Song Lyric Quotes & Sayings

There's no reason anybody should be reading too much into 'Thrift Shop.' I just have because I have a 10-year-old and a 7-year-old who are really into going to lyric websites, hitting print, and printing lyrics for every song that's popular. — Al Madrigal

What the song expressed so perfectly from lyric to melody was unrequited love, and we men of the south loved nothing more than unrequited love, cracked hearts our primary weakness after cigarettes, coffee, and cognac. — Viet Thanh Nguyen

My job is to be some sort of music/lyric psychic, to figure out that that's the right song to not fight the lyric. — Ben Folds

I'm conflicted about the lyric tattoo thing. I feel like that's a lifetime decision, and I always feel like, 'I hope you don't regret this a couple years from now when you get tired of that song.' — Sam Hunt

I was about to ask Alec how he was getting on with the dealf when I heard him singing. The fucker was not only good looking, but he could sing and sing really well. His choice of song caused my eyes to roll though.

"Sex bomb, sex bomb, I'm a sex bomb-"

"You're a sex bomb!" I corrected the lyric cutting him off as I went into the bathroom. — L.A. Casey

The video forum for me has been a source of great consternation because once you start projecting a look to a song, it robs the listener of their ability to adopt that song and make the lyric their own. — Sheryl Crow

Everything stems from real experiences but I do also have a very vivid imagination. A song lyric gets easily carried away with itself and can end up somewhere I'd never have predicted. — Imogen Heap

My favorite song he ever wrote was 'Cold Cold Heart.' If you think about it, the lyric to 'Cold Cold Heart,' see how many two syllable words are in that song. Very, very few ... Verses and the choruses have very few two syllable words. 'I tried so hard my dear to show that you're my everything.' One three-syllable word. — Don Helms

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

A good song is like a mannequin - its form makes sense, but there's no life. There should be memorable melody, thoughtful lyric, appropriate arrangement. — Greta Salpeter

What makes a great song - you don't put it into words. You feel it. The perfect lyric. The perfect melody. It makes you feel something. — Diane Warren

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

You'll be mine and I'll be yours. — Taylor Swift

In my fiction, there's a lot that's borrowed from music. It's never like I'm taking a lyric, but more the mood of a particular song. 'The Boy Detective Fails' was like listening to 'Eleanor Rigby' by The Beatles, this very melancholy-but-poppy song. — Joe Meno

I'm no good at goodbyes

-50 Ways To Say Goodbye — Train

That's really what was wonderful for me growing up, since I got to know so many of the songwriters who liked me and thought I had talent. They would then tell me how to read a lyric and sing a song, and challenge me to try and find a different end to a song. — Margaret Whiting

Ruby said there were many songs that you could not say anybody in particular had made by himself. A song went around from fiddler to fiddler and each one added something and took something away so that in time the song became a different thing from what it had been, barely recognizable in either tune or lyric. But you could not say the song had been improved, for as was true of all human effort, there was never advancement. Everything added meant something lost, and about as often as not the thing lost was preferable to the thing gained, so that over time we'd be lucky if we just broke even. Any thought otherwise was empty pride. — Charles Frazier

When Blue sang, a lyric became a libation; a song became a sacrament. — Pearl Cleage

Soon the Boov was in the ghost suit and Pig was in the car, which would be a good lyric for a bluegrass song, now that I think of it. — Adam Rex

All you ever did was...WRECK ME...

-Wrecking Ball — Miley Cyrus

Poetry is like a portrait of a moment or person, and the poem is almost like looking at a photograph; it slaps you in the face and kisses you at the same time. Nothing else does that, with that brevity. Songs try to do it, but that's three minutes. A poem, you read it and it kind of changes your life and you don't know how it happened and you can never forget it. It's like the best song lyric, the best line from a film-everything in the world that's short and great put together. — Warsan Shire

JAMIE'S SONG 'She':

There's something about her eyes.
I don't know what I see.
She wears a cloak of lies.
I don't know what I mean.
She hides behind those eyes.
Will she let me in?

I could feel the barrier between,
Her and the world and sea.

She is not what she may seem..... — Neha Yazmin

love is but an echo in her head — David Cantor

It's like you know a lyric for a song by heart and suddenly you forget the words. — Cecelia Ahern

This 'Making Mirrors' album is far more personal, even if there's a character element to the sounds I'm working with. Every song on this album I stand behind; I feel like I have a close relationship with them. There are older songs where I can feel myself writing a story, so this is the first album where I'm proud of every lyric.' — Gotye

Don't run

Stop holding your tongue — Sara Bareilles

Usually now a song starts just in my head with a melody or a lyric idea coming first.Then typically I'll go to a guitar, unless it's a instrumental then I'll usually build it on a keyboard instrument. — Eliot Lewis

I began thinking about the idea of a 24 hour concert. What if you tied songs to certain hours of the day - creating a 24 hour world of lyric and melody. So that was the inspiration for this project. — Jon Foreman

I touched my lips to hers again, and this time, it was a very different sort of kiss. It was six years' worth of kissing, her lips coming to life under mine, tasting of orange and of desire. Her fingers ran through my sideburns and into my hair before linking around my neck, alive and cool on my warm skin. I was wild and tame and pulled into shreds and crushed into being all at once. For once in my human life, my mind didn't wander to compose a song lyric or store the moment for later reflection. For once in my life, I was here and nowhere else. -Sam — Maggie Stiefvater

A lot of writing I do on tour. I do a lot on airplanes. At home, I write a lot, obviously. When I write a song, what I usually do is work the lyric out first from some basic idea that I had, and then I get an acoustic guitar and I sit by the tape recorder and I try to bang it out as it comes. — Pete Townshend

I was half asleep lying there writing this lyric in my head at about 3:30 in the morning. I woke Steve up with this idea and then we went into the living room where there was a little upright piano and finished the song. I wonder where that piano is now? — Jim Capaldi

JAMIE'S SONG 'LOVE TRANSFUSION':

I'm not sleeping nights,
I'm not doing good.
I'm not eating right,
have no use for food.

All I do is bleed dry for you.
But somehow I survive,
And wake up with more love for you.

It's not blood running through my veins, it's you.

I've had a strange blood transfusion,
To add to my confusion.
It's not compatible;
I'm going hysterical.
It's some kind of love transfusion.
Love transfusion.
Love transfusion.
I've had a strange blood transfusion.
Blood transfusion.
Blood transfusion.

It's not blood running through my veins, it's you. — Neha Yazmin

My advice to singers is always the same: 'Don't sing the song, sing the lyric.' — Mitch Leigh

I love creating. I am addicted to the drug of creation and creating things. I get a little depressed when I am struggling to find what I know is locked inside. If it's a lyric or something that is challenging me, I can be very depressed, but when it's like heaven opens up and it gives you a song, it's amazing. There's nothing else that I enjoy more probably. — Mat Kearney

It's very rare - and it does happen on occasion - where I'll take a piece of lyric and I'll just sit down and purposefully craft that melody around that lyric because I think the lyric is the wellspring for the song, without question. — Geddy Lee

No one can threaten poetry. It's always been there, always will be. Humans need it to live: it has sustaining powers. How could we (anyone) get through adolescence without some form of song? Song is only a version of lyric poetry that is carried more by melody than by internal coherence and unity. but lyric and song - they are the same. — Gregory Orr

The title song of David Bowie's 'Young Americans' is one of his handful of classics, a bizarre mixture of social comment, run-on lyric style, English pop and American soul. — Jon Landau

When I listen to a song, I don't say, 'Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.' I'm thinking, 'That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.' — Taylor Swift

Anything is food for starting a song. A song can start with a lyric idea or a melody or just a sound that inspires. — Alison Goldfrapp

The assholes took their toll." "Assholes often do." "That's a Billboard Top Forty song waiting to happen." "Sung to the tune of 'There'll Be Sad Songs,'" I suggested, then offered up a lyric. "'There'll be assholes, to make you cry.'" "'Assholes often dooo,'" Mallory sang. — Chloe Neill

If some event happens and it seems really important to me and moving to me, I'll write it down in my lyric book knowing that it will come out in a song. — Amy Ray

JAMIE'S SONG 'Mukti':

She's sitting on the step,
staring back at me.
Wonder why she does,
wonder what she sees.

Nothing but the lies.
Nothing but the cries.
There's nothing in her eyes except for me.

I don't really quite see,
what I'm meant to find.
But something in me says,
there's something in her mind,

That I need to know,
have to comprehend.
Wonder what she'll see
if I want to be her friend.

Nothing but the lies.
Nothing but the cries.
There's nothing in her mind except for me. — Neha Yazmin

I'm a composer, and therefore I know when I've written a good tune. When you've written a good song is when you know that the lyric is completely coalesced with the song. — Andrew Lloyd Webber

I don't find the songs; they find me. I just strum my guitar and wait for a lyric to come. — James Taylor

And we dance all night to The Best Song ever!
-One Direction — One Direction

I think what we like about music - and what we like about art in general ... is that enterprise that stops our minds from spinning. Because we're always all over the place. A good song, a good lyric is a movie: it will just focus and calm and confer significance on this completely bewildering reality that all of us live in. — Leonard Cohen

The thing is: in order to reach an agreement, to reach that balance, sometimes it is sort of like that old Rhinestone Cowboy lyric, 'There'll be a load of compromisin' on the road to my horizon.' For those of you who were too young, or don't recall the song, made famous by country singer Glen Campbell, it is your loss. — Bart Chilton

I was once making a burger for myself at my boyfriend's house and a lyric started pouring out and I had to catch it, so I ran to another room to write it down, but then the kitchen caught fire. His cabinets were charred, and he was furious. But it was worth it for a song. — Jill Scott

For me, a song doesn't really take flight until it has a lyric on it ... Without a lyric that I'm happy with, it could be the greatest song ever melodically or arrangement-wise, but it doesn't have any resonance. — Ben Gibbard

Speaking of people I had to exclude: Hank Williams. which is to say, songs are part of lyric poetry in my book, my thinking. In fact they are the urgent element of poetry in our time, they carry the most emotion for the most people in our culture. everyone LOVES poetry, because we all love (one form or another) of rock and roll (be it folk to emo to rap). It's all rock and roll and all lyric poetry. — Gregory Orr

I get asked all the time, "What is a George Strait song?" I know it when I hear it. I don't seek a specific tempo or lyric or melody. It just has to make sense. Maybe it is natural because I was given the gift to sing. — George Strait

Musically, there's probably nothing better than, after spending weeks or months of grinding on a lyric or a song, when you play a good song from beginning to end for the first time - there's a moment there where all the pain and suffering is worth it. — Five For Fighting

Only know your lover when you let her go
And you let her go
-Let Her Go — Passenger

In a song, you have to have a lyric that gives us new ideas on how to live, a lyric that makes us feel, and a melody that gives you some kind of body response and emotional response. — Jennifer Warnes

Some songs started from a bass line, some started from having the full lyric and Jim, my drummer, who's also the first guy I've been in the studio with him since 16, sometimes he'd have an idea and I'd put a lyric to it and then the track evolves, there's no set way to write a song. — Paolo Nutini

When we feel, a kind of lyric is sung in our heart.
When we think, a kind of music is played in our mind.
In harmony, both create a beautiful symphony of life. — Toba Beta

As a musician and a guitar player, I can noodle as well as anybody. But from my background as a session musician, I always try to play what is called for by the lyric and listening to the song. As a writer, that's what I do, too. — Richie Sambora

Pronouns really don't matter in a song - 'I' or 'he' or 'she' or even subscribing a lyric to an inanimate object. — Conor Oberst

JAMIE'S SONG 'KILL ME':

In the darkness of the night,
you come to me to fight.
You tell me stories of your life,
and make me miss you all the while.

I used to crave you but now I find,
I'm not living, I'm blind.
And the daylight has combined,
with the hollow that's inside.

This black space that's in me,
is all you've left me to feel.
The love you took from me,
was all I had, is all I feel.
But now there's nothing left of me.

You should've killed me,
or buried me alive.
You could've shot me,
even stabbed me with a knife.

I wish you'd killed me;
I wish you'd kill me instead. — Neha Yazmin

Although I've written a few (a very few) poems over the years, I am not a natural poet ... and I remain in awe of people who are. The ability to evoke deep emotion, reveal a new facet of the world, or condense an entire story into the limited space and form of a poem (or likewise, of a good song lyric, or the text for a children's picture book) seems like pure magic to me. — Terri Windling

Trouble, Troublemaker yeah that's your middle name

Ooh — Olly Murs

I was the lead singer in a lot of the bands I was in. You have to be comfortable. You gotta get up there and sell the song. You have to get up there and sell the lyric. You gotta be able to feel it. — Richie Sambora

My first lyric departed directly from Mingus's title "This Subdues My Passion." If you didn't think the song was already half written after that title, then you had no business dallying with the tune in the first place. I wrote about the way that music tempers the violence within a man. This subdues my passion And it may control my rage It may stem the poison that spills out onto the page — Elvis Costello

I'm not so in with the prescriptive avant-garde agenda. I can do that sort of thing, but I feel that I'm still interested enough in song structure. When I look at a lyric on the page, the lyric is alive to me, looking like soldiers in a field. I can move it around, and it's very black-and-white. — Scott Walker

The feeling of joy came up in me again the way the lyric of a song might remind a man on the edge of insanity that soon he will be insane again and there is a world there more interesting than his own. — Norman Mailer

Evelyn was twenty-six, and for the first time in her life, she was seen. Recognized. It wasn't that heads were turning--she wouldn't ask that much--but just for a moment, one man would hold her gaze a little longer than he should. Or a woman's eyes would flick over her dress with jealousy. She could now be a missed connection on Craigslist, a fragment in a song lyric, the inspiration for a girl in a musical. — Stephanie Clifford

The masters painted for joy, and knew not that virtue had gone out of them. They could not paint the like in cold blood. The masters of English lyric wrote their songs so. It was a fine efflorescence of fine powers. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I remember coming in to the studio and meeting Barry Manilow . I was kind of star-struck. He said, "I want to play you this song." We get to the end of the song and I hear him actually sing my name as part of the lyric. I had to pick my jaw up from the floor! — Dave Koz

Amos Oz is one of the finest novelists of this entire period. MY MICHAEL is a beautiful work of great depth and in some indescribable way lingers in the mind as a lyric song to his country's people as much as a moving love story. — Arthur Miller

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

Now I'm a warrior
Now i've got thicker skin
I'm a warrior
I'm stronger than i've ever been
And my amor
Is made of steel you can't get in
i'm a warrior
And you can never hurt me again — Demi Lovato

So wake me up when its all over

-Wake Me Up — Avicii

Maketa Groves has a strong, bright lyric gift. Her poems come out of music and are full of music. They bring us the sounds of the streets and the sounds of nature, and make us see once again that they are parts of the same song. She celebrates American lives as they are lived today: the mother scrubbing her kitchen floor at midnight, the drag-queens in the Tenderloin, the homeless woman knitting in the courtyard. This is poetry that relentlessly shows us the beauty in the world, with all its struggles and complexity, and demands that we go out to meet it with open hearts. — Diane Di Prima

The reading of the song is vital. The written word is first always ... first. Not belittling the music, but it really is a backdrop. To convey the meaning of a song you need to look at the lyric and understand it. — Frank Sinatra

I think the difference between a good song and a great song is ... honestly, I think the lyrics, because if you have a really solid melody and solid track and everything is there but then the lyric is just okay, then you've got a good song. — Bonnie McKee

I'm not sure anyone's ever experienced enlightenment, been born again, been called to repentance or decided to sell their belongings on account of a system. The voice, the tale, the image, the parable that gets through to you
that wins your heart
religiously is the one that makes it past your defenses. You've been won over, and you probably didn't see it coming. You've been enlisted into a drama, whether positively or negatively, and it shouldn't be controversial to note that it happens all the time. When you really think about it, there's one waiting around every corner. It's as near as the story, song or image you can't get out of your head. Religion happens when we get pulled in, moved, called out or compelled by something outside ourselves. It could be a car commercial, a lyric, a painting, a theatrical performance or the magnetic pull of an Apple store. The calls to worship are everywhere. — David Dark

In the half light of morning, in a world between the sheets
I swear I saw her angel wing, my vision was complete
from TIGHTROPE - Stone Roses — Matt Squire

Did I live the spring I'd sought?
It's true in joy, I walked along,
took part in dance,
and sang the song.
and never tried to bind an hour
to my borrowed garden bower;
nor did I once entreat
a day to slumber at my feet.
Yet days aren't lulled by lyric song,
like morning birds they pass along,
o'er crests of trees, to none belong;
o'er crests of trees of drying dew,
their larking flight, my hands, eschew
Thus I'll say it once and true ...
From all that I saw,
and everywhere I wandered,
I learned that time cannot be spent,
It only can be squandered. — Roman Payne

I don't spend my time perusing message boards to find out what people think about me or if people think my songs are good or if people love that lyric or this or that. I just want to be happy with it myself - and if other people like it, that's great. — Ben Gibbard

It's funny: not only with the title of the album but also the song [It's Decided]. I kind of felt nostalgic. The beginning lyric is, "There's almost a sentimental feeling to another time," and when I got together with Kevin, he just absolutely, in his own fashion, just pushed me to go deeper than I usually would want people to know. That was the most difficult part for me was to bring someone in. — Andy Kim

I love to be in control of everything I do and everything around me. So that means, you give me a romantic lyric and I'll make the atmosphere, I will build on that. And then the song then becomes, it takes me to do the song, it's just a belief, it's just who I am. — Teddy Pendergrass

Sometimes, the best songs are the ones you write without any pen and paper or audio recording device or guitar in your hands. Because there's nothing between you and the melody; it's just a great lyric. — Jon Foreman

We spent a long time learning the craft of songwriting, Roger Glover and I, for a few years before we joined Deep Purple. You learn about the percussive value of words, and you learn about rhyme and meter. You learn that you can't transform a poem into a song lyric, mostly because the spoken shape of words is different than the sung shape of words. You wouldn't use the vowel 'U' or the vowel sound 'ooo' for a high note for example, its very difficult. — Ian Gillan

I always think of each night as a song. Or each moment as a song. But now I'm seeing we don't live in a single song. We move from song to song, from lyric to lyric, from chord to chord. There is no ending here. It's an infinite playlist. — David Levithan

My daughter, who is 7 years old - I have no idea where she learned this - she made a video where she's beat-boxing. We have no idea where the beat-boxing came from, but all of a sudden, there it was. Now we're launched into lyric sheets for every single song that is current. They're all over our house. — Al Madrigal

The song could start with a riff that I base the song around. Or a chord progression or a melody I have, I just write a story about it. Lyric-wise, it's cool to have someone else's input too. — Orianthi

Or you can just start speaking up...

-Brave — Sara Bareilles

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

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

Most songs have bridges in them, to distract listeners from the main verses of a song so they don't get bored. My songs don't have a lot of bridges because lyric poetry never had them. — Bob Dylan

I really do seek to create music that is timeless, ... Each project takes on its own life, and the songs from "A Time To Love" are the most appropriate for the statement I wanted to make ... The most important thing is, when I do give the music, I'm satisfied with it, that it speaks for what I want to do ... It is a different kind of lyric; it's very picturesque. I can see everything that I'm writing, I can visualize all those things happening. — Stevie Wonder

I knew there was something special between us, knew it as surely as a lyric that belonged in a song. But as with all good songs, I needed time to figure out the melody and chords. — Cari Quinn

The poems in Helena Mesa's virtuosic first book, Horse Dance Underwater, run with such speed, verve, and alacrity they leave you breathless, exhilarated, and transformed as if the purest kind of song had lifted you into the air. By this quickness of language finding lyric speech, Mesa's poems remind us of art's joyous and ecstatic effects. — Michael Collier

Songwriters I've always been drawn to are people who deal with something of depth in the lyric writing ... I've always been influenced by the folk song, the storytelling tradition in folk music. And so for years I wrote mostly story songs. I still do that, but as I've gone on, it's gotten a little more personal. I used to write mostly in the third person. I write a little more in the first person now. — Bruce Hornsby

When we study Shakespeare on the page, for academic purposes, we may require all kinds of help. Generally, we read him in modern spelling and with modern punctuation, and with notes. But any poetry that is performed - from song lyric to tragic speech - must make its point, as it were, without reference back. — James Fenton

I understand that transposing a song a half step can effect the believability of a lyric. — Trey Anastasio

I was inspired by people like Joni Mitchell and Carole King and Stevie and "Storytellers." People that could really change the world with their lyric, no matter who sung the song, they had still been the source of that message. So that's what I really aim for. — Emeli Sande

Talk show host Charlie Rose asked folk rocker Neil Young about following his own muse. "So if you get an idea at, say, a dinner party, if you hear a tune or a lyric, do you excuse yourself from the party?" Charlie inquired. "Of course. You never know when she'll [the muse] come again. I'm responsible to her." Sometimes, Neil would hide out in a bathroom to scratch out a song that was coming to him and return to his dinner guests after he felt he'd captured it. When you feel an idea comin' on, excuse yourself. Pull over to the side of the road. Get lost in the creative flow. Be late. Barge in. — Danielle LaPorte

To share is precious, pure and fair.
Don't play with something you should cherish for life. Don't you wanna care, ain't it lonely out there? — Marvin Gaye

Find it incredible impossible not to cry when I hear Stevie Nicks's "Landslide," especially the lyric: "I've been afraid of changing, because I've built my life around you." I think a good test to see if a human is actually a robot/android/cylon is to have them listen to this song lyric and study their reaction. If they don't cry, you should stab them through the heart. You will find a fusebox. — Mindy Kaling