Quotes About Music

Steve Howe met Paul Simon and said that Paul was very approving of our version of 'America.'

When I was young, I was offered my first recording contract in 1971 and was offered quite a bit of money if I would change my character and be a '70s version of Cher.

'She's Dynamite' was a 100 years ago, and I recorded that song because the company thought that it was a great song and it was hot. That was the beginning of rock n' roll, and I guess they thought it would be a BB King version of rock n' roll.

It's not that I'm trying to write another '7 Years' or a new version of 'Mama Said.' Songs just kind of come out of nowhere, and you need to catch them when they do.

I like the original Metallica version they did on 'Garage Days' - 'Last Caress' and 'Green Hell.'

Sometimes I have a melody in my head; sometimes it's just a verse. I read lines from a book or movies that I watch and grab a few quotes and start writing on paper. From there, I record a really rough version and work on the song.

I have a lot of favorite songs. One of them is Lyle Lovett's version of 'If I Needed You.'

'NME' and 'Melody Maker' were saying I was the next Lou Reed or Van Morrison. So, everyone has their own version as to when the height of my career was.

One of the first albums I can remember hearing was a Supertramp best of, with mostly 'Breakfast in America' songs on it. It's kind of the same thing as the Flaming Lips, where there are these really melancholy lyrics and melodies, yet it's extremely uplifting. They're like a nonfuturistic version of the Flaming Lips.

I've been lucky, because people have done such great versions of my songs, and I've worked with the best singers ever, and I'm lucky that way.

My guitar heroes are Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck and people like that - so I've tried to make an album of Robert Johnson covers that, well, while not totally faithful for blues purists, is faithful for people like me that grew up with the '60s and the electric blues-rock versions of Johnson's songs.

If there is enough space on radio for Busted and McFly, who are basically the same band, or for 50,000 versions of Stereophonics and Coldplay, there must be enough room for all of us.

Cover versions, that's my forte, that's all I ever used to do. When you play your own songs, it's quite scary, 'cause I'm quite honest and open, they can be very revealing. But covers, I don't have to think about, just get me up there!

Amaal and I have some sort of magnetic connection. I am my brother's first assistant. So I have sung the scratch versions of all his songs. We make music at home, jam every day.

I started singing when I was three - my mother would teach me some versions of 'Thirupugazh.' And I loved being on stage.

I record all of my music with authentic instruments in a studio before we start editing, doing many, many versions. The music shapes the film as we edit so it has an organic relationship to the content.

So you do shorter versions of the hits, or you take out a long guitar solo or things like that to make time for the hits and new music as well. But I don't think any of us ever get to do as much new music as we would like to.

I think that there are a lot of really beautiful Christmas carols, and then sometimes there are horrible renditions of them that are played to death in malls that make me sad. I try to avoid stores where they're playing bad versions of Christmas songs on repeat.

There are a lot of talented Punjabi singers in Bollywood and we are also using a lot of Punjabi songs and reprise versions of these songs in our films and I have also sung quite a few of them.

All you hear Catholics turning out these days are pop versions of the old Protestant anthems.

I always say it took me 10 minutes to write 'Cars,' but if I am honest it could have been even less than that - and it has been a really successful song over the years. It is still massively used, in advertising, in films, and people do cover versions of it a lot.

I think there is some truth to the fact that yeah, okay, cool, obviously the more mainstream kind of easier-to-grasp-onto dance music has become popular, but that holds true with almost any genre. It wasn't like the Sex Pistols hit the radio. It was poppier versions of that is what hit. It's never, like, the true core stuff.

Claude Debussy's 'Children's Corner' is a suite with six movements just for piano. Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and Alfred Cartot's versions are amazing, but my favorite is Menininha Lobo's. Her version was done when she was an old lady - and you can hear it.

'Teenage Dream' was the most difficult song I've ever been a part of. We wrote five different versions of it. We couldn't get the lyrics right. Max Martin and Dr. Luke wrote most of the melody, and then Katy Perry and I were responsible for getting the lyrics right.