I don't know why. — Frank Iero

The Smiths hasn't been equaled. That goes for the composition of the songs, the lyrics, and the performance. — Jeff Buckley

I have a voice that's obviously untrained - and I think untrainable - so I kind of secreted it away for a long time. Actually, I would write songs with lyrics when I was younger, but I would just sing in my head. — Joanna Newsom

I write for myself; I'm trying to keep myself interested in the music. But at the same time, I want to make the songs relatable in a way; I want to keep melodies pretty simple and the lyrics open-ended so that people could maybe relate them to their own life in different ways. Something for everybody to have a piece of. — Mac DeMarco

I only know the lyrics to songs that I listened to between the ages of 11 and 15. — Elizabeth Banks

Composers now just don't have the depth of inspiration for melody. Most of the lyrics of the pop songs you hear today are repetitious. They're almost nursery rhymes, as if written by children - which they are. — Rudy Vallee

Yeah. My singing and my songs were very influenced by all of that. People would come up to me and ask, Is that a Billie Holiday song? I'd say, No, it's my song. The lyrics would be in my style, but the songs would be very jazzy. — Regina Spektor

Most of the time, the lyrics are kind of like my secret messages to my friends or my boyfriend or my mom or my dad. I would never tell them that these songs are about them or which specific lyric is about somebody. Often, when I sit down to write a lyric, it is in the heat of the moment, and something has just happened. — Imogen Heap

The quality of the writing, really. Simple as that. Beautiful words. It's very nice as a singer to do great songs, which have wonderful lyrics and strong feelings underneath the song. — Bryan Ferry

Been a long road to follow
Been there and one tomorrow
Without saying goodbye to yesterday
Are the memories I hold
Still valid?
Or have the tears deluded them..
Something somewhere out there
Is calling ...
Zero Gravity,
What's it like?
Is somebody there
Beyond these heavy aching feet?
Am I going home?
Will I hear someone?
Singin solace to the silent moon
Still the road keeps on telling me
To go on ...
Something is pulling me,
I feel the gravity
Of it all. — Maaya Sakamoto

I'm not afraid to go out on a limb, style-wise or with lyrics. I don't ever want to be afraid to cut those types of songs because radio might not play it. — Lee Ann Womack

There's a whole bunch of unfinished stuff. Then I've got books of lyrics. I find it frustrating to finish a song and not be able to record it ... so I don't write a million songs. — Christine McVie

Two people, two hands, and two songs, in this case "Big Shot" and "Bette Davis Eyes." The lyrics of the two songs provided no commentary, honest or ironic, on the proceedings. They were merely there and always underfoot, the insistent gray muck that was pop culture. It stuck to our shoes and we tracked it through our lives. — Colson Whitehead

Opportunities may come along for you to convert something -something that exists into something that didn't yet. That might be the beginning of it. Sometimes you just want to do things your way, want to see for yourself what lies behind the misty curtain. It's not like you see songs approaching and invite them in. It's not that easy. You want to write songs that are bigger than life. You want to say something about strange things that have happened to you, strange things you have seen. You have to know and understand something and then go past the vernacular. — Bob Dylan

Mimesis has longevity on its side. But Oasis wrote two of the greatest pop songs of all time, each with lyrics that mean less and less the more you think about them. So I'm going to have to go with the Gallagher brothers. — Matthew Zapruder

Some of the fanmail is interesting! Some of it's the lyrics to the songs and stuff, and they'll like, send me their favourite lines, which is cool to ... know what people are liking. Most of them are really cool to read. — Miley Cyrus

I am a big fan of the Gallagher brothers. At Liverpool, they came a few times; they are friends of Steven Gerrard. It was nice to meet them. When I was in Spain, I couldn't speak English, so I couldn't understand the lyrics. When I came to England, I started studying music and trying to understand what my favourite songs said. — Fernando Torres

I get tips from Bob Gaudio. And one of my songs somehow caught the attention of one of my idols, Marty Panzer, who wrote big hits for Barry Manilow. So two guys who inspired me to write lyrics are now teaching me to write. — Erich Bergen

The songwriting style, to me, is superior ... there was a certain amount of joy in it, no matter how sad the song is. You get joy in listening to these Buddy Holly or Roy Orbison sad lyrics. I'm attracted to songs that have balance between the darks and the lights and giving them all equal opportunity. — M. Ward

I love the sad songs with their maudlin, self-deprecating, almost funny lyrics. As an Englishman, they make a lot of sense. — Teddy Thompson

Whenever I sing 'Total Eclipse of the Heart,' the way people sing along with me still excites me. It's one of the songs that audiences know all the lyrics to, and they sing along with me, and it makes me so happy. People also know my songs 'Holding out for a Hero' and 'Lost in France,' and this gives me so much joy on stage. — Bonnie Tyler

So you write to our congressmen
With bleeding pens
Of the sorrow within
And in return they just send
Tickets to the latest Tom Hanks show — Jewel

This was where she belonged with Nur, right here, here in his songs. Here within the lyrics they were intimate, caught in the rythm of his words, proppelled by the substance of his dreams.
These songs would be their story and these lyrics their home. — Leila Aboulela

Can't fight the moment of truth in your lies. — Goo Goo Dolls

The visual side of being a performer or in a band is, to me, as important as the music. I know not everyone shares that same opinion, but when I'm writing songs or working on lyrics or coming up with an idea, I think about videos as I'm in the studio. If I had all the money in the world, I would have the most amazing videos ever, you know? You're saying grandiose, and big; if the song warrants it, I try to push the visuals as far as I can. — Tamaryn

The '60s was a magical time in the music business. So much creativity and talent. I think a lot of it came from the fact that we had grown up before rock n' roll. We listened to all the great songwriters and big bands, songs with great lyrics and melodies. I think that really influenced everybody. — Frankie Valli

When you listen to the music in this film [Despicable Me], it's working on the level of melody, but the other key element is lyrics. There are a number of songs in the film where the lyrics themselves are very much speaking to the essence of what Ted Geisel was setting out to do. — Christopher Meledandri

You float like a feather," sings Radiohead, "In a beautiful world." I've listened several times to the Radiohead songs, because it was nice of Raymond to say he heard a bit of them in what I sang. I'm not sure I hear it myself, but I am pleased and touched. Sometimes that's what you need, just a quick casual word of knowledgeable encouragement. Radiohead reminds me a little of the songs in Garden State soundtrack. Now, that's a soundtrack. They were all songs that Zach Braff liked, so he put them in his movie. And there's that beautiful moment near the beginning where Natalie Portman hands him the headphones and she watches him listen to the song and she smiles her huge, innocent Natalie Portman smile. — Nicholson Baker

When she awoke there was a melody in her head she could not identify or recall ever hearing before. 'Perhaps I made it up,' she thought. Then it came to her - the name of the song and all its lyrics just as she had heard it many times before. She sat on the edge of the bed thinking, 'There aren't any more new songs and I have sung all the ones there are. I have sung them all. I have sung all the songs there are. — Toni Morrison

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

While you're singing something romantic, I can't get the lyrics to 'Love and Marriage' out of my head, and that tune always reminds me of the jingle from Jeopardy. — E.A. Bucchianeri

I used to know all the lyrics to all the songs from 'The Phantom of the Opera.' — Mallory Jansen

I basically try not to waste any lines in any of my songs, and I think the witty phrases and funny lyrics I have bring a smarter sound to college hip-hop. — Mike Stud