Original Song Quotes

It's easy to get people to sing along to cover songs, but when it's your song, it's the coolest.

I got a guitar when I was six and, instead of learning other people's songs, started to try to write my own, even at that young age.

The first time I heard 'Jolene,' I was 12 years old, and it was performed by Jack White. I remember watching that video and forgetting it was from a woman's point of view, and forgetting it was a country song, and forgetting it was originally by Dolly Parton.

We didn't say, 'Hey, we're gonna pick a bunch of cover songs,' or, 'We're gonna write an original song that has to sound like this, because we're a metal band, so we're gonna cover some metal songs.' We did the opposite. We just said, 'We're gonna have fun with these songs, and we're gonna try different things.'

Most people in the U.K. discovered me playing a standard on Parkinson. In America, it was on VH1 singing an original called 'All At Sea,' which is a contemporary pop song. So the people that know me there tend to think of me in the singer/songwriter category.

When directors tell me they want a song like one, I tell them no song should be like another. I don't listen to directors.

There's something different that happens when you're writing a song for your own record that you know you're going to sing.

With any cover, I like to choose songs that affected me strongly already. So it's tough sometimes to take a song that you love so much and put your own spin on it because you get such a strong feeling from the original.

I think it was when I was 12 when I entered a singing competition. I sang my own original song for an audience of 1,000 people.

I like Anastacia's version of Love is Alive best.

My 'Slide Some Oil' ain't gon' be Nipsey Russell's 'Slide Some Oil.' Elijah Kelley's 'You Can't Win' ain't gon' be Michael Jackson's 'You Can't Win.'

I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs.

My opinion of covers is that unless you're going to change and take a cover in a new direction, it's gonna get put up against the old one, and you're gonna lose. It's like, which would you rather listen to? The Righteous Brothers' 'Loving Feeling' or Hall and Oates' 'Loving Feeling?'

"I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day," which I actually recorded on "Quality Street" because I don't think anyone has ever covered it before. You hear it every single Christmas, and it is a great record. That's by Wizzard. It is a really great record, but I don't think anyone's ever covered it before, so I had to go it doing it differently. It's quite different from how the original goes.

The pressure is only from the producers and the labels. No composer, no singer would ever want to sing a remix.

You're never going to improve on a Michael Jackson song if you cover it.

The show is called 'Todrick,' and the show follows my life and the friends that I've gathered over the past few years making YouTube videos. Every week, we're taking a brand new concept - a brand new original song, brand new hair, makeup, choreography, and making a video come to life on our shoestring budget.

I feel like a lot of bands have done amazing covers, but whenever we start working on it, whenever we try it in rehearsal, it never feels right for me to do the song.

The reason we see more recreations is because people want to re-introduce some iconic songs to the younger generation. I support recreations too, as long as they're done well and respectfully. I have done a couple myself too, but when I recreate a song, I do it like a tribute to the makers of the original song.

'You Talk' was originally a copy of a certain Velvet Underground song.