It's hard to say a favorite song of my father's. I listen to all his stuff - a lot of the old stuff before the '70s.
To have a song work for the movie, it can't just be written apart and shoved in. It's got to come out of the action. It's got to talk about the characters, not the story: it has to augment that action.
I don't think there is anything hard at all about having a lot of songs. It makes it easier to be less precious about them, and know that everybody's going to want to work on some of them.
While listening, to things like western swing, for instance, I'd work something out in my head, then play it on my National; not the same song, but one that captured the feeling of the original tune.
For a song cycle to work, you have to feel these things when you hear them and you either have an emotional reaction to it or you don't. The plotline is something that gets woven together in the back-story.
I'm never too ambitious when I go into the studio. I always know that I'm just going into the studio to work on or try to develop an idea that I have for a song.
I had no album title, and the album is like a journey in that it's a complete body of work. It's not just a couple of catchy songs and filler, so I felt that I needed to capture the essence of the album.
It's now taken for granted that women are in bands and you can say feminist things in your songs. But back in the early '90s, there was a lot of violence at Bikini Kill shows that people don't realize happened.
I've always had mostly women come out to see me perform. That's the reason the guys show up; they know R. Kelly is going to draw the women. Most of the songs I'm singing are catering to women anyway.
I continue to believe, contrary to the given wisdom, that it's more interesting to have an album - or, indeed, an individual song - which has variety rather than homogeneity.
Displaced Person’s Song If you see a train this evening, Far away, against the sky, Lie down in your woolen blanket, Sleep and let the train go by. Trains have called us, every midnight, From a thousand miles away, Trains that pass through empty ci...
What came first, the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person? People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers ...
Mockingbirds are the true artists of the bird kingdom. Which is to say, although they're born with a song of their own, an innate riff that happens to be one of the most versatile of all ornithological expressions, mocking birds aren't content to mer...
He had never got so much back for himself from any pupil as he did from Miss Kronborg. From the first she had stimulated him; something in her personality invariably affected him. Now that he was feeling his way toward her voice, he found her more in...
Tevye: [in song] Do you love me? Golde: [speaking] I'm your wife! Tevye: [speaking] I know! [in song] Tevye: But do you love me? Golde: [singing] Do I love him? For twenty-five years I've lived with him, fought with him, starved with him. Twenty-five...
Young J.R.: [to Young Jack] How come you're so good? Young Jack Cash: [laughs] I aint! Young J.R.: You pick 5 times more than me. Young Jack Cash: Well, I'm bigger than you are. Young J.R.: You know every story in the scripture. Young Jack Cash: Well...
Loving a band with all your heart is something you understand when it happens to you. On the surface, others can see its a petty obsession, but they'll just never know the feeling of putting so much fail into a few people on the other side of the wor...
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
Some days, the music is not in tune, but it's always a song worth singing. That's the best description of a good marriage I've ever heard...
Now Autumn's fire burns slowly along the woods and day by day the dead leaves fall and melt.
Be prepared. A dog is adorable and noble. A dog is a true and loving friend. A dog is also a hedonist.
