Song Quotes

Sam Phillips asked me to go write a love song, or maybe a bitter weeper. So I wrote a song called, "Cry Cry Cry," went back in and recorded that for the other side of the record.

I could wrap myself in the warm cocoon of a song and go anywhere; I was invincible.

Every week, Dennis Day sang an old Irish folk song. And next day in the fields, I'd be singing that song if I was working in the fields.

Writing for other artists helped me figure out that magic you have to capture to make everyone connect with a song.

It's about you putting in the work, practicing every day, and hopefully one day you write the song the whole world wants to get down to. And one day you're going to be sitting next to Ellen DeGeneres talking about how you broke records and rocked the Super Bowl!

I tend to overthink things. I'm not the guy who screams 'This is a world smash!' when I finish a song.

Throughout my career, if I have done anything, I have paid attention to every note and every word I sing - if I respect the song. If I cannot project this to a listener, I fail.

I get an audience personally involved in a song - because I'm involved myself. It's not something I do deliberately: I can't help myself. If the song is a lament at the loss of love, I get an ache in my gut. I feel the loss myself and I cry out the loneliness, the hurt and the pain that I feel.

Man down is a song about a girl who has committed a murder that she regrets and is completely remorseful about.

Making music is like shopping for me. Every song is like a new pair of shoes.

Music, at its essence, is what gives us memories. And the longer a song has existed in our lives, the more memories we have of it.

I can't see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That's terrible.

I think of myself as a song-and-dance man.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

At certain times I read a lot of poetry. My favorite poets are Shelley and Keats. Rimbaud is so identifiable. Lord Byron. I don't know. Lately if I read poems, it's like I can always hear the guitar. Even with Shakespeare's sonnets I can hear a melody because it's all broken up into timed phrases so I hear it. I always keep thinking, 'What kind of song would this be?'

Anything I can sing, I call a song. Anything I can't sing, I call a poem.

Sometimes people ask songwriters what a song means, not realizing if they had more words to explain it they would've used them in the song.

I have written a song that says: If you ever lose someone dear to you, never say the words, "They're gone," and they'll come back.

When I was a child, ladies and gentlemen, I was a dreamer. I read comic books and I was the hero of the comic book. I saw movies and I was the hero in the movie. So every dream I ever dreamed has come true a hundred times...I learned very early in life that: 'Without a song, the day would never end; without a song, a man ain't got a friend; without a song, the road would never bend - without a song.' So I keep singing a song. Goodnight. Thank you.

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I'm really not worth being called an artist at all.