Quotes About Lyrics

I had an unspoken treaty with myself to never lie in my lyrics, so, for a long time, when I wrote love songs, I would use genderless pronouns, like "dear" and "darling" - like some kind of granny!

I love music, and I love singing.

If lyrics make people do things, how come we don't love each other?

One thing a lyricist must learn is not to fall in love with his own lines. Once you learn that, you can walk away from the lyric and look at it with a reasonable degree of objectivity.

I love Billy Joel. I cry sometimes when I hear 'The Stranger.' 'You May Be Right' may be one of the greatest songs ever written.

Sometimes I'll come up with a lick that I really love, and I'll try to put the right words to it for years. Suddenly something comes to me that works just right.

Don't want to hear my favorite rapper doin' a love song. If I want to hear something soft, I'll throw on Luther Vandross.

Early mornings were given over to Bartok and Schoenberg. Midmorning I treated myself to the vocals of Billy Eckstine, Billie Holiday, Nat Cole, Louis Jordan and Bull Moose Jackson. A piroshki from the Russian delicatessen next door was lunch and then the giants of bebop flipped through the air. Charlie Parker and Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan and Al Haig and Howard McGhee. Blues belonged to late afternoons and the singers' lyrics of lost love spoke to my solitude.

What's the secret to a great popular song? It must be melodically simple and harmonically attractive.

My first song was 'So Sick,' which was my first number one as an artist, and I turned the mic around to the crowd, and they sang the whole song. Every lyric. That was my first experience with the power of music.

I remember one of my favorite all-time records was by Edwin Starr: 'Stop Her on Sight.'

I have been around for a long, long time. I didn't make it 'til I was older. I went through the period when women were not getting signed, particularly if you were writing songs that were lyrically propelled.

I feel like sometimes, when I'm singing a song like 'Moment of Forever,' that it goes both to your significant other and to the audience, and was it wonderful for you, you know? I think the best love songs I've written work on that level, like 'Help Me Make It Through the Night.'

Even to be flown out to New York was mind boggling for me, and signing with Columbia was great because they really understood my vision. Of all the labels that I met, they were the ones that really seemed to understand that I was really about the music, the writing, and the lyrics, so it was really fulfilling to sign with them.

I had written lyrics to a song called The Silent Extreme, which Alex later renamed Humans Being.

I can't write when it's silent. But the music can't have lyrics.

A lot of people heard 'Murda Business' and thought it was about killing people, trying to be tough and hardcore. If you actually listen to the lyrics, it's kind of silly and playful.

Some very silly songs can have an almost melancholy feeling when you put it in a different perspective.

One of the disadvantages of poetry over popular music is that if you write a pop song, it naturally gets into people's heads as they listen in the car. You don't have to memorize a Paul Simon song; it's just in your head, and you can sing along. With a poem, you have to will yourself to memorize it.

Paul Simon is the king!

I like records. My favorite is Simon and Garfunkel.

When I was working on 'Night Falls Over Kortedala,' I was listening a lot to 'Graceland,' the Paul Simon record. I really got into the lyrics on that album. The opening line is so brilliant, the way he sets the scene.

I always come back to the gentler stuff like Simon & Garfunkel and the Fleet Foxes' first album - that's quite an odd one.

But I think beautiful is simple and elegant, like a ballad with simple harmony.