Pop Song Quotes & Sayings

Magne Furuholmen is a very dear friend of mine. A-ha are a classic pop band and they've got some brilliant songs. I'd say 'The Living Daylights' was one of my favourite Bond tunes: regardless of it being a Bond song, it stands alone as a great piece of music. — Guy Berryman

My songs are like Bic razors. For fun, for modern consumption. You listen to it, like it, discard it, then on to the next. Disposable pop. — Freddie Mercury

For my money, insecurity, depression, etc, can be healed by way of El Morocco, sad songs at 4am, and the pop of a champagne cork — Elaine Stritch

I am not dogging on non-melodic pop music because I love it, but I am saying that is why the timeless songs are still here. It's because of the melody. As far as what shouldn't be brought back, the high-waisted bikini bottoms. — Julianne Hough

There's a whole range of sources of inspiration for the drawings and stories. They come from dreams, hallucinations, pop songs, or other things I see in the world around me. — Ryan McGinness

That's what is so great about being able to record a 13-song album. You can do a very eclectic group of songs. You do have some almost pop songs in there, but you do have your traditional country, story songs. You have your ballads, your happy songs, your sad songs, your love songs, and your feisty songs. — Reba McEntire

I'm really attracted to music that sort of toes that line between pop and avant-garde, that pushes the envelope of what you can get in a pop song. — Patrick Stump

Twelve years ago me and Allanah became really sick of writing pop songs, ... Eventually we dug a grave for the Thompson Twins, pushed them in there, and then moved to New Zealand. Before that I'd lived for a long time in south London where reggae was the music of the streets around me. You'd hear it booming out of people's windows and shops, and you could buy great old reggae singles for 50p (NZ1.30) in second hand shops. I'd always loved that sound, so soon after we got here I started making electronic dub records with my mate Rakai Karaitiana as International Observer. — Tom Bailey

Most people in the U.K. discovered me playing a standard on Parkinson. In America, it was on VH1 singing an original called 'All At Sea,' which is a contemporary pop song. So the people that know me there tend to think of me in the singer/songwriter category. — Jamie Cullum

I always like to think that I make movies that are like Nirvana songs. They have a slow verse and then they pop into high gear and then they go back into slow and then they pop into high gear again. — James Gunn

You know what I thought of when I saw her? That song, 'Boss's Daughter' by Pop Evil. It's like they're describing her." Scott Mason — Bella Jeanisse

When we try to write a pop song, we go for standard pop arrangements, even to the point where we will go to the key change at the end, which is really cheesy. — Joe Elliott

It's lifestyle music. It's not like some secretary who likes some pop song, but can't name who the band is; whereas a heavy metal fan is into every aspect of it. We'll see if rap holds up to that. Run-DMC seemed to be the Led Zeppelin of rap. — Rob Zombie

Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I'll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I've written a whole song in an hour. — Eminem

I have so many songs, it's ridiculous. I love so many different types of music and tend to write all over the map, style-wise. R&B, rock 'n' roll, screamers, pop, good-time songs. — Taryn Manning

Maybe that whole love thing is just a grown-up version of Santa Claus; just a myth we've been fed since childhood. So, we keep buying magazines, joining clubs, and doing therapy and watching movies with hit pop songs played over love montages all in a pathetic attempt to explain why our love Santa keeps getting caught in the chimney. — Meg Ryan

I'm not good at happy, lightweight kind of music. I'm not really good at pop music. 'Cars' is probably the only true pop song I ever wrote. I wish I could write more, but I'm not very good at it. — Gary Numan

In the future, women will have breasts all over. In the future, it will be a relief to find a place without culture. In the future, plates of food will have names and titles. In the future, we will all drive standing up. In the future, love will be taught on television and by listening to pop songs. — David Byrne

These pop songs almost feel like tabloid journalism, in a way. It's c**p that people seem to like. And I don't know if it has meaning. I don't know if one of the pop songs of the summer has any fibre in it. People are consuming it, and is it healthy? ... Maybe there's some healthy property or some restorative property that I'm not receiving. It seems like it has a really high fructose content. — Eddie Vedder

Everything (N.W.A.) attempted had to possess criminal undertones. I can only assume they spent hours trying to deduce villainous ways to microwave popcorn (and if they'd succeeded, there would absolutely be a song about it, assumedly titled "Pop Goes the Corn Killa", or "45 Seconds to Bitch Snack"). — Chuck Klosterman

Owens, our minister, would get up from his seat and stop the song. He'd sit behind his pulpit in a spiritual trance, his eyes closed, clad in a long blue robe with a white scarf and billowed sleeves, as if he were prepared to float away to heaven himself, until one of Mommy's clunker notes roused him. One eye would pop open with a jolt, as if someone had just poured cold water down his back. He'd coolly run the eye in a circle, gazing around at the congregation of forty-odd parishioners to see where the whirring noise was coming from. When his eye landed on Mommy, he'd nod as if to say, "Oh, it's just Sister Jordan"; then he'd slip back into his spiritual trance. — James McBride

Sometimes when I get home after a long day, I'll turn on music - I love Latin, disco, and pop - and do my own workout, even if it's a short one. Know a good song to work out to? 'I Will Survive.' — Summer Glau

Sometimes I write songs that just come out in a pop format because I grew up on melody and these amazing artists during the 80s. It's my tradition and it's something that I can't really control. — Robyn

Hit songs did not come out of musicals. Pop-rock was creating the hits. There were very few songs that made the charts out of any Broadway musical. — Stephen Sondheim

And for so long, I had thought if I was going to write a song, or get "into" something, I had to at least smoke a joint or something. And that didn't work anymore. Once I was fairly well cleaned out, even a little bit of a drug getting into my work threw me off kilter. — Iggy Pop

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

When I sang that song, I felt it was almost as if some force had moved into my body. Things like that have only happened to me singing jazz. It doesn't happen when singing pop. I get so deeply into the music, it feels like I've become someone else. — Rita Coolidge

There was scant precedent for the prickly kind of pop the Pixies played, and their sound is recognizable on the slightest whiff. It's a series of opposing forces that fit together incongruously but exquisitely: a bouncy yet firm bassline (Deal called it "boingy-boingysproingy") joined to a demented choir of punky guitars; Thompson's harsh primal scream beside Deal's coy and smoky harmonies; explosive, grating riffs in songs crafted from prime bubblegum. Behind it all is Thompson's song-writing, playful but also insular, inscrutable. — Ben Sisario

Beware young brides: The cruelest behaviors on earth are done in the name of, what some call, 'love.' Therefore, the Shulamite does a much better job at defining love than pop-culture.
pg 4 — Michael Ben Zehabe

I think when you write every song on your album - it's like having eleven or twelve children. It's hard to say I like this one song more or I like that one more. I love every song on the album. What's happening is that I'm hoping that everyone will be very satisfied. I think the single "Good Girl" will be adored by the people in the urban world and I think the "Best of Me" will be loved by people in the pop world. — Chrisette Michele

Sometimes you want something really serious that makes you feel emotional and makes you think, and sometimes you do just want a pop song. What I love about Taylor Swift is that she offers both. — Tavi Gevinson

Pop music thrives on repetition. You know a song's a hit when you've heard it so often that you'll be happy never to hear it again. — James Surowiecki

For me, with the Blue Man Group, I got asked. It was for the Royal Variety Show, which was something I always wanted to be a part of. I'm really interested in things people don't necessarily expect. I did a pop song, but I did it in my own style. — Katherine Jenkins

Pop is an easy way for evil business people to make a lot of money. But I find myself humming a Christina Aguilera song every once in a while. — Brandon Boyd

The nice thing about doing a pop opera - in the way that doing, say, 'Miss Saigon' or 'Les Miz' would be - is that, because the convention is set from the beginning that this is an opera and everything is sung, there is never that feeling of 'Why is this person bursting out into song?' because the whole thing is sung. — Lea Salonga

I am a pop girl! And I'm on a major label. I enjoy singing pop songs. — Katy Perry

You can only write so many pop songs before they all sound the same. I got to a point where something overtly melodic and straightforward sounded sort of cheesy to me. Pop songs seemed too manufactured. — Dylan Baldi

The first time I heard Bob Dylan, I was in the car with my mother listening to WMCA, and on came that snare shot that sounded like somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind ... The way that Elvis freed your body, Dylan freed your mind, and showed us that because the music was physical did not mean it was anti-intellect. He had the vision and talent to make a pop song so that it contained the whole world. He invented a new way a pop singer could sound, broke through the limitations of what a recording could achieve, and he changed the face of rock'n'roll for ever and ever. — Bruce Springsteen

I feel like a lot of people look at pop music with a very formulaic perspective in numbers and patterns, but an outsider would think that the process is very natural. It is, but there are a lot of times where people treat it like a sport - there are tricks you can pull, different combinations that make something better. I don't really think I approach it that way, but I definitely have a love for the science that is pop song writing. — Halsey

It was entirely possible that one song could destroy your life. Yes, musical doom could fall on a lone human form and crush it like a bug. The song, that song, was sent from somewhere else to find you, to pick the scab of your whole existence. The song was your personal shitty fate, manifest as a throb of pop floating out of radios everywhere. — Jonathan Lethem

Slade was never pretentious. It was just music to them. Pop, rock, soul ... it was all the same to Slade. They wrote great songs. And, besides, I'd like to raid their wardrobe. — Noel Gallagher

To write a love song that might be able to make it on the radio, that is something that is terrifying to me. But I can definitely write a song about that chair over there. That I can do, but to sit and write a pop song out of the clear blue sky, that is very difficult and I admire the people that can do it. — Barry Manilow

And waking, once again, face smudged into Andrea's couch, the red quilt humped around her shoulders, smelling coffee, while Andrea hummed some Tokyo pop song to herself in the next room, dressing, in a gray morning of Paris rain. — William Gibson

Juliet, the dice were loaded from the start. / When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong, Juliet? — Mark Knopfler

The backside of Hollywood passion is disappointment and loneliness - and more often than not, resentment and cynicism about the nature of love itself.
Betsy and I were building more of a symphony than a pop song. — Donald Miller

I have a passion for music, and I enjoy the process of expressing myself within the parameters of a pop song, and I don't do it to seek anybody's approval, necessarily. Obviously, you go on stage, and you enjoy it when people respond to a particular song, but the overall concept of playing music I do for myself. — Russell Crowe

It's so easy for me to do a boy-bashing pop song, but to sit down and write honestly about something that's really close to me, something I've been through, it's a totally different thing. — Avril Lavigne

The opening notes of a song began, some plucking of guitar strings. I knew the melody. It was Maroon 5's "She Will Be Loved." As pop songs went, it was pretty damn good, a bit of a favorite of mine. — Kylie Scott

Britains still commemorate the Battle of Cable Street in London. There are still pop songs in Britain that reference Sir Oswald Mosley and his black shirts. — Rachel Maddow

I love that Euro-pop dance music, but with girl power. I also listen to Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan. I have a Beatles song tattooed on my foot. I'm all over the place. — Hilary Duff

I think there's a good pop song in pretty much anything. — Kesha

You know, just because you think bubblegum pop on the radio represents all that is wrong with society, that doesn't mean there's not someone out there who needs that shitty pop song. Maybe that shitty pop song makes them feel good, about themselves and the world. And as long as that shitty pop song doesn't infringe upon your rights to rock out to, I don't know, Subway Sect, or Siouxsie and the Banshees, or whichever old-ass band it is you worship, then who cares? — Hannah Harrington

I think pop music is in such an exciting place right now, and I do kind of credit that to Lorde with 'Royals.' I think that song changed everything in the pop scene. All of the sudden, alternative pop music became pop music. — Troye Sivan

So I'll set a cycle in motion and pop it into record and I'll lay down a drum pattern, a bass line, a keyboard and guitar part, and once the groove is going I launch into the song and sing my song over the top. — Thomas Dolby

There's a bit of hope that a song can be about anything. If you want to write a song about anything, you can, and you don't have to put it through the process of having it be trendy or cool or generic pop or these types. — M.I.A.

But that was Rishi... he was like a pop song you thought you couldn't stand, but found yourself humming in the shower anyway. — Sandhya Menon

I'm not a pop song lyric writer. I can't just focus on one simple meaning or even a double entendre. — Julian Casablancas

For me, there's the certain focus points that come out, which could reference a song or a pop disco, or something really abstract. It's not totally fulfilling or complete, but rather an ongoing incompleteness. I'm really interested in the audience's relationship with myself, and my relationship with them. — Sue Tompkins

I love Lady Gaga, Rihanna - all the pop girls like Katy Perry. I think Miley Cyrus is very talented, too. Apart from the visuals, which you may like or not like, but her music is quite good, actually. 'Wrecking Ball' is quite a good song, and she sang it really nicely. — Giorgio Moroder

It's cool when your husband starts to sing some old Merle Haggard song and I can pop in with a harmony and it doesn't sound too bad. — Trisha Yearwood

It gets quite difficult for me when I listen to pop music. I don't often understand the words, but when someone translates them to me, I think, 'What is this song representing? That women are just there to be treated like objects?' — Malala Yousafzai

I think Badfinger was the epitome of that type of music before the power pop term was coined. 'No Matter What is always gonna be a great song on the radio. There?s probably two or three others off their records that are as cool like 'Day After Day'. — Robin Zander

I really got into psych because everything has a really good groove to it and it's nicely spaced out, but ultimately they are just cool pop songs with a little something else that makes them special and unique. They are interesting and have another dimension to them besides a three chord change. — Mike Romano

People have habits about what they think songs should be like. There's the folky thing of: "Poor me, I'm a sensitive person in a cruel world." Or the pop thing of: "Hey, look at me, I'm sexy." — Robert Wyatt

When I hear myself singing, I hear Iggy Pop and Jimi Hendrix. There's a conversational thing going on. I suppose it depends on which The Pretenders song you're listening to. — Chrissie Hynde

I DON'T CARE
I LOVE IT
I DON'T CARE
I LOVE IT
I LOVE IT — Icona Pop

I sing songs from the theater and pop songs. When I say 'pop songs,' I mean from the 90's. And I tell jokes. So it's sort of a stand up show meets a concert - not your traditional lounging across a piano cabaret show. It's much looser. — Laura Benanti

Despite my own doubts of being marketable or crushworthy, my goal was to write a record of peppy pop songs, hopefully without annoying anybody. — Stephen Malkmus

I have some irrepressible pop impulses to write an appealing, concise song. And I also have some irrepressible kind of restlessness as well, and I need to keep myself interested. When I'm left to my own devices, there's a struggle. — Andrew Bird

I'm trying to use people like Meredith Monk and Philip Glass and Terry Riley as the backing tracks for new pop songs. It's really hard trying to use the format and write a pop song on top of avant-garde music, so we'll see. It could be cool, or it could totally flop. — Autre Ne Veut

I was always one of these people who is irrationally moved by stupid pop songs. — Will Sheff

I love pop music. It's not easy to write a good pop song. — John Lydon

We didn't want to worry about the formula that has been implanted into our brains - this verse/pre-chorus/chorus format. When we were writing 'The Papercut Chronicles,' we had no idea about any of that. We didn't know how to count bars or how to write what's considered a well-formatted pop song. — Travie McCoy

'Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,' if you go through the lyrics, is such a haunting melody, and the words are, for a pop song, pretty deep and dark. — Jake Epstein

With my records, it's just a matter of trying to create something fresh for myself in a very finite context, which is the pop song. I don't know anything about the people who buy my records, and what, if anything, they get out of them. — Tom Verlaine

Originally, I wanted a pop career and formed a girl-band 'Genie Queen' managed by Andy McClusky from 'Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark', but it didn't work out. My brother John is the talented singer and song-writer with 'The Razz,' while my other brother Sean is a footballer for Telford United. — Abbey Clancy

To look for some kind of insight or meaning in pop songs is not really - well there's plenty of other places where you should probably look first before you start looking for it in a pop song. — Jason Newsted

Pop music has greater power to change people and to affect people because it's a universal language. You don't have to understand music to understand the power of a pop song. — Paul Epworth

A couple of days after the last time I saw him, I got a typically well-written postcard. He said that after he kissed me goodbye at LAX he was driving away and turned on the radio. Elvis was singing "It's Now or Never." In my personal religion, a faith cobbled together out of pop songs and books and movies, there is nothing closer to a sign from God than Elvis Presley telling you "tomorrow will be too late" at precisely the moment you drop off a girl you're not sure you want to drop off. Sitting on the stairs to my apartment, I read that card and wept. It said he heard the song and thought about running after me. But he didn't. And just as well
those mixed-faith marriages hardly ever work. An Elvis song coming out of the radio wasn't a sign from God to him, it was just another one of those corny pop tunes he could live without. — Sarah Vowell

It never really interested me in the past but, for the first time, I wanted to make a pop record. I thought a good way of doing it would be to make songs that didn't really make sense to me as songs; songs that I couldn't just sit down and play in front of someone and then get them to play over it. — Dan Bejar

When I originally wrote "Jealousy," it was more like an exercise to try to write a girl-group kind of pop song. It was really contrary to most of the material I'd ever written. I didn't pay much attention to the song after I'd recorded it. I didn't really perform it at all the last 20 years. When it came time to make the new record, I decided to make peace with the song and have fun with it. — Natalie Merchant

I still don't know how to express the really delicate personal stuff. People think that Plastic Ono is very personal, but there are some subtleties of emotions which I cannot seem to express in pop music, and it frustrates me. Maybe that's why I still search for other ways of expressing myself. Song writing is a limiting experience in some ways - writing down words that have to rhyme. — John Lennon

I've written about a lot of different things, but the whole idea of writing for another character is unusual for pop music. Most of the repertory is love songs, and most of mine isn't. I don't know if that's a mental defect, or shyness, or what. — Randy Newman

They pay money to watch the same film. Now, you could argue, that's because it makes them feel comfortable. When they go to a movie now, it's almost like hearing a pop song. You know the rhythms, you know when the downbeat is going to come, you know when the explosion is going to come ... And so as life becomes more complex, as the economy is in trouble, people cling to what makes them comfortable, so they go again and again to see the same movie. — Terry Gilliam

Creating a decent pop song is a challenge - and occasionally, once in every decade - it's kind of fun to do that. — David Sylvian

I just felt like I'd rather listen to even the worst metal song more than most current pop music. — Brian Posehn

A cupcake is like a great pop song. The whole world in less than three minutes. And it's impossible to have a bad cupcake. In New York you walk everywhere. So I'm always looking, always on the eternal search for the perfect cupcake. I take them very seriously. It's like hunting and gathering for me. — Laurel Nakadate

The Replacements are the foundation for a lot of what came after in alternative and college rock. Let It Be is their best record and has the most diverse collection of songs. Some pop stuff, some heavy stuff, and some real moments of beauty like 'Sixteen Blue' and 'Androgynous.' It's a record I always go back to. — Craig Finn

In my head, I actually think my songs are pop songs. I think, 'Damn, that's a pop song!' I can practice in front of the mirror with my hairbrush for as long as I want to. But when it finally comes out, it sounds avant-garde to people. — M.I.A.

It would have been easy for me to bring out a real cheesy pop song, but 'Please Don't Let Me Go' isn't your typical 'X Factor' single, and it's a grower, not a shower. — Olly Murs

My song 'Play It Again' is a perfect example of my music because the verses go so hard, and they're so urban; and then this pop hook comes out of nowhere and socks you in the face and makes you want to dance. — Becky G

I write pop songs. But I think it is sprinkled with a lot of counter-culture references. It ranged from rap to hip hop to trip hop, house, drum and bass, and experimental and improv and jazz. — Nelly Furtado

What is the song, the pop song? Is it a conduit to give out the feeling in a compact form, a short form? Shorter is better because it is physically much easier to share. A slogan verse a book, single versus record. What if it's blank white with really no cover? That leaves the meaning clear.
wait?
It's more vague.
With no hints to intentions.
Except that maybe the intention was to seem vague
or not to have a cover.
Maybe just there's no cover
And if the children cared then the children are pissed. You said you wanted pop but instead you got this....

— Brendan Fowler

I can answer anything about any American pop culture song ever. — Mark McGrath

Saying you have a political solution is like saying you can write a pop song that's going to stay at the top of the list forever. I don't have many illusions about this, but I'm not cynical about it. — Bruce Sterling

I grew up listening to all kinds of music, everything from country to rock, pop, R&B and even rap, so for me, music is music and a great song is a great song. — Jason Aldean

It's different for every song. But for 'Say Something,' I think it was Chad who had an idea on guitar, and I had an idea on piano for different songs, and we just married them together. We bounce things off each other constantly and kind of massage all these ideas into a three and a half minute pop song. — Ian Axel

Every time I finish a song ... most of the time it's in my own head, like this sounds too much like a Townes Van Zandt song, or whoever. I realize there are so many melodies and chord progressions in pop and rock music that are so similar that you can kind of trace it back to other things. Most of the time it's just in your head. — Conor Oberst

After a while, no matter how much you love any pop song, you're going to get tired of it. That's the way it is with any entertainment. It's good when you first hear it or see it, you like it for a while, then it gets old. It gets chewed up and spit out and it's done. — Joe Perry

But when you're a teenage boy, you can be narrow-minded about things that are girlie, things that are frivolous, things that are pop. Boys always want to be taken seriously, and they always want to transcend the tawdry emotion of the pop singer
it's a fairly standard response to the rigors of young manhood ... This isn't so different from how people talk about culture now. Rock epics are for boys; pop hits are for girls. When you're a boy, pop is scary because it's a maneater. You sing along with a pop song, you turn into a girl. That takes some degree of emotional risk. — Rob Sheffield