Great Songs Quotes

It's easy to make an album full of great songs. But I want people to go for the ride. The songs have to make sense together.

Starting a band is the easy part. Once you've formed the band, you have to tell a story, and that story requires songs. And not just good songs, but great songs. After a while, great songs won't do - they have to be the best. Success doesn't make it any easier. Each time I start a new record, it's a brand-new search.

At the end of the day, I'm a fan of great stories and great songs.

I'm a fan of all music, and probably my first - well, not the very first music I listened to, but back in the late fifties, when I first started hearing rock & roll, it was definitely tinged with doo wop and also Elvis and all those great songs.

Coming from the U.K., I can think of so many great songs and musical moments that didn't require a belter of a voice; my favorite singer is Kate Bush and she's not a belter, or PJ Harvey... I'm definitely more of an alternative girl.

[Miley Cyrus] got a fantastic voice. I do think she's a fantastic artist and does great songs. I wish her all the best.

He learned through the way that my father and I felt about his songs, his country songs, that they were great songs. And then he went out and sang them for the audiences that we found, and he found a tremendous reaction to that.

And the thing about me is, I have a lot of mellow songs, because they're the easiest for me to write. I wanted to try to make some more upbeat songs, so, I ended up gravitating toward writing songs with friends, which was a great learning process, and also we came up with great songs. Those are the songs that came out the most naturally.

No matter how many people try, no matter how many fancy songwriters in Los Angeles try to break it down to a formula... to an extent, there isn't a science to writing great songs, I suppose.

I have been very blessed with some great songs.

Everything about Sinatra was good. He had the ability to pick great songs, and once Sinatra had sung them, that pretty much was it. He pretty much put his stamp on everything.

I like people writing great songs on guitar or piano or what have you. I miss people getting on stage with real bands and real instruments and expressing themselves that way instead of with computers and technology.

I like Stevie Wonder as my favorite non-pianist pianist. I mean, I shouldn't call him a non-pianist, because he's really a great pianist, but he doesn't feature it that much - he uses his keyboards and his piano technique to support his great songs and so forth, but he can really blow.

I want to make great songs.

There are certain functions that a writer has to do. In a time of crisis, it is great to have heroic poems, as it was in the Irish Revolution. It's great to have great songs, because people need something to sing when they are marching. That's OK, but it should be on the side. It's not the ultimate thing.

I'm a songwriter who just wants to bring people great songs.

There's gonna be a lot of great songs, but there ain't going to be another 'Trap Queen.'

There are some Rolling Stones songs that are just stunners.

I am permanently a student of people who make great songs, but besides sort of learning by absorption, I just love listening to music, hearing what's going on, hearing new things or new old things.

I wrote all the lyrics on 'Good Vibrations' and most of them in 'Kokomo.' 'Kokomo' was extremely popular and fun to sing - it's probably one of the bigger sing-along songs in our show. But then 'Help Me Rhonda,' 'Surfin' USA' and 'California Girls' and 'I Get Around' and 'Fun, Fun, Fun' are great songs as well.

No matter how many people try, no matter how many fancy songwriters in Los Angeles try to break it down to a formula... to an extent, there isn't a science to writing great songs, I suppose. For me, it's always about melody - it doesn't matter what genre of music you're writing, if there's a strong melodic thing somewhere, whether that's in a vocal or in a guitar part or a sample. Something that sticks in your brain, that seems to be something that works.

With the Stone Roses, I always thought we'd be successful because we had some great songs.

I like making songs up. Whether or not they're great songs or good songs, whatever. It's something I've always done, and I definitely feel like I've gotten better at it.

Most of our artists are songwriters, so the songs are still central to all this. If you don't have great songs, it doesn't matter the marketing or how many times you are on TV; you can only polish it so much.

I've always covered some Dylan songs. I do one or two. And I do them because they're great songs. You know some people cover songs they wish they could have written, not me. I like to cover songs I know I could not have ever written.