Singing Bad Quotes & Sayings

It's bad enough being conned into singing an anti-war message by John Lennon when you think you're just wishing everyone a merry Christmas. — Ian Watson

Their singing wasn't particularly good, but the feeling with which they sang was not bad at all. — William, Saroyan

Rock n' roll was a bad and evil thing. l remember once I was singing a Barry Manilow song, "Mandy," In the back seat of the car. It came on the radio, and I kind of sang with it, and I got smacked In the mouth because that song was "evil." — Axl Rose

There is no place in the service of worship where vanity and bad taste can so intrude as in the singing. There is, first, the improvised second part which one hears almost everywhere. It attempts to give the necessary background, the missing fullness to the soaring unison tone, and thus kills both the words and the tone. There is the bass or the alto who must call everybody's attention to his astonishing range and therefore sings every hymn an octave lower. There is the solo voice that goes swaggering, swelling, blaring and tremulant from a full chest and drowns out everything else to the glory of its own fine organ. There are the less dangerous foes of congregational singing, the 'unmusical' who cannot sing, of whom there are far fewer than we are led to believe, and finally, there are often those also who because of some mood will not join in the singing and thus disturb the fellowship. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I really enjoy being with the people I play with. I enjoy their company. I love the crew, the band - we just move through the country like an army. I always feel very grateful to be up there. There aren't any bad nights anymore unless I'm singing bad, but then the band will carry me. And if they're playing bad, I will carry them.. — Bob Seger

When I was studying in secondary school, a teacher recommended me during a singing contest. I took the championship because of my voce that I take proud of. Then I thought maybe my voice is not bad,then I wanted to be a singer. — Daesung

Oh, I can picture myself rattling along Route 66 on that thing, headphones on, singing along to ZZ Top's 'Sharp Dressed Man' or the opening line from 'Born to be Wild' by Steppenwolf - 'Get your motor running ... ' The trike brings out that in all of us, which is no bad thing. Forget Viagra, get yourself a trike! — Billy Connolly

The Beatles were bubblegum cards and Help at the Saturday morning cinema and toy plastic guitars and singing 'Yellow Submarine' at the top of my voice in the back row of the coach on school trips. They belong to me, not to me and Laura, or me and Charlie, or me and Alison Ashworth, and though they'll make me feel something, they won't make me feel anything bad. — Nick Hornby

When it is all too much; when the news is so bad meditation itself feels useless, and a single life feels too small a stone to offer on the altar of Peace, find a Human Sunrise. Find those people who are committed to changing our scary reality. Human sunrises are happening all over the earth, at every moment. People gathering, people working to change the intolerable, people coming in their robes and sandals or in their rags and bare feet, and they are singing, or not, and they are chanting, or not. But they are working to bring peace, light, compassion, to the infinitely frightening downhill slide of Human life. — Alice Walker

The song was the late Ishihara Yujiro's "Rusty Knife," and Sakaguchi's singing was so bad that it
gave the lyric a strange new pathos and poignancy. Listening to his version, Suzuki Midori was
reminded that no one ever said it would be easy to go on living in this world; Takeuchi Midori
pondered the noble truth that nobody's life consists exclusively of happy times; Henmi Midori
vowed to remember that it's best to keep an open heart and forgive even those who've
trespassed against us; and Tomiyama Midori had to keep telling herself that hitting rock bottom
is in fact the first step to a hopeful new future. — Ryu Murakami

I'm not Prince Charming. I'm the bad guy that sneaks into the castle when Prince Charming is off singing songs in the woods. I'm the one with the big cock that bends needy Cinderella over. And I'm the one that makes her scream until her throat's raw and she can't sing a note. — Kenya Wright

At least, not in this country,' she added after a moment's thought. 'In China it's a little different. Once I saw a Chinaman in Shanghai. His ears were so big he could use them for a raincoat. When it rained, he just crept in under his ears and was warm and snug as could be. Not that the ears had such a rattling good time of it, you understand. If it was specially bad weather, he'd invite friends and acquaintances to pitch camp under his ears too. There they sat, singing their sorrowful songs while it poured down outside. — Astrid Lindgren

Anything I shouldn't laugh at makes me laugh. I mean, I'm bad at that, when somebody is singing something terribly and I'm thinking to myself, 'If I laugh now, this is the absolute worst thing I could ever do,' and then I start laughing and I can't stop. — Simon Cowell

But at times words can be a dangerous addition to music - they can pin it down. Words imply that the music is about what the words say, literally, and nothing more. If done poorly, they can destroy the pleasant ambiguity that constitutes much of the reason we love music. That ambiguity allows listeners to psychologically tailor a song to suit their needs, sensibilities, and situations, but words can limit that, too. There are plenty of beautiful tracks that I can't listen to because they've been "ruined" by bad words - my own and others. In Beyonce's song "Irreplaceable," she rhymes "minute" with "minute," and I cringe every time I hear it (partly because by that point I'm singing along). On my own song "Astronaut," I wrap up with the line "feel like I'm an astronaut," which seems like the dumbest metaphor for alienation ever. Ugh. — David Byrne

Still i knew because of my own feelings there was something wrong with me and i knew it wasnt only me. I knew it was everybody. It was like a bacteria or a cancer or a trance. It wasnt on the skin, it was in the soul. It showed itself in lonliness, lust, anger , jealousy and depression. It had people screwed up bad everywhere you went- at the store, at home, at church, it was ugly and deep. Lots of singers on the radio were singing about it and cops had jobs because of it. It was as if we were broken I thought, as if we were never supposed to feel these sticky emotions. It was as if we were cracked, coudlnt love right, couldnt feel good things for a long before screwing it all up.
I am talking about the broken quality of life. — Donald Miller

He looks almost as bad as I feel. Nat calls out, "So I'm guessing by your silence that I've won this round."

I shake my head and speak into the cell, "Sorry, I gotta go. Max is here."

She purrs into the phone. "Ah, I get ya." Then sings, "Let me lick you up and down 'til you say stop."

I fight my hysterical laugh and mumble, "Yeah, like I said, I gotta go."

But she ignores me, singing louder, "Let me play with your body, baby, make you real hot."

I hang up and swallow hard. "Hi."

Max opens his mouth to speak, but Nat is not to be ignored. She shouts through the wall, "Let me do all the things you want me to do." I cover my mouth with a hand, flushing as she finishes her solo. "'Cause tonight, baby, I wanna get freaky with you." A moment later, she yells a huffy, "You shut up, ASSer! — Belle Aurora

Each in the most hidden sack kept
the lost jewels of memory,
intense love, secret nights and permanent kisses,
the fragment of public or private happiness.
A few, the wolves, collected thighs,
other men loved the dawn scratching
mountain ranges or ice floes, locomotives, numbers.
For me happiness was to share singing,
praising, cursing, crying with a thousand eyes.
I ask forgiveness for my bad ways:
my life had no use on earth. — Pablo Neruda

I like singing," said Alys.
Wylan shook his head frantically, mouthing, No, no, no.
"Shall I sing?" Alys asked hopefully. "Bajan says that I'm good enough to be on the stage."
"Maybe we save that for later - " suggested Jesper.
Alys' lower lip began to wobble like a plate about to break.
"Sing," Matthias blurted, "by all means, sing."
And then the real nightmare began.
It wasn't that Alys was so bad, she just never stopped. She sang between bites of food. She sang while she was walking through the graves. She sang from behind a bush when she needed to relieve herself. When she finally dozed off, she hummed in her sleep .
"Maybe this was Van Eck's plan all along," Kaz said glumly when they'd assembled outside the tomb again.
"To drive us mad?" said Nina. "It's working."
Jesper shut his eyes and groaned. "Diabolical. — Leigh Bardugo

See, Shel (Silverstein) was possessed with one of the worst singing verses ever heard. Musical appreciation is inherently subjective, and it's normally senseless to write about vocalists or instrumentalists as 'good' or 'bad.' But in Shel's case, it's a practical necessity. His voice was a razor-gargled hyena screech. — Peter Cooper

The singing stopped when I walked in. They all turned and stared at me, Bonne-Bell-Orange-Crush-glossed mouths hanging open, looking at me with the same horror and excitement they'd exhibit it I had just walked into the room naked. I stood there frozen, hyperaware of my scruffiness, my shirt untucked and one ponytail higher than the other. The Bad Dog turned me in on myself like a vortex, gleefully saying, Look, look. There they are, here you are. Separate. You do not belong. — Stacy Pershall

Problem with segregation isn't that people can't live in peaceful harmony singing "Kumbaya" - although that wouldn't be bad. The problem is that many of these Whitopian communities are taking state, local, and federal resources with them. — Richard Benjamin

Dude, there should be a law against people singing that bad. — Carolee Dean

She was bad at love. There were people in the world who were good at love and people who were bad at it. She was bad. She used to think she was good at love, that it was intimacy she was bad at. But you had to have both. Love without intimacy, she knew, was an unsung tune. It was all in your head. You said, "Listen to this!" but what you found yourself singing was a tangle, a nothing, a heap. It reminded her of a dinner party she had gone to once, where dessert was served on plates printed with French songs. After dinner everyone had had to sing their plate, but hers had still had whipped cream on it, and when it came her turn, she had garbled the notes and words, frantically pushing the whipped cream around with a fork so she could see the next measure. Oh, she was bad, bad like that, at love. — Lorrie Moore

They have me singing in a reformatory. My singing would be enough to get me in, but I'd never be able to sing my way out. — David Stenn

After being so bad I could hear the angels singing. — Lillie Langtry

I love you, Tess McGee. I don't do big funny or heartfelt speeches in front of people at birthday parties, but I'm excellent in private alcoves in beer gardens." He paused. "Okay, that sounded really bad, what I mean is ... "
I kissed him into silence. I pressed my forehead against his with a sigh. "I love you, too, Toby. In fact, that's what I was going to tell you before we walked into the beer garden. Right before the really bad singing started."
Toby chuckled. He let out a sigh of relief. "Ready to reminisce?"
I whispered my final word before he closed the distance.
"Always. — C.J. Duggan

When you put biblical truth to the songs used in churches, you'll have the congregation leave singing the sermon. You'll have God's thoughts, things that are God-breathed, stuck in their heads. It's sad to think about a really catchy tune paired up with bad theology because that could, honestly, do a lot of damage in church. — Laura Story

My voice sounded like one of the guinea fowl that screeched in our trees as it pooped, but I never let that stop me. — William Kamkwamba

I wanted music very bad this evening, that singing devotchka in the Korova having perhaps started me off. I wanted like a big feast of it before getting my passport stamped, my brothers, at sleep's frontier and the stripy shest lifted to let me through. — Anthony Burgess

I'm not bad at singing - at least in the shower. — Sean Bean

But if the world measures a refugee according to the worst story, we will always excuse human suffering, saying it is not yet as bad as someone else's. — Victoria Armour-Hileman

The longer we spent on Tarawa the more Sylvia and I came to realize that to live on Tarawa is to experience a visceral form of bipolar disorder. There is the ecstatic high, when you find yourself swept away in a lagoonside maneaba rumbling to the frenzied singing and dancing of hundreds of rapturous islanders. And there are the crushing lows, when you succumb to a listless depression, brought about by the unyielding heat, sporadic sickness, pitiless isolation, food shortages, and the realization that so much of what ails Tarawa, the overpopulation and all its attendant health and social problems, need not be as bad as it is. — J. Maarten Troost

Swans sing before they die - 't were no bad thing
Should certain persons die before they sing. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Mr. Klamp laid down the law. No tardiness, no talking above 40 decibels, no untied shoelaces, no visible undergarments, no eating, no chewing gum, no chewing tobacco, no chewing betel nuts, no chewing coca leaves, no chewing out students (unless Mr. Klamp was doing the chewing out), no chewing out teachers (unless ditto), no unnecessary displays of temper (unless ditto), no unnecessary displays of affection (no exceptions), no pets over one ounce or under one ton, and no singing, except in Bulgarian. I began to think Mr Klamp wouldn't be so bad ... — Polly Shulman

It's shocking when someone who is really bad thinks they're really good. It's heartbreaking, because singing is such a vulnerable thing to do. — Anna Camp

A dog - a dog teaches us so much about love. Wordless, imperfect love; love that is constant, love that is simple
goodness, love that forgives not only bad singing and embarrassments, but misunderstandings and harsh words.
Love that sits and stays and stays and stays, until it finally becomes its own forever. Love, stronger than death. A dog is a four-legged reminder that love comes and time passes and then your heart breaks. — Deb Caletti

It seems like pop singing has sort of influenced musical theatre in so many ways - you could argue good or bad, really - and musical theatre is written for that style so often, which is a completely different style. — Julian Ovenden

Golden girl, there you are. I'm singing for the crowd, the music's loud. I'm living my dream, riding the high, But I see you there, sunlight in your hair, And I'm ready to go, desperate to fly. Golden girl, there you are. Dancing for the crowd, the music's loud. I want you so bad. I can't look away. Later, you'll drop to your knees. You'll beg me please. And then you'll go, it's only your body I know. Golden girl, where'd you go? You're not there, with sunlight in your hair. I could have you in the bar or the back of my car, But never your heart. I'm falling apart. I'll drop to my knees, I'll beg you. Please. Please don't go. There's so much more I want to know. Eva, please. I'm on my knees. Golden girl, where'd you go? I'm singing for the crowd, the music's loud. And you're not there, with sunlight in your hair. Eva, please. I'm on my knees. — Sylvia Day

Chris was in the rocker, fully clothed, and was strumming idly on
Cory's guitar. "Dance, ballerina, dance," he softly chanted, and his
singing voice wasn't bad at all. Maybe we could work as musicians
a
trio -if Carrie ever recovered enough to want a voice again. — V.C. Andrews

It's ill-becoming for an old broad to sing about how bad she wants it. But occasionally we do. — Lena Horne

Occasionally, a great band would come along, like Blondie or OutKast who could be pop and bring interesting ideas into the mainstream at the same time. That's now gone, because of this weird mutation of pop, rap, R&B, bad rave, and supposedly soulful singing on top of it. — Johnny Marr

Gerald's arm rose and fell the same way to any song he led, no matter the time signature. He had a nasal twang when he spoke and sang, like a younger Grandpa Jones, but his pitch wasn't bad and he seemed to enjoy song-leading. His job was to get everybody started at the same place and everybody stopped when the song was over, but whatever happened in the middle was up to God and the congregation. — Chris Fabry

It is not I who mix the colors but your own vision,' he answered. 'I only place them next to one another on the wall in their natural state; it is the observer who mixes the colors in his own eye, like porridge. Therein lies the secret. The better the porridge, the better the painting, but you cannot make good porridge from bad buckwheat. Therefore, faith in seeing, listening, and reading is more important than faith in painting, singing, or writing.'
He took blue and red and placed them next to each other, painting the eyes of an angel. And I saw the angel's eyes turn violet.
'I work with something like a dictionary of colors,' Nikon added, 'and from it the observer composes sentences and books, in other words, images. You could do the same with writing. Why shouldn't someone create a dictionary of words that make up one book and let the reader himself assemble the words into a whole? — Milorad Pavic

To stand in the pit, shoulder to shoulder, sweating and singing with people you hardly know is an amazing thing. "I'm such a bad singer that I hardly sing around my own home but I have no trouble screeching at the top of my lungs in a huge stadium. In that sense a Springsteen concert is kind of a religious thing. Everyone knows what and when to sing, when to raise their arms, to pogo-dance, when to be silent and respectful. The music of course also makes you feel connected to something 'higher'. — Greg Lewis

I couldn't help thinkin' if she was as far out o' town as she was out o' tune, she wouldn't get back in a day. — Sarah Orne Jewett

I've always enjoyed singing and can't recall a time in my life where I wasn't singing. I'm most grateful for the strength I have in that department. I have a lot of bad habits on the guitar which limits my playing ability. But I get a little better each year. — Jason Mraz

That's what I hate about the war on drugs. All day long we see those commercials: "Here's your brain, here's your brain on drugs", "Just Say No", "Why do you think they call it dope?" ... And
then the next commercial is [singing] "This Bud's for yooouuuu." C'mon, everybody, let's be hypocritical bastards. It's okay to drink your drug. We meant those other drugs. Those untaxed
drugs. Those are the ones that are bad for you. — Bill Hicks

We [ Paverment] were definitely unafraid of playing wrong notes and singing wrong things. We could be fearlessly bad! — Stephen Malkmus

I'm singing and dancing and playing guitar. I really enjoy pushing myself into different aspects. I'm not going to do this for the rest of my life, but I want to keep challenging myself. And if I'm fearful of something I definitely want to step into it and see how good or bad I am at it. — Dustin Clare

Because after the haze of not being kissed cleared I was forced to face the facts that:
1. Jack was a very bad guy.
2. Jack had threatened Fred.
3. Just thinking that he was going to kiss me made me tingly everywhere
4. In a way no other guy had
5. And that was without our mouths even touching
6. Which meant that
7. If they did
8. Wooohoo baby!
9. Except that it did not matter
10. At all
11. Because he was plotting against fred
12. And I was complicit in whatever he planned if I didn't tell Mr. Curtis
13. And I was trapped in a boat with a woman singing showtunes. — Michele Jaffe

One looks back to what was called a 'wine-party' with a sort of wonder. Thirty lads round a table covered with bad sweetmeats, drinking bad wines, telling bad stories, singing bad songs over and over again. Milk punch-- smoking--ghastly headache-- frightful spectacle of dessert-table next morning, and smell of tobacco--your guardian, the clergyman, dropping in, in the midst of this--expecting to find you deep in Algebra, and discovering the Gyp administering soda-water.

There were young men who despised the lads who indulged in the coarse hospitalities of wine-parties, who prided themselves in giving recherche little French dinners. Both wine-party-givers and dinner-givers were Snobs. — William Makepeace Thackeray

For him life was all full of opportunities, and I don't think that was necessarily a bad thing, but I think he wanted to grab them for all the wrong reasons. He wasn't passionate about art, he didn't care about lawyers helping people, he didn't even care about my singing voice. It was all for more money. And so I suppose it was fitting that it was the loss of all his money that killed him in the end. The pills and the whiskey were just the nails in the coffin. — Cecelia Ahern

The new solo album sounds like me: I'm singing about bad business transactions, bodily fluids, and courage. — Kevin Drew

I gestured my frustration. "I don't know. She's much better already. She wasn't talking half an hour ago.
Look at her now."
We all turned, finding Ceri sobbing quietly and drinking her tea in small reverent sips as the pixy girls
hovered over her. Three were plating her long, fair hair and another was singing to her.
Okay," I said as we turned back. "Bad example. — Kim Harrison

Now, I normally do not like it when people sing near me, much less at me. I don't care if they're good, bad, or mediocre. It's all the same. Unless you're signed to a major label with music I can find on iTunes, I don't want to hear your live performance. It's why I can't watch American Idol. I keep worrying the contestants will mess up and be embarrassed, and then I'll be embarrassed for them. — Lauren Morrill

I started playing the guitar when we started filming the pilot to 'Lost in Space,' which was way back in December of 1964, and there's a little bit in the pilot that was used in the first season where Will Robinson is sitting around some bad foam rubber rock playing and singing 'Greensleeves.' — Bill Mumy

Ginny had seen enough shows in her lifetime to know that this wasn't a very good show. It didn't actually make any sense. There were a lot of random things going on, like a guy who sometimes rode through the scene on a bike for no reason that Ginny could figure. And at one point, there was a shooting in the background, but the guy who got shot just kept on singing, so his injuries obviously weren't that bad. — Maureen Johnson

I was in college, but I got kicked out. It was a very free school, but I created a "bad impression." Like I was a bit more fiery in those days. At the time I got kicked out, I knew exactly what I was going to do and didn't even bother to go back for a leaving certificate. Then I was singing in folk clubs around Birmingham and playing jazz in clubs on Sundays. — Steve Winwood

I have a bad back partially from playing the drums and singing. I used to have to hold my body in such a position that my spine got out of alignment. — Don Henley

In this mob of I's inside, which one is me? Hear me out. I know I'm wandering, but don't start putting a lid on this racket. No telling what I'll do then. Every moment I'm thrown by your story. One moment it's happy, and I'm singing. One moment it's sad, and I'm weeping. It turns bitter, and I pull away. But then you spill a little grace, and just like that, I'm all light. It's not so bad, this arrangement, actually. — Rumi

There are a few YouTube clips of me singing at The King's Head in Santa Monica, so you can see how bad I am. — Vinnie Jones

-I love yeh, son, said Jimmy Sr.
He could say it and no one could hear him, except young Jimmy, because of the singing and roaring and breaking glasses.
-I think you're fuckin' great, said Jimmy Sr.
-Ah fuck off, will yeh, said Jimmy Jr. -Packie saved the fuckin' penalty, not me.
But he liked what he'd heard, Jimmy Sr could tell that. He gave Jimmy Sr a dig in the stomach.
-You're not a bad oul' cunt yourself, he said. — Roddy Doyle

In musical performances one can sense that the person on stage is having a good time even if they're singing a song about breaking up or being in a bad way. For an actor this would be anathema, it would destroy the illusion, but with singing one can have it both ways. As a singer, you can be transparent and reveal yourself on stage, in that moment, and at the same time be the person whose story is being told in the song. Not too many kinds of performance allow that. — David Byrne

Tucker: "Today we ran into a mama grizzly with two cubs at the ridge off Colter Bay and Clara sang to it to make it go away."
Mrs. Avery: You sang to it?
Tucker: Her singing is that bad. — Cynthia Hand

A karaoke bar?" Mitch glared at him. "You dragged us to a karaoke bar?"
"She didn't tell me it was karaoke."
"You know it's bad enough having to listen to you guys howl all the time. But this ... this may be asking too much. Dogs. Singing." Mitch turned to the bar and lashed Smitty with another glare. "And no goddamn liquor. You know, as per shifter law, I could legally kill you. — Shelly Laurenston

I am trying now to be entirely honest. I did actually comfort in the thought that the Devil had, on Strawless Common, defeated God. I much preferred that thought to the thought that God hadn't cared, hadn't helped Robin. I thought all the way back to the story of Eden. God, all-loving, all-wise, had surely wanted people to be happy and healthy and good; it was the Devil who spoiled it all ... and since so many people were miserable and sickly and bad the Devil must indeed by very powerful. The lifeless, voiceless thing, lately a singing boy, which they had cut down and put under a sack in the barn to await an unhallowed cross-road grave seemed to me to prove the power of the Devil.
Lady Alice Rowhedge — Norah Lofts

By the time he was done with the deer it had been dark three hours and his bad leg was singing 'Ave Maria'. — Stephen King

Everyone is so cheerful and happy," I said
"This isn't Mister Rogers Neighborhood, Dex. It's Miami. Only the bad guys are happy." She looked at me without expression, a perfect cop stare. "How come you're not laughing and singing?"
"Unkind, Deb. Very unkind. I've been good for months."
She took a sip of water. "Uh-huh. And it's making you crazy. — Jeff Lindsay