Lyrics are the only thing to do with music that haven’t been made easier technically.

I always loved that old song ‚Banks of the Ohio‘ – it was always such a man’s song, so I’ve always wanted to record it.

For me, writing a song, I sit down and the process doesn’t really involve me thinking about the demographic of people I’m trying to hit or who I want to be able to relate to the song or what genre of music it falls under.

Latin music is universal.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.

Until it’s on the radio or online, it’s not real. With U2, our album isn’t finished until it’s in the stores.

I’m a big fan of songs like Joe Cocker’s ‚You Are So Beautiful‘ and Eric Clapton’s ‚Wonderful Tonight‘ – songs that go straight to the point.

People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around – the music and the ideas.

I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.

The effect of music on fashion has been immense, especially hip-hop and urban music.

In a long meter hymn, a singer – they call it ‚lays out a line.‘ And then the whole church joins in in repeating that line. And they form a wall of harmony so tight, you can’t wedge a pin between it.

So there’s no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn’t necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn’t necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.

I ain’t here to argue about his facial features. Or here to convert atheists into believers. I’m just trying to say the way school need teachers the way Kathie Lee needed Regis that’s the way yall need Jesus.

The darkness, the loop of negative thoughts on repeat, clamours and interferes with the music I hear in my head.

I don’t know if it’s changing already with ‚Joanne,‘ but my intention is to bring people together that don’t know each other and that would maybe feel awkward, but somehow be brought together by the music. That’s what I wanted to do. Because that is pure and authentic to my family history and what I stand for.

I just try to write songs that people are going to have a dialogue about.

Of course, ‚I Will Always Love You‘ is the biggest song so far in my career. I’m famous for several, but that one has been recorded by more people and made me more money, I think, than all of them. But that song did come from a true and deep place in my heart.

Honestly, I’d love to be remembered as one of the best to ever pick up a mic, but if I’m doing my part to lessen some racial tension I feel good about what I’m doing.

I’ve proved to be as difficult to convert as I am to hypnotize.

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

The great moments of rock ‚n‘ roll were never off in some corner of the music world, in a self-constructed ghetto.

I’ve started doing book reviews for Barnes & Noble! They saw that I did a lot of book reviews on the site, and they figured that it might not be a bad thing if they got me to do some for them as well. I gave them five categories I’d be interested in reviewing, from art to fiction to music.

I don’t live for the accolades. I’m more so about the music. Making it, and putting it out. Those are the two best feelings.

‚Thursday‘ is a conceptual album. Whatever that situation was, I spent the whole album focusing on that situation.

There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you.

Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.

Sing me a new song; the world is transfigured; all the Heavens are rejoicing.

When I listen to the radio, I just hear so much music that doesn’t even sound like people. The vocals are all tuned, and the drums are all fake.

I wanted to be famous for my music and my talent, and I always wished I could cut it out when I left the stage.

When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.

I don’t want to do free jazz! Because free jazz – which is the musical equivalent of free marketeering – isn’t actually free at all. It’s just constrained by what your muscles can do.

One of the benefits of playing to small audiences in small clubs for a few years is that you’re allowed to fail.

So many girls come up and say to me, ‚I have never listened to country music in my life. I didn’t even know my town had a country-music station. Then I got your record, and now I’m obsessed.‘ That’s the coolest compliment to me.

Songwriters, you have to work – you have to wait for residuals. You have to pray that the song’s going to be a hit. And then a year later, you might get a check.

I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.

I don’t think a song should be put in a category.

I push myself in a lot of aspects when I write a song. I write a piece and where most people would stop and say, ‚Oh, that’s the hook right there,‘ I’ll move that to the first four bars of the verse and do a new hook.

We need to try to unite audiences, unite countries, join musical tastes, unite people.

The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.

If there’s not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.

I love to play music. So why endanger that with something like drugs?

Producing all my own songs and refusing to go to the hot producer. That’s the biggest risk I’ve taken so far.

Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.

I don’t think I’d ever apologise for music I make, no.

I really started writing music to challenge myself, to see what I could write.

You gotta make sure the listener is listening to you, so if you put it into a song, often times, if the song is striking enough, then you can really deliver the story most effectively while keeping the ear of the listener the whole time.

One of my lungs is half gone, and the other half, because I smoked for years, has a lesion. So I can’t swim anymore and had the swimming pool covered over. Now it’s what I call the dance pavilion, and so I and my friends sit out and put music on and watch people dance.

I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.

It’s not essential for me to have a big debut week; it’s not essential for me to have big radio records.

I thought that I wrote songs and wrote music, and that was sort of what I thought I was best at doing. And because nobody else was ever doing my songs, I felt – you know, I had to go out and do them.

Open Graph is a language for structuring content and sharing that goes on in other apps, and we’re continuing to build it out longer term. But we found we need to build more specific experiences around categories like music or movies. Where we’ve taken the time to build those specific experiences, stuff has gone quite well.

My body is damaged from music in two ways. I have a red irritation in my stomach. It’s psychosomatic, caused by all the anger and the screaming. I have scoliosis, where the curvature of your spine is bent, and the weight of my guitar has made it worse. I’m always in pain, and that adds to the anger in our music.

I rate Morrissey as one of the best lyricists in Britain. For me, he’s up there with Bryan Ferry.

People tried to change my concept of what music is. That music is work, but it’s not like that.

I think ‚Invisible‘ is a great song, but I don’t know how accessible it is.

Music has to be sort of ignorable sometimes.

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I’m really not worth being called an artist at all.

Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches – he has made music sick.

Who’s to say what’s a good voice and not a good voice?

What makes a song last is real content from a mind that is thinking a little bit harder about certain things. A lot of artists don’t really think that hard.

I need music. It’s like my heartbeat, so to speak. It keeps me going no matter what’s going on – bad games, press, whatever!