Nuno Bettencourt Quotes

When you first start out in the music business and hope that you have a couple hits, the ultimate payoff is to be standing in front of all those people who are singing it back to you at the top of their lungs. And you know by the way they're singing it back that it's affected their life in some way. That's the ultimate reward as an artist for me.

The thrill of writing songs for other people, when you get that right, that person's soul speaks to that song; you've done them a favor and the world a favor. That's what writing is all about - you're always trying to get the real picture.

My favorite part about writing a song is really when it's released, and I can see that it relates to so many people.

Every song I ever wrote, I wrote to be heard. So, if I was given a choice that 50 years from now I could either have a dollar or knowing that some kid was listening to my song, I'd go with the kid listening to my song.

It's not a lot, but we have 8,000 people following us. I get the biggest kick out of it, to hear words that I wrote and chords that I wrote being sung by somebody else. It's a true honor, and it might sound intense, but it's one of the most rewarding parts of the songwriting experience.

My aspirations aren't to sell millions of records, but to write really good songs.

To see fans singing your songs back to you is an indescribable thing.

I connect emotionally to these songs. I mean what I say when I say it, and that allows your audience to connect. That's the number-one reason why any music is successful, because you make people feel something.

Whenever you write music, you want it to touch people on a certain level. I mean, I've been reading tweets about 'Troublemaker' and people saying 'OMG, I can so relate to this - this is a guy that I fancy, or a girl that I fancy; it's exactly like this person.'

A lot of people have come with 100 songs and never had the impact that I have with one, and I'm well aware of that.

The way I write my songs is that I have to believe what I'm writing about, and that's why they always end up being so personal - because the kind of artists I like, they convince me, they totally win me over straight away in that thing. Like, 'Oh my God, this song is totally about me.'

As a songwriter, if you can touch people and make them feel a little less alone in the world, then you've done your job.

No matter what, I will always hope for that day when I look around and can say, 'Oh yeah, I wrote a song that touched me emotionally the way that a song like 'She's Got A Way,' by Billy Joel did.'

I started playing, and people responded to it and connected with it and now, I don't even know what I'm really connecting with anymore or if I'm helping people. Now it's more of a business.

That's why we do this. In country music, we do this for this very reason... to impact people lyrically, to be a part of their lives.

I don't feel that I have achieved anything, I just want people to love my songs.

When it comes down to it, it's all about good music and what makes people react. That wins over everything else.

The most rewarding experience as a musician is to know that I moved people personally.

It'll never get old to hear a song that I wrote on the radio or to hear what someone experienced when they heard a song I wrote.

Whether my lyrics are about love or something else, I always make sure I'm connecting with my fans, and to see their support is definitely a motivation.

When I look at my streams on Spotify, and I just see it's hundreds of millions of streams, I think, 'Wow, that's amazing.' But you don't really get it. Once you see people in front of you singing along to your songs, it's real.

I think sometime during the peak of 'Whiskey Glasses' is when I realized: 'Man, this is really starting to happen. People are not not just singing these singles, they're singing every song on my album and really invested in what I'm doing.'

Of course I think we're most thankful for 'Shake It,' because it's given us a lot of opportunities, helped us pay some bills and brought us pretty far in life. And it's fun to perform live.

I've had tons of incredible conversations with people who say they got married or buried relatives to my songs.

My favorite part is, once a song is out there to the public, having someone come up and tell their own story about why one of your songs resonated with them. It's an incredible feeling.