I don't care about the rules. In fact, if I don't break the rules at least 10 times in every song then I'm not doing my job properly.
I don't want my reputation to take me over, I just want to be judged on my songs. I want people to come and see me because they want to, not because fashion dictates it.
Instinct taught me 20 years ago to pace a song or a concert performance. That translates into pacing a story, pleasing a reading audience.
In early spring, every petal of tulips sing a song of love and life, dance with joy and happiness to enjoy her short life of dazzling beauty.
As dreams are the healing songs from the wilderness of our unconscious - So wild animals, wild plants, wild landscapes are the healing dreams from the deep singing mind of the earth.
Ian and Sylvia, who, when you got right down to it, were essentially country and western singers. I just recorded his Four Strong Winds. It's a wonderful song.
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.
Nobody thinks mystery writers go around killing people, but they always seem to assume singers are singing about themselves, especially if you write melancholy songs like me.
I also wanted to make a record that was about other things than romance, yeah, after two years on the road singing all the songs from the first album, I got kind of tired of that.
Every man needs his Siren To check his courage and strength When he hears her song In his travels through the unknown.
You'll almost encounter a superstition amongst musicians, people sort of go through strange rituals, what they need to do to write a song.
I get sick when I think about someone going to iTunes and downloading two songs off our album. It's not meant to be listened to that way.
I have been consistent by staying true to who I am and will continue to sing the type of songs that those who have continued to support my career expect from me.
Every song is like a kid. How can you have that many kids and have a favorite? Which one do I like to hang most with? Probably the one that I haven't hung most with recently.
I like to think about stringing songs together like a string of pearls, or a string of beads, but ultimately it has to be stuff that really works with the band, and gives a spin to the older material.
That's where it begins and ends for me and these songs were the ones that touched me the deepest. It was like I was laying hold of some part of me that I didn't even know was there until I let it out.
In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.
I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, 'Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!'
All our good and bad memories—they were like our B-side diaries. They were like those songs on old dusty punk albums that no one listened to anymore.
I would sit on the street corners in my hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, and I would play. And, generally, I would start playing gospel songs.
Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do, and then just go for it.
