I'm always imagining some sort of story behind the song, even the ones I haven't written. I'm actively engaging in playacting.

I'm always imagining some sort of story behind the song, even the ones I haven't written. I'm actively engaging in playacting.

My father had all kinds of instruments in the house that he would hide from my mother. He bought them through mail order!

There was a train that would come by our house every night, and I'd hear the whistle blow. That is the sweetest memory I have.

Miles Davis was doing something inherently African, something that has to do with all forms of American music, not just jazz.

I'm always looking for ways to develop as an artist, especially as a jazz artist-to find different ways of testing my voice.

I've often cringed when I heard myself described as a jazz singer. I've always thought of myself as a jazz vocalist.

My grandmother sang, too, and she was really loud. It was this wild kind of singing. I count her among my influences.

Everything I do is collaborative. It's just my way. I'm really very interested in how the other musicians perceive the song.

Miles Davis was a master. In every phase of his career, he understood that this music was a tribute to the African muse.

Being black, I'm involved in the reparations movement. It's focused toward the African-American audience. We could begin to heal.

I was never interested in singing in the church choir or in school. I was more interested in becoming a musician.

I just wrote one song at a time. Kinda like an alcoholic. One day at a time.

Then, in that hour of deliverance, my heart spoke. Does not such a country, and such defenders of their country, deserve a song?

If you give it good concentration, good energy, good heart and good performance, the song will play you.

But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry.

I guess a good song is a good song is a good song, ya know.

In the past 3-4 years I've developed a habit of keeping numerous small cassette recorders in my house and in a bag with me so that I'm able to commit to tape memory song ideas on a constant basis.

I don't ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful.

The band set up in January and just started rehearsing. If there was a song, we'd just rehearse it as a band, and it would get arranged as a band, and it got changed around a lot.

Peace Train is a song I wrote, the message of which continues to breeze thunderously through the hearts of millions of human beings.

I love listening to Radio Head's 'Everything in its Right Place' because it's all major chords, it makes you feel really good. It's soothing, it's got a beautiful voice, crazy textures. When I'm down I listen to that song and it really makes me feel good.

I've always wanted to sing, just as I've always known that one day I would have my own niche in the annals of song. It was a feeling I had.

I have eighteen titles in the German language. I had a number one song in 1965.

Listen kid, take my advice, never hate a song that has sold half a million copies.

There's a lot of rage... you have to express it somehow. If I didn't express it in song, I'd become incredibly violent.

I do not mind having written the song at all. I just wish that I had written it in a different key, as the high d is hard to play. I am glad that I wrote something that brought joy to millions of people.

It's like, it's up to the people to fall in love with the song. The record company can only do so much.

People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.

I guess you could write a good song if your heart hadn't been broken, but I don't know of anyone whose heart hasn't been broken.

A song has to become as much a part of you as a tailored suit.

A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song.

Most musicians count at the beginning, and never count and talk to their musicians after that. They only talk to them at the end of the song. But I would count with them and talk.

In an age of incompetence, I've been able to last in this crazy business. I actually know how to play my ax and write a song. That's my job.

The only thing that's a little tricky about it is sometimes people assume that if it's a new song, it's a reflection of what you're feeling or going through now.

When I write a song, it's all about the riff - the riff first, then the words come later.

There's not one Tin Pan Alley song on my record.

Song Sung Blue took a lot of compressing and refining, and it has one of my favorite lyrics.

The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.

Each member does whatever they want with the song and it totally changes it from whatever idea I hear around it. It turns it into a Sonic Youth song and completely away from it being a solo song.

People get passionate about a song. It's been my experience if you put out radio candy, something commercial, it doesn't sell records.

I usually have an idea of how I want a song to sound, but I don't always know how to get there.

We worked very hard to make the lyrics suit the music. I can't, like Elton John, for example, compose by lyrics. Elton has a great talent for that. Whatever you give him, including your questions, he composes in half an hour and makes a great song out of it.

A lot of Woody Guthrie's songs were taken from other songs. He would rework the melody and lyrics, and all of a sudden it was a Woody Guthrie song.

I just try to get inside the song and imagine what comes next.

If I found a cure for a huge disease, while I was hobbling up onstage to accept the Nobel Prize they'd be playing the theme song from 'Three's Company'.

I mean a song that's specifically for the girls. It's saying you know we talk about them night and day, we're constantly pondering on men and what they've done good and what they've done bad and all these things in our lives.

If you have a song that you think sounds like another song you should contact the publishing company and say I have a song here, let's cut a deal that lets everyone walk away feeling good.

Right now, I'm Writing song lyrics. Experimenting with a play. Toying with an idea for a documentary. I hope one of these will eventually be launched into the light of day.