Song quotes
10.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside song — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"When you make a solo record, it's you. It's your name. It has to be the right songs for how you feel. It just took me a really long time to get to a place where I felt comfortable with the material and the recording."
"Whenever I have a bunch of tunes written, I always find a kind of uniform that accompanies the songs."
"I think I have a hard time expressing myself in my relationships. I use songs to tell people how I'm feeling. If I can't say 'I love you,' I'll write a song about it and hope that the person figures it out."
"You would never hear any song played twice in the same way. The words were retained, but within a certain frame there was great latitude, and the musician could improvise to his heart's content; and the more the variations and combinations, the greater the musician."
"I guess it would be if I wanted to, just lay back and predominantly write songs when I can't go on a stage anymore."
"Sometimes I do a Dylan song and it seems to fit me so right that I figure maybe I wrote it. Dylan didn’t always do it for me as a singer, not in the early days, but then I started listening to the lyrics. That sold me."
"Me + Love Songs on KOST=embarrassing car jam sesh."
"You shall abstain, shall abstain. That is the eternal song."
"Whether one show one's self a man of genius in science or compose a song, the only point is, whether the thought, the discovery, the deed, is living and can live on."
"In fact, many musicians are the happiest when the artist and audience re-interpret or re-imagine the content of the songs."
"At the start of 2005 the idea of downloading a song to a mobile phone was an idea, by the end of the year it was a reality."
"In these pages, and in my memories, she reminds me that a short life can also be a good and rich life, that it is possible to live with depression without being consumed by it, and that meaning in life is found together, in family and friendship that transcends and survives all manner of suffering. As the poet wrote in the Bible's Song of Solomon, 'Love is strong as death.' Or perhaps even stronger."
"Lack of feeling in an emotional sense is responsible for the way some singers do our songs. They don't understand and are too old to grasp the feeling. Beatles are really the only people who can play Beatle music."
"The whole Beatle thing was just beyond comprehension. When 'Help' came out, I was actually crying out for help. Most people think it's just a fast rock 'n roll song. I didn't realize it at the time; I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie. But later, I knew I really was crying out for help."
"It ( In My Life ) was the first song that I wrote that was really, consciously about my life.... up until then, it had been all glib and throwaway."
"I'm always proud and pleased when people do my songs. It gives me pleasure that they even attempt them, because a lot of my songs aren't that doable."
"It was very romantic. It's all in the song, The Ballad of John and Yoko. If you want to know how it happened, it's in there. Gibraltar was like a little sunny dream. I couldn't find a white suit - I had sort of off-white corduroy trousers and a white jacket. Yoko had all white on."
"I don't know if I want to record together again. I go off and on it... In the old days, when we needed an album, Paul and I got together and produced enough songs for it. Nowadays, there's three of us writing prolifically and trying to fit it all into one album."
"I started being me about the songs, not writing objectively, but subjectively. I think it was Dylan who helped me realize that - not by any discussion or anything, but by hearing his work."
"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."
