David Byrne Quotes About Songs

Quotes about: Songs

• In the future, women will have breasts all over. In the future, it will be a relief to find a place without culture. In the future, plates of food will have names and titles. In the future, we will all drive standing up. In the future, love will be taught on television and by listening to pop songs.

  David Byrne

  Song, Names, Listening

• I try to write about small things. Paper, animals, a house... love is kind of big. I have written a love song, though. In this film, I sing it to a lamp.

  David Byrne

  Song, Writing, Animal

  "Stop Making Sense". Documentary, Music, 1984.

• Maybe it's naïve, but I would love to believe that once you grow to love some aspect of a culture-its music, for instance -you can never again think of the people of that culture as less than yourself. I would like to believe that if I am deeply moved by a song originating from some place other than my own homeland, then I have in some way shared an experience with the people of that culture. I have been pleasantly contaminated. I can identify in some small way with it and its people.

  David Byrne

  Music, Song, Believe

• Often I don't know what the song means until it's finished. Sometimes months later. I don't think that's bad. It implies that I don't know what I'm doing but-I think if you're able to follow your instincts, then that's knowing what you're doing.

  David Byrne

  Song, Mean, Thinking

• I sense the world might be more dreamlike, metaphorical, and poetic than we currently believe--but just as irrational as sympathetic magic when looked at in a typically scientific way. I wouldn't be surprised if poetry--poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs--is how the world works. The world isn't logical, it's a song.

  David Byrne

  Song, Believe, Design

• I think sometimes - not always - I write songs that are accessible.

  David Byrne

  Song, Writing, Thinking

• I still feel like if I can get a song to work with, say, a basic beat, a rhythm, some chord changes, and a melody, a vocal melody - if it works with that, then I feel it's written and there's something there.

  David Byrne

  Song, Beats, Chords

  Interview with Chris Dahlen, pitchfork.com. July 17, 2006.

• There's still a feeling that uncensored emotions make a good song. They don't. Pure emotion is just somebody screaming at you, or crying. It doesn't communicate anything. It has to be mediated with some skill and craft, in order to communicate it to a second, a third, or a fourth person. That doesn't make it any less real. And it doesn't make it any less true. But it does mean that, yeah, it's the combination that makes it work.

  David Byrne

  Song, Real, Mean

• I've been asking myself: 'Why put together these things - CDs, albums?' The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it's artistically viable. It's not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it's not obvious or even conscious on the artists' part.

  David Byrne

  Song, Artist, Cds

  "David Byrne and Thom Yorke on the Real Value of Music". Wired Interview, www.wired.com. December 18, 2007.

• There's a pervasive feeling that when somebody sings a song and records a song on a record, that it's their true feeling.

  David Byrne

  Song, Feelings, Records

  Interview with Chris Dahlen, pitchfork.com. July 17, 2006.

• Probably the reason it's a little hard to break away from the album format completely is, if you're getting a band together in the studio, it makes financial sense to do more than one song at a time. And it makes more sense, if you're going to all the effort of performing and doing whatever else, if there's a kind of bundle.

  David Byrne

  Song, Effort, Together

  "David Byrne and Thom Yorke on the Real Value of Music". Wired Interview, www.wired.com. December 18, 2007.

• There's still a feeling that uncensored emotions make a good song. They don't. Pure emotion is just somebody screaming at you, or crying. It doesn't communicate anything.

  David Byrne

  Song, Feelings, Emotion

  Interview with Chris Dahlen, pitchfork.com. July 17, 2006.

• Punk. . .was more a kind of do-it-yourself, anyone-can-do-it attitude. If you only played two notes on the guitar, you could figure out a way to make a song out of that, and that's what it was all about.

  David Byrne

  Song, Attitude, Guitar

• I think that if they want people to listen to ten or twelve songs, they have to give the listener a reason to listen to ten or twelve songs or to buy ten or twelve and listen to the whole thing instead of just pulling one or two for their iPod or their computer.

  David Byrne

  Song, Thinking, Two

  "Byrne, Baby, Byrne". Interview with Michael Archer, www.guernicamag.com. April 15, 2010.

• The world isn't logical, it's a song.

  David Byrne

  Song, World, Logical

  David Byrne (2010). “Bicycle Diaries”, p.165, Penguin

• I think it's really hard to make songs that pursue an agenda. You can kind of do it a little bit through a character, so the character gives voice to something or their story, the story of the character tells you something, but, for me anyway, it's really hard to write directly about politics.

  David Byrne

  Song, Writing, Character

  "Byrne, Baby, Byrne". Interview with Michael Archer, www.guernicamag.com. April 15, 2010.

• I still feel like if I can get a song to work with, say, a basic beat, a rhythm, some chord changes, and a melody, a vocal melody - if it works with that, then I feel it's written and there's something there. So I intentionally don't get involved with arranging stuff or fussing over the sounds and the edits and the beats too much, at least not in the beginning, because I feel like then you can fool yourself that you've got something there, when you might not.

  David Byrne

  Song, Fool, Rhythm

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