Aretha Franklin Quotes

If you have tapped into something that is real for you, chances are you are going to tap into something that is real for someone else.

As the writer, you're always a presence in the song. If you get close to what human beings are like, you're writing about common experience. We all do much the same things, so if you nail somebody, then you've also nailed yourself.

I love the fact that people can relate to what I'm saying, even if it's not for the same subject I was writing about. That is the power of real music and real expression.

My songwriting is personal in the hope that listeners will know that I relate to them.

I think if something resonates, even if it's surreal, it's because it is relatable and I think that that's a core issue for me.

I think that talking about the personal specificity, personal details, is how you get the big, big audiences - by talking about your relationships or your personal tragedies. If you reach out with that energy, you'll touch people.

And that's what people want to see when they go to the theater. I believe at the end of the day, they want to see themselves - parts of their lives they can recognize. And I feel if I can achieve that, it's pretty spectacular.

I'll never sing something that I've never been through. So even if I didn't write it, I have to have at least experienced it.

Almost everybody will listen to you when you tell your own story.

I think what I'm trying to do is create moments of recognition. To try to detonate some kind of feeling or understanding of lived experience.

When you're watching somebody read your material and they smile and nod, you know you've found that place where your experience and their experience match, even though they aren't the same exact experience.

I never really thought about my music being universal. When I set out to write, it was just a feeling that felt good to me. I never thought about being able to reach everybody.

You're creating an intimacy that everybody feels, that it's their experience, not yours. I'll never introduce a song and say, now this song is about 'my' broken heart.

Whenever I perform, people get me because I'm talking about things that people can identify with and relate to. I'm not just up there doing jokey, jokey, joke.

If you show you're human and have something to say, people will connect with you.

I put my emotions in my music and I want people to relate to that.

I guess when you write a personal story, people feel compelled to share their own stories.

When I'm picking songs for an album I always want a song that I can relate to and that I have experienced. There's nothing worse than watching an artist try and sell a song that isn't believable coming from them.

I just want to portray a very honest character that displays traits that people can truly relate to and can help them - the audience and myself because I learn from the characters as well - help them see themselves in a perspective that is outside of what they know already, and grow from that experience.

My poems - I don't even like the sound of that, in a way. Not that anyone else wrote them. But we know that only people who are really close to us care about our personal experience.

For me, I can only do that from my own experience with people I've known and things that I've lived and experienced. That's what good pop music is all about, pop music that does reach out to people. It's very personalized and very real, honest and sincere.

As a fan, I connect with realness. Whether it's strong or vulnerable, if it's real, I can connect with it.

Anytime I hear songs that are so honest, whether they make the person who's singing it look good or not, there's a level of honesty that resonates with people.

Generally, if I read something that I think is really good and that I feel a connection with and is right for me, I see and hear who the guy is, as manifested by me.

A lot of the albums that I've been really into are like, 'Oh man. That doesn't make him look like a perfect human. That actually shows his warts and his scars, and for some reason, I'm super drawn to him now because he shared that or she shared that with me.'