"I don't think that good politics ever excuse a bad song."
Read quote
3 likes
Song quotes
Song
10.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Song
Browse quotes that often appear alongside song — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Song quotes (page 112 of 536)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"My job as a songwriter is to write good songs."
Read quote
3 likes
"Honestly, when I got to Hollywood I was trying to sell my songs."
Read quote
3 likes
"I had tremendous fun fooling around with the way people talked about songs, just the way that became another way of understanding the world."
Read quote
3 likes
"I don't really think about having had a hard life. It was just my life, and it's all I knew. It made me who I am - all the good and bad - and it's where all of the songs on Here For The Party came from. I've lived them all."
Read quote
3 likes
"I don't know how other bands play the same songs every night."
Read quote
3 likes
"I love the art form of songwriting. I get to carry a lot of vibes to a lot of people. My songs are all about the human condition, and people will be able to find themselves in my songs."
Read quote
3 likes
"I'm doing more than just making songs for the radio. I want it to be a well rounded sounding experience."
Read quote
3 likes
"I have to have music playing constantly. It creates the tone and mood for anything you are doing. I specifically love rock, and Jimi Hendrix is one of my favorite artists. My favorite song is 'Red House,' because it's heavy on the blues."
Read quote
3 likes
"There are so many songs I've recorded, only to hear other people singing them. It happens all the time."
Read quote
3 likes
"I want all of my songs to do well whether I've written them or not."
Read quote
3 likes
"No one's ever done one of my songs badly. People say to me, "God, so-and-so wrecked that song." Well, I'm unaware of it. Anybody doing one of my tunes has earned my gratitude, and I don't get that many covers where I have the luxury to choose."
Read quote
3 likes
"As soon as anybody does one of my songs, I rejoice. This particular case of all these great singers doing my work - the implications are very rich and the temptation to think of the outcome of these masses of the mainstream injecting my work into the marketplace, it's a very sweet speculation."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"It just takes a long time for me [to write a song]. I'm very slow. And it comes, kind of, by dribbles and drops."
Read quote
3 likes
"I always felt I was scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get a song together."
Read quote
3 likes
"Part of the shabbiness of our culture, if indeed it is shabby, is that it doesn't seem to prepare people. With all the songs about love and all the movies and all the books, there doesn't seem to be any way that we can prepare the human heart for this experience."
Read quote
3 likes
"Other people singing my songs is something that I've never been casual about. I've always been very touched by it and I always go into immediate critical suspension."
Read quote
3 likes
"Women stand for the objective world for a man. They stand for the thing that you're not and that's what you always reach for in a song."
Read quote
3 likes
"My sense of proprietorship has been so weak that actually I didn't pay attention and I lost the copyrights on a lot of the songs."
Read quote
3 likes