Song Identity Quotes

You don't really write a hit song - you write a great song, and then, if the public decides it's a hit, they take over from there. The song becomes its own monster.

Well, it's funny because, "The Green Leaves of Summer" and "The Alamo" theme are the same thing. There's just - the Brothers Four was a different recording of it.

When you listen to an album, it shouldn't feel like, "That's the girl song," "That's the club song." I shouldn't know what you're thinking while you're making the song. I don't want to know what the artist is thinking.

I hear a lot of bad TV commercials that try to sound like Where It's At. That pretty much turned me off from using the electric piano for a lot of years.

It can even be a single note which defines the entire song.

But I knew - in the old days, if a song was a good song, I don't care if it was 'Yellow Submarine' or, you know, or 'The Times They Are a-Changin' or 'Don't Be Cruel', you knew it, you know? You heard that song, and you were talking about it, and you knew it.

Lyrics is the face of any song. The combination of composition, lyrics and singing is what makes a song a song.

On the records that I grew up with and loved, every song was unique - it's almost as if you had a different journey every time - and the drums were big part of that story.

The melody is the most important thing that must stay in the minds of the people who listen to you. No matter how many notes you play, you can't let them forget what the song is.

'Trapped In The Closet' lives in a place on the earth on its own. It pays its own rent, it's its own landlord, it owns the building, it's everything. And it's so separate from what R. Kelly does; that's the great thing about it.

Whoever hired me might've just heard 'Refugee.' Well, I'm not the secret to 'Refugee.' The secret to 'Refugee' is the song. But if somebody really good calls me up to play on something because they like the way I played on 'Refugee,' then I wind up playing on another really good song.

Like for me, it's funny that I have ended up in so many side projects because I have always looked at any song that I write as a Dawes song.

I also don't like to make really big records, because I feel then that the songs don't get enough space to be themselves, so I would never want to make a record that's like seventeen songs.

Whenever I have a bunch of tunes written, I always find a kind of uniform that accompanies the songs.

There's no separation between electronic music and acoustic music. It's all one thing. Each song has its own heartbeat. Each song has its own soul.

I don't want another 'It Wasn't Me.' I've been asked that question so many times. Do I want a song of that magnitude? Great, always, but not the same type of music.

It doesn't really matter what chords I play, what words I say or time of day it is, as it's only a Northern Song.

Eventually, when I recorded 'Release Me,' it sort of stamped my style, and I've followed in that vein ever since.

For me, a song doesn't really take flight until it has a lyric on it. ...Without a lyric that I'm happy with, it could be the greatest song ever melodically or arrangement-wise, but it doesn't have any resonance.

Branding your song is the worst thing you can ever do. That's turning your song into a product.

My songs are really never titled. Sometimes I call it one thing. then I change it.

It's so interesting to me how songs take on a shape and body of their own and grow.

We've always been trying to climb this ladder that leans so hard on our own idea of what our big songs are. We realized recently that we're not a band with big songs.

'Santa Monica' was a big song, and I always knew it would be radio friendly. But it's not a defining song for me, though for a lot of people it is.