Singing Quotes - page 19
The sound shivers through the walls, through the table, through the window frame, and into my finger. These distraction-oholics. These focus-ophobics. Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother's holding your attention every moment you're awake. He's making sure you're always distracted. He's making sure you're fully absorbed... and this being fed, it's worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what's in your mind. With everyone's imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.
Chuck Palahniuk
I think I first realized I wanted to be in country music and be an artist when I was 10. And I started dragging my parents to festivals, and fairs, and karaoke contests, and I did that for about a year before I came to Nashville for the first time. I was 11 and I had this demo CD of me singing Dixie Chicks and Leanne Rimes songs.
Taylor Swift
I always had a knack for it [music]. I bought a drum kit for like 50 bucks, and within three weeks I was in a band. Not only was I in a band, but people were saying that I was really good. Being someone with a short attention span who didn't have much patience for anything, that was great, 'cause it didn't take much. I could just sit down and do it instantly. I could play a basic rock beat right away, so it didn't require much patience, and that's probably why I ended up doing it. As I got some of the rewards for it, it fueled me to want to be better. Then the rewards thing gets old, and what you really want is to be good and understand it, 'cause you're so enthused by it. That's what got me into all the other instruments and songwriting and singing.
Chris Cornell
I've always said that Chris was the greatest songwriter to ever come out of Seattle. Jimi Hendrix could play the guitar like crazy, but Chris had the song-writing chops that we all sort of hoped to get to at different points in our songwriting careers. He had a way he could wrap a melody around odd time signatures and weird parts and make them catchy. He was a beautiful wordsmith. If you look at his lyrics, he obviously was processing his pain and depression, and all of those things. I think that's part of what people, myself included, responded to when he was singing. With the songwriting he had that voice, there's not too many people that have that many options with their voice. He could do a lot of different things with it, and have a lot of different characters in that voice. I feel so lucky that I got to be in a project with him, got to hang out with him, and just sort of witness his greatness.
Chris Cornell
A lot more can happen in the world of singer-songwriters that I appreciate. This storytelling where you have the ability to sit and listen to it because you don't have other distractions -- you're not listening to what the bass part is doing, there isn't an elaborate instrumental arrangement that's taking you into Middle Earth and back.. For me just as a singer I think you're able to hear aspects of my voice and my singing and what it conveys in ways you're not going to on a Soundgarden or an Audioslave record.
Chris Cornell
With Moondance, I wrote the melody first. I played the melody on a soprano sax and I knew I had a song so I wrote lyrics to go with the melody. That's the way I wrote that one. I don't really have any words to particularly describe the song, sophisticated is probably the word I'm looking for. For me, Moondance is a sophisticated song. Frank Sinatra wouldn't be out of place singing that.
Van Morrison
Our voices, our representation of ourselves, have been in the hands of others, namely men, since the beginning of the mediums of film and television. My main character in I've Heard the Mermaids Singing videotaped a confession that is used through the film. It's her way of having control over her definition of herself.
Patricia Rozema
I have grown weary of the winds of heaven.
I will not be a reed to hold the sound
Of whatsoever breath the gods may blow,
Turning my torment into music for them.
They gave me life; the gift was bountiful,
I lived with the swift singing strength of fire,
Seeking for beauty as a flame for fuel -
Beauty in all things and in every hour.
The gods have given life - I gave them song;
The debt is paid and now I turn to go.
Sara Teasdale
I like to take things easy. I don't constantly think about music. I never plan concerts, practise or even hum. When I go up on the stage, music courses through me. My family members attend my concerts because they do not hear me sing at home. I have entrusted you [Prince Rama Varma] with the task of popularising my style of singing among others, especially in foreign countries. I have heard some of your foreign students sing my compositions and was surprised. They sound better than many Indian students. I want to be known more as a composer than as a musician. You are now making this happen.
M. Balamuralikrishna
