Quotes About Interpretation

Memorizing the song and singing it are two different things.

If I can't get a mental image from the song, I won't sing it.

You have to learn how to act a pop song. You have to find the balance of the pop from the pop song and the lyrical significance of the scene you are in.

I love Erykah Badu. Every time I listen to her music, I'm, like, laying out all the instruments in the song, like, how I would loop it.

When I sing, I try to make the song my own and sing it my way because, in my mind, I am not following any school of thought. I just make myself free.

If I sample a song, I usually make samples out of the whole album. Then I move on after that. Doesn't mean I'm going to release that whole album, but I do that.

I hate it when people try to explain music. The best thing about music is that it's invisible. If you make a song and someone is like, 'Explain it,' and you explain the message, it's like - poof. It all crashes down.

When you don't know how to pronounce words, when you don't know the meaning of the words, how will you imbibe a song with feeling?

I'm just singing a song, and if people want to laugh, that's their business.

We have to put expressions in a song when we sing it.

You can say things a million times, but if you can't sing it, then it really isn't much of a song.

The moment any film has song and dance sequences - where any time any character can start singing and dancing without any explanation - it can turn into a senseless film.

I always hate explaining away songs, because for me they mean something, and for other people, they'll mean something absolutely different.

In the songs I can still be really really direct but in interviews when I'm explaining my songs I shouldn't be so direct about who they're about.

I guess all songs is folk songs. I never heard no horse sing 'em.

I don't really like to talk about what my songs are about.

There are many songs that have become popular and people sing along with it without knowing the meaning of its lyrics.

I love playing guitar every night, and to be at this point where it's like, the songs are done and I'm happy with the way they are on record, and I get to hear them be reinterpreted by the live band? That's kind of the icing on the cake. It's the best.

When I hear the piano played in a compositional way, like in a songwriter's way in a compositional way, there's a certain arc to that that I love.

I'm not really a songwriter - I'm an interpreter. So in a sense I am an actress first and foremost. I act out the songs, and I lead with my heart.

For me as a songwriter, I love when other people cover my songs.

I always like to write the songs, and they get turned loose into the world, and who knows what happens to them. That's the joy of being a songwriter. You get to hear what other people do, interpretation-wise.

I'm really not a songwriter, so if I hear a song, I feel it and like it, I'll do it. But I'll make it the way I want to hear it.

Every so often, you have a producer or a songwriter or both or a team that comes along and really reshapes and redefines sonically what music is and the interpretation of it to the masses.